Will was outstandingly insightful today regarding the identification of the opposing forces and types of conflict portrayed in ten passages from To Build a Fire. Great job! His homework for Tuesday is to read as much as he wishes of a chapter from Bill Nye the Science Guy's new book and indicate unclear passages.

Will scored 100% on an adverb clause exercise today. He was able to identify all of the adverb clauses in the sentences and the questions they answered (to what extent, under what circumstances, when, why, etc.). He combined other sentences using an adverb clause of his own creation. Great job, Will!

Will completed various vocabulary exercises today using the Latin root -ject with various prefixes (de, e, in, ob, sub) and others using unfamiliar words from the text (conjectural, unwonted, conflagration, peremptorily).

Will revised his draft of "To Build a Fire Today." He was able to independently identify many of the changes that needed to be made. He saw that he was overusing the word "got" and earnestly strived to select more specific terms. He added an ending that found the main character satisfied and proud--and alive--rather than the original tragic ending by Jack London. Will is quite proud of his resulting product and earned an A on the assignment.

Will has made excellent progress on his parallel plot for To Build a Fire. He stated that he modernized the story in the same way that the filmmakers set The Secret Life of Walter Mitty in contemporary times although the original story was set during World War II. Wow! Great idea! Instead of moccasins and mittens, Will's characters have snowmobiles and Gore-Tex. Instead of being a gold miner, Will's main character is a biologist from Northwestern University, conducting research on climate change. His homework is to finish the story and bring the main character to the final destination, "the old claim on the left fork of Henderson Creek, where the boys are already."

Will is in the process of creating an alternate, more upbeat ending for To Build a Fire. For homework, he should compose two sentences.

Today Natalie wrote the first body paragraph of her "Crucible" essay. We discussed her writing as she continued to develop her thoughts on how guilt transformed the character of John Proctor.

In his homework, Will identified the role of the dog (here, not man's best friend) in To Build a Fire and the way the dog serves to represent Man v. Nature. He also saw the ways the basic elements (air, fire, water, and to a lesser extent, earth) all worked against the protagonist. Will then began writing an alternate, cheerier ending to the story.

Will did an excellent job today analyzing the progression in the protagonist's perspective on the man on Sulphur Creek. The protagonist's level of confidence and despair conditioned his view, and Will sussed that out quite quickly.
His homework is to answer questions about the role of the dog in the story and the motive of the author for including the dog as a character, especially in terms of the types of conflict that occur in literature.

For homework, Will reviewed the vocabulary from the short story. Today, he accurately recalled all of the definitions and composed sentences for each term. His *optional* homework is to begin to read about Jack London in preparation for next week's selection, "To Build a Fire."