Katya and I read to Act 2 of "Love from a Stranger," then we watched the 1937 movie. Allusions, old sayings, vocabulary, and values keep coming up for thoughtful explanation and discussion.
Katya finished The Book Thief book and film today, reading the epilogue that never made it to the movie, and discussing how brilliant, creative, and satisfying it is. Her culminating work on Zusak's book is a very detailed comparison/contrast of the difference between the movie and book. Katya is excellent with details and remembering differences -- a wonderful skill in all ways.
Alexa completed the Book Thief work and watching the film. She did the crossword Book Thief test that Craig and I created over the past few sessions, scoring 100. We analyzed a part of the text aloud before moving to the Agatha Christie play, Love from a Stranger. We watched the early 1930's film for awhile, and concluded our session with reading from the book and noting differences.
Katya has almost completed reading The Book Thief, and today watched nearly to the end of the film. She asked good critical thinking questions about possibilities of the conclusion, and tonight she is planning to finish the last pages. Tomorrow I will show her the last five minutes of the film. Then she is writing a comparison/contrast essay between the book and the film. Katya did the crossword puzzle test that Craig created on The Book Thief, and scored 100.
We are on Skype today, and close to concluding our reading of The Book Thief. I am using some portions to illustrate analytical writing. Katya will be writing an analysis after we finish the book. She is also working on the illustrated extended analogy as Max's book without The Book Thief, but focused on her project about puppy mills.
Katya took notes on process writing (Skype) as I gave them to her from our textbook, Patterns. I then read her Ben Franklin's Daily Schedule for the purpose of crafting a thesis statement for an analysis or evaluation essay. We worked through a good strategy for creating thesis statements. Katya then discussed how she would develop the body paragraphs and argue her point that he needed to build in some "down time!" Then we discussed which strategy for introductory and concluding paragraphs would work best.
Skype with Katya - vocabulary review for Tuesday test. Reading The Book Thief -- discussion of his writing techniques and strategies, use of rhetorical devices, and how to apply these in her own writing, whether creative, analyzation, or evolution of a text.
Katya had an excellent session of close critical reading with The Book Thief (Skype). We discussed the strategies used by Zusak and how he used these fabulous writing techniques to create mood, enhance the story, develop and deepen character, and put forth philosophical questions. The critical thinking element "point of view" was especially vivid in one scene. This gave opportunity to help Katya see how to look for things when analyzing or evaluating for essay writing.
Today we completed watching and discussing the film The Book Thief, and read a portion of the book. We should finish this reading and an essay based on the film and reading by the end of next week, in order to continue to the requirement to read/study a play by Shakespeare.
