We began studying and reading the novel,"The Secret Life of Bees" ,today. Lena took introductory notes on the setting and on the main characters as well as on discrimination in 1964 South Carolina. I further discussed the importance of the 1964 Civil Rights Act in history and in the novel's setting. I then placed vocabulary words and definitions on our screen which Lena copied into her notebook . We stopped our aloud reading to discuss important elements of the story and to allow me to project reading comprehension questions on the screen which Lena correctly answered. Thematically, we noted how the emotional impact of the death of the narrator's mother when the narrator was only four will drive the main character to try to fill that void.