Reading Log for Nov./December: Focus on Theme

Reading Log for Nov./December: Focus on Theme

Student Name ________________Period ____ Points for the week ______
(first and last required) (Important!)
Weekly Reading Log for the Book-of-the-Month Club Book – Month 3
Due: This log is due weekly -- on the last day you attend class each week.
To hand it in, place it in the top wire basket for your period, and pick up a new log.
 Don’t forget to have your book approved before you read it.
 Plan to have your entire book read by the due date: December 10/11
This time you are focusing on themes found in the book. For each day you will record the date, pages read, and as you find them, sentences or passages from the book that indicate theme.
The chart includes these items:
Title of Book (Use ″ to show you’re in the same book as on dates above.)
Date Read -- Required
Pages Read Required -- Example: page 23 – page 41

(“Topic” is what it’s about.)
What is the topic of your book? ______________________________

Passages from the book that show themes:
Include page found (required), the sentence or passage, and the theme shown. [“It might help to think of a theme as an idea that flows through the book and states something about life.” – from “Finding a Theme” by Grace Fleming] Sometimes a theme is called “the moral of the story.” A theme will be a complete sentence. Write complete sentences neatly, and spell correctly.


Example
Title of Book (Use ″ to show you’re in the same book as on dates above.) Date Read -- Required Pages Read Required
Example: page 23 – page 41
The Outsiders 11-5-08 Page 1 through page 20
″ 11-6-08 Page 20 through page 35
What is the topic of your book? This book is about teenagers in the 1960’s and the gang warfare between the rich kids and the poor kids. It’s also about friendship and family.

Passages from the book that show themes:
Include page found (required) and the sentence or passage.
page 148 -- Johnny did’t even try to grin at him. “Useless. . . fighting’s no good. . . .” Theme: Violence doesn’t help solve a situation.

Books Not Allowed for Class Book Assessments

Books Not Allowed for Book-of-the-Month Club
[Some of these books are used as class sets in our 7TH, 8TH and 9TH grade English classes. Others may be considered by our English department teachers to be too “young” for you, or otherwise inappropriate as homework for a junior high class.]

A Tale of Two Cities
Adventures of Ulysses
And Then There Were None
Animal Farm
Book of Three
Boxcar Children, any of the series
Bud, Not Buddy
Call of the Wild
Captain Underpants, any of the series
Charlotte’s Web
Diary of Anne Frank
Getting Away with Murder
Goosebumps, any of the serie s
Great Brain, any of the series
Great Gilly Hopkins
Gregor the Overlander (#1 and #2)
Harriet the Spy
Holes
Ice Story
Invention of Hugo Cabret
Left for Dead
Midwife’s Apprentice
Mississippi Trial 1955
Phineas Gage
Regarding the Fountain
Roll off Thunder, Hear My Cry
Romeo and Juliet
Spiderwick
Stand Tall
Tom Sawyer
The Giver
The Outsiders
The Whipping Boy
To Kill a Mockingbird
Walk Two Moons
White Fang
Words By Heart
Authors:
Judy Blume
Beverly Cleary
Katherine Patterson (most)
R.L. Stein (all)
Also not accepted:
Books you read for reading skills or literature classes (or other classes), comic books, cartoon books, graphic novels, novels in verse unless approved by the teacher, scriptures.
Please do not select books you have previously read.


The consequence for doing a book assessment on books “not allowed” will be a zero (no points) on the assignment.
Your teacher reserves the right to add or delete books on this list at her discretion.
 Have your book approved by your teacher and parents before you start reading.

Book-of-the-Month Club Approval

Seventh Grade English Book Approval for the
Book-of-the-Month Club!

This month the approval is due by: November 14 .(Sooner is better!)
The book should be read by December 10/11.

Book-of-the-Month Club Assignment: In addition to the reading we’ll do in class, students are required to read a novel (or other approved book) on their own (outside of school, during advisory reading time, etc.) each month. You will keep a reading log to be handed in each week, and you will complete an assessment based on the book.
Book Requirements: You get to choose your book ☺, but it must meet these requirements.
 The book cannot be one read as a class or as a small group in class.
 The book must be grade level/reading level appropriate.
 The book should be 100 pages or longer. Select a book you can read by the time it is due.
 See the back of this sheet for a list of books not allowed.
 Check your teacher’s website and/or blog for a list of recommended books.
 The book must be approved by a parent or guardian, and by your teacher.
 The teacher may ask you to read a book from a particular genre.
This month the book should be a novel in a different genre than the novels you’ve used so far for Book of the Month.
Student name: (Please print first and last name) ______Period:_____
Title of book: __________________________________
Author's name: ________________
Number of pages: _________ (The book should be at least 100 pages long.)
Parent signature: _______________________ Date: __________________
Teacher approval _________________ Date: ___________ Points _____/10 + on time _____/5 + early _____/5

High Flight

High Flight

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air. . . .

Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or ever eagle flew —
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

— John Gillespie Magee, Jr

Vocabulary Helps
surly: unfriendly or hostile

trod: to step or walk on, about, in, or along.

sanctity: holiness, a sacred thing

About the Poet:
During the desperate days of the Battle of Britain, hundreds of Americans crossed the border into Canada to enlist with the Royal Canadian Air Force. Knowingly breaking the law, but with the tacit approval of the then still officially neutral United States Government, they volunteered to fight the Nazis.

John Gillespie Magee, Jr., was one such American. Born in Shanghai, China, in 1922 to an English mother and a Scotch-Irish-American father, Magee was 18 years old when he entered flight training. Within the year, he was sent to England and posted to the newly formed No 412 Fighter Squadron, RCAF, which was activated at Digby, England, on 30 June 1941. He was qualified on and flew the Supermarine Spitfire.

Flying fighter sweeps over France and air defense over England against the German Luftwaffe, he rose to the rank of Pilot Officer.

On 3 September 1941, Magee flew a high altitude (30,000 feet) test flight in a newer model of the Spitfire V. As he orbited and climbed upward, he was struck with the inspiration of a poem — "To touch the face of God."

Once back on the ground, he wrote a letter to his parents. In it he commented, "I am enclosing a verse I wrote the other day. It started at 30,000 feet, and was finished soon after I landed." On the back of the letter, he jotted down his poem, 'High Flight.'

Just three months later, on 11 December 1941 (and only three days after the US entered the war), Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee, Jr., was killed. The Spitfire V he was flying, VZ-H, collided with an Oxford Trainer from Cranwell Airfield flown by one Ernest Aubrey. The mid-air happened over the village of Roxholm which lies between RAF Cranwell and RAF Digby, in the county of Lincolnshire at about 400 feet AGL at 11:30. John was descending in the clouds. At the enquiry a farmer testified that he saw the Spitfire pilot struggle to push back the canopy. The pilot, he said, finally stood up to jump from the plane. John, however, was too close to the ground for his parachute to open. He died instantly. He was 19 years old.

November 5/6, 2008

November 5/6, 2008

Special Notice: A1 and A2 received their Book-of-the-Month Club assignment for November-December. The B-Day classes will receive the assignment on November 7. See nearby posts for more information. The book approval is due by Novmeber 14. The reading log for this week will be extra credit.

Responding to Poetry -- Emotions and Ideas
Students responded to the poem "High Flight. " They read the poem, and in their composition books they a) wrote quickly for about two minutes about anything this poem brought to mind for them. b) borrowed one line from the poem and created a poem or continued to write their thoughts, focusing now on that one line. (See the nearby post for the poem and information about the poet.

Genre and Theme
We then read a play titled The Flying Machine by Ray Bradbury. We discussed genre and theme.

Sentence Combining
B1 and B2 had time to do sentence combining. Ask for the worksheet if you were absent.
A1 did part of the sentence combining.

Prefixes and Suffixes
We also looked at a list of words such as
prewrite
prerinse
prealgebra
preview
prekindergarten

What does "pre" mean in these words?
Is "pre" a prefix or a suffix?

We will be learning prefixes and suffixes in class during this term.

The Boy with Five Fingers

This is the short story we read in class on November 3/4.
What would be a theme found in this story?

The Boy with Five Fingers by James Gunn

I love Miss Harrison. The other boys laugh at me and say that Miss Davis is prettier or Miss Spencer is nicer. But I don’t care. I love Miss Harrison.
Miss Harrison’s my teacher. When I grow up we’re going to get married. When I tell her that she gets that kind of crinkling around her eye like she does when she’s pleased about something, and she says that’s fine like she meant it, and I guess she does.
The first time I thought about it was the day Miss Harrison told us about the scientists and the Old Race and the Basic Right. Miss Harrison said we should try to keep track of what the scientists are doing because they are the wisest and maybe if we know more about them we will be wise, too, and might even be scientists ourselves some day. But I think what she really wanted to talk about was the Basic Right. Somehow, everyday, she talks about the Basic Right, and it must be important because she talks about it so much.
So Miss Harrison said that many, many years ago, before any of us were born, the scientists had uncovered ruins and nobody knew what they were and everybody wondered and thought about them because they were really big.
Somebody said that we had built them long ago and left them and forgotten about them but nobody believed that because we live in little houses far apart and we never had built anything as big as the ruins and never had wanted to build anything like that.
Then somebody else said that the ruins had been built by a race that lived on Earth before we did and had died or something because maybe conditions got different or maybe they went to live on another planet. And everybody said that it might be good to know more about the Old Race, but nobody knew what they looked like, or did, or anything except that they built these huge places and then went away.
Nobody knew any more than that for years and years, Miss Harrison said, until just a year or so ago when the scientists dug up a place that wasn’t all in ruins and found statues and pictures and books and everything. So everybody was all excited and worked on them awfully hard until they could tell what the Old Race was like and just about what was in the books.
Miss Harrison kind of stopped here and looked at us like she does when she’s going to tell us something important and we should all get real quiet and listen carefully so we wouldn’t miss anything.
Then she said that they had just released the news and the Old Race wasn’t really different after all but sort of like ancestors of ours only far away. She said that in lots of ways they were like us only strange and did strange things, and she said we should be sorry for them and glad, too, because maybe if they hadn’t been strange we wouldn’t be here. Then she told us how strange they were, and I was glad I didn’t live then and that I was living now and I was in Miss Harrison’s class and listening to her tell us about the Old Race.
Most all of them lived together in these big places, she said, like ants in an ant heap. Everybody gasped at that because we all liked lots of room. But the strangest thing of all, Miss Harrison said, was something else. She stopped again and we all got real quiet. They were all, she said slowly, exactly alike.
Nobody said anything for a moment and then Willie began to laugh the way he does, sort of half-hissing, and pretty soon we were all laughing and Miss Harrison, too. They all had two eyes, she said, and one nose, and one mouth, and two ears, and two arms, and two legs. After every one of those things Willie began hissing again and we all had to laugh. And, Miss Harrison said, they were all stuck in exactly the same place. Their arms and legs all had bones in them that had joints, in the middle and at each end.
Though they were all exactly alike, Miss Harrison said, they thought they could see differences and because of this they did all sorts of strange things until they did the strangest thing of all and ruined all their big places and their children weren’t all alike any more. So it went on like that until nobody was alike and here we are. So they were kind of ancestors, like Miss Harrison said.
Miss Harrison moved upward slowly, the way she does when she wants to make sure everybody will pay attention. We all held our breath. In this room, she said, right now, we have a member of the Old Race.
Everybody let out his breath all at once. We all looked at her but she laughed and said no, she wasn’t it. Johnny, she said, stand up, and I stood up. There, said Miss Harrison, is what the Old Race looked like. Everybody stared at me and I felt kind of cold and lonely all at once. Of course, she said, I don’t mean that Johnny is really one of the Old Race, but he looks just like they used to and he even has five fingers on each hand.
All at once I felt ashamed. I put my hands behind me where nobody could see.
Willie started hissing again, but he wasn’t laughing now and his thin forked tongue was flickering at me. Everybody moved as far away from me as they could get and started making nasty sounds. If I had been younger I might have started to cry, but I just stood there and wished I had a mouth and tongue like Willie’s, or a cart like Louise’s instead of legs, or arms like Joan’s or fingers like Mike’s.
But Miss Harrison stood up straight and frowned, like she does when she’s real mad about something, and she said she was very surprised and it would seem like everything she’d said had been wasted. Pretty soon everybody quieted down and listened so she wouldn’t be mad and she said it looked like what she’d said about the Basic Right hadn’t done one bit of good.
Everybody has a right to be different, that was the Basic Right, she said, the foundation of everything and we wouldn’t be here now if it weren’t for that. And the law says that no one shall discriminate against anyone else because they are different, and that applied to being the same, too. And Miss Harrison said a lot more things I don’t remember because I was sort of excited and warm inside. And finally she said she hoped we’d learned a lesson because the Old Race hadn’t, and look where they were.
It was right after that I decided I loved Miss Harrison. The other boys say she should have a neck, like Miss Davis, but I don’t see why. They say she should have two eyes like me or three like Miss Spencer, but I like her just the way she is and everything she does, like the way she wraps her arm around the chalk when she draws on the board. But I’ve already said it. I love Miss Harrison.
When I grow up we’re going to get married. I’ve thought of lots of reasons why we should but there’s one that’s better than any of them.
Miss Harrison and me – I guess we’re more different than anybody.

November 3/4, 2008

November 3/4, 2008
Today more students presented their Book of the Month Club Assessments -- presenting their characters to the class through quotes from their books. If you did not present today, and were not absent, it may be awhile before you can change that zero grade.

We also talked about the genre of science fiction.
Science fiction is fiction (made-up rather than things that have really happened) and usually involves either outer space, technology, or ideas about the future.
Many deal with imagined technology, or with the results of the misuse of technology.

The characters usually act as people would if the situations they are placed in were real.

We shared a poem that works as a riddle, and worked on figuring out what was being described and who was seeing it that way. You could call this a "science fiction" poem!
Here is the poem: (By the way, May Swenson originally came from Utah. She was born in Logan, attended the University of Utah, and became a world-famous poet.)

Southbound. . .
By May Swenson

A tourist came in from Orbitville,
parked in the air, and said:

The creatures of this star
are made of metal and glass.

Through the transparent parts
you can see their guts.

Their feet are round and roll
on diagrams or long

measuring tapes, dark
with white lines.

They have four eyes.
The two in the back are red.

Sometimes you can see a five-eyed
one, with a red eye turning

on the top of his head.
He must be special—

the others respect him,
and go slow

when he passes, winding
among them from behind.

They all hiss as they glide,
like inches, down the marked

tapes. Those soft shapes,
shadowy inside

the hard bodies—are they
their guts or their brains?

We also read the short story, "The Boy with Five Fingers," in preparation for more short stories, and for reading the novel The Giver. This story, like The Giver, looks at a possible post-apolcalyptic future. In other words, in these books, man has destroyed civilization and most of mankind. The story and book deal with what sorts of societies might grow up many years after such an event.

In this case, apocalyse means "any universal or widespread destruction or disaster: the apocalypse of nuclear war."
any universal or widespread destruction or disaster: the apocalypse of nuclear war.