Today we prepared ourselves to read To Kill a Mockingbird.
1. Narration time difference. As a Do Now, students created a Venn diagram exploring the differences in language and comprehension of themselves as a 6-year-old and themselves as a 35-year-old. We then discussed how the narrator of To Kill a Mockingbird is about thirty-five (or older), while the time that she narrates takes place when she is six. So the character is six but the narrator (the same character) is much older and has quite a large vocabulary.
2. Reading Guide. Students received the To Kill a Mockingbird Reading Guide as well as their own copy of the novel. The guide should be kept folded up inside their book. Students should add anything and everything to the guide as they read. Students, please, feel free to read ahead! I will love you more if you do! We filled in some of the background information on the reading guide and added to the map of Maycomb.
3. Historical Background via Mr. Jones. We watched a video of DSA teacher Ken Jones explaining the background of To Kill a Mockingbird.
4. Annotation notes. We took notes on how to annotate a passage on L12: Close Reading and Annotation. Here’s our acronym:
Scope it out!
Summarize the difficult parts.
Connect the passage to your life, other books, history, other events in the novel, and the big pictures
Observe suspicious diction, information about characters
Predict what will happen next
Examine Patterns, like repeated words and phrases
No homework. Bring your novel back to class tomorrow.
Honors – if you want to read Other Voices, Other Rooms you should try to obtain your own copy if possible (we have 13; 20 people want to read it).
ALEXA GARVOILLE 