As Hunter completed The Book Thief, we read poems by Emily Dickinson and Edgar Masters likewise about death or where death is personified. Hunter did a good job analyzing a number of the Masters poems from Spoon River Anthology. We also defined and reviewed point of view and personification and located examples in the poetry. Hunter is keeping notes in his notebook on these topics.

Hunter and I watched "The Book Thief" movie in class today.

Hunter read aloud during our entire class today and finished "The Book Thief." I really think he enjoyed it and was proud of accomplishing this task, the first time he's really read a novel from start to finish. We will watch the movie in our next class.

Hunter read in "The Book Thief" today.

Using his prior outline, Hunter completed drafting his descriptive paragraph . In order to enhance the paragraph, we read some descriptive paragraphs from Of Mice and Men and using Steinbeck's sentence structure and organization, wrote a few closing sentences by substituting some of Hunter's nouns and verbs for Steinbeck's.
We will be starting a brief poetry unit that ties into the novel he is now completing, The Book Thief, and then read Of Mice and Men.

Miss Kelli had assigned a descriptive paragraph as a writing exercise.. Hunter's initial effort lacked much in the way of descriptive material. I brought in a picture of Costa Rica and then gave Hunter an opening sentence to use in drafting a descriptive paragraph. We initially drafted an outline for the paragraph and then began converting the outline into sentences, describing the scene from sky to ground. I expect we will complete this on Monday. We also corrected some incorrect word usage in his prior descriptive essay by distinguishing : were,where, we're; then and than: there and their; scalpel and rappel.

Hunter and I discussed irony relative to a quote by Death, the narrator, from "The Book Thief." We read together from the book and discussed the events. The war is ending, Molching is being bombed, and Leisel has seen Max marching through the streets on his way to a concentration camp.

Hunter did grammar practice with Khan Academy video and practice tests. We learned about irony - situational, dramatic and verbal, sarcasm and puns. We discussed expectation versus result and how it applied to "The Book Thief." We discussed and watched lessons to tackle confusing words - their, there and they're, than and then, affect and effect. Afterwards, we read "The Book Thief" together.

Hunter and I read together from "The Book Thief." I ordered the DVD to watch afterwards.

I gave Hunter a notebook today to keep notes of our classwork and of our class discussions. I will instruct Hunter what to write in the notebook. While I have not yet drafted any tests for Hunter, I let him know that I would try to use an open notebook policy for some of the tests and that the notebook would be of great assistance in completing the course.
We continued reviewing imagery in the opening passage of Steinbeck's The Pearl. Hunter identified descriptive adjectives and images and then in the notebook wrote down the noun described, the descriptive phrases and adjective, and the type of imagery-sound or sight. Next, we will work on his writing a descriptive paragraph of a place in Costa Rica that he has visited.