Readings This Week
This week, we studied fiction in all three junior high NELP classes.
The first grade studied "Gonzalo" by Paul Fleischman. This is from our Visions textbook. It's about a boy and his family who come to America from Guatemala, and especially about the problems Gonzalo's Great Uncle, Tio Juan, has in adjusting to his new life so far from his home.
The second grade studied "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" by Rudyard Kipling. This is quite ambitious, as it is one of the longest stories in our curriculum, however, the students really enjoyed it. It's about a mongoose, a small weasel-like animal, named Rikki who goes to war against two cobras, snakes who are trying to kill the family that adopted him.
The third grade just finished "Buried Poems" by Terry Tempest Williams. This is a story about an archaeologist who gets the whole town talking about its past by leaving mysterious poems all over town. Unfortunately, the students had a very difficult time, as many of our reading questions were about motivations. This was quite a difficult story in terms of age-appropriateness, and I'll be giving consideration to replacing this story with something else in the future.
Next Week: Non-fiction.
The first grade will be reading about fashions in the 18th and 19th century from a selection from Grammar Sense from Oxford.
The second grade will be reading a true story about trading and friendship between enemies during the US Civil War in "Blue and Gray Fraternize on the Picket Line" by Alexander Hunter from the book The Blue and the Gray by Henry Steele Commager.
The third grade will be reading a selection written by me about the Mausoleum of Theodoric: an amazing and nearly indestructible piece of ancient architecture.
I'll let you know how it goes.
Wish me luck!
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Date: 2008⁄09⁄26 19:49｜Permalink｜Author：nelp