After reading a few pages of "Catcher in the Rye", we discussed the symbolic significance of Holden's searching for the ducks in Central Park in the middle of winter as well as the significance of his dropping and breaking the record he purchased for his sister,Phoebe. I then projected a series of short answer questions onto Bobby's screen which he answered. Again , we worked on using the question's format to locate a subject and verb to incorporate into the answer. Bobby 's confidence in formulating answers to literary short answer questions is increasing as we continue this exercise. In the context of the breaking of the children's record Holden purchased for his younger sister, Bobby addressed its significance in terms of representing the"shattering " of innocence and composed sentences avoiding the awkward "is when" / "is because" construction that some students rely upon in answering the short answer question. I have assigned reading Shirley Jackson's short story "Charles" for our next session on Wednesday.

As many exams require multi -sentence responses rather than an entire essay, we today again worked on how to address a question that requires more than a sentence but less than an entire essay. We first reviewed the most recently read chapters of "Catcher in the Rye", and then I placed on the screen a series of questions requiring a multi-sentence answer. Bobby first discussed the substantive response, for example a plot line or character motivation, and then drafted a response which we analyzed and rewrote where necessary. I addressed the need for pronoun clarity and amplification of ideas ,even in a non essay response. This skill will assist Bobby not only in English class, but in other subjects as well.

As Bobby does not have access to a "Word" program on his computer, I shared my "Word "screen with him as well as a series of short answer questions on Chapters 17 and 18 of "Catcher in the Rye". We reviewed portions of the text , and thereafter Bobby dictated answers to questions about character, plot ,symbolism. After I placed his responses on the screen ,we discussed ways to rewrite his responses in order to make them more concise . I directed Bobby to the wording of the question to locate word choices for his answers if he felt it necessary. Last, we focused on any grammatical issues such as commas. Bobby came up with some good active verbs and strong descriptive adjectives in today's session which significantly elevated his writing style.

Bobby completed revising the rough draft of his essay on Holden Caulfield as an unreliable narrator in"The Catcher in the Rye". He evidenced strong mastery in the proper use of commas and capitalization and made some very worthwhile changes to his word usage. We then discussed the use of parallel structure in the complex sentence. As Bobby is reading the novel for his regular Language Arts class, we will continue writing about some of the novel's dominant themes this week.