November 12, 2015

We started class with 15 minutes of independent reading. Students kept an eye out for new and interesting words as they read then added the word to their Writer's Notebook. My word was "bosh," which means absurd or foolish talk; nonsense. It comes from Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court: "He spoke of me all the time, in the blandest way, as 'this prodigious giant,' and 'this horrible sky-towering monster,' and 'this tusked and taloned man-devouring ogre;' and everybody took in all this bosh in the naivest way, never smiled or seemed to notice that there was any discrepancy between these watered statistics and me" (20).

We've spent the past 2 1/2 weeks studying one set of stories that share a common thread. Today, I challenged students to find their own set of retellings. We visited the Bright Room where students worked with a partner to find a short story, a poem, and a song or artwork that all tell the same story. They then shared their findings with the class (not all groups presented today, so we'll return to the lab to finish up tomorrow). Students discovered retellings of Peter Pan, Sleeping Beauty, Little Red Riding Hood, and many more!

Students collaborate in the Bright Room.

These young men are finding retellings of Pygmalion.