September 19, 2014

The Scarlet Letter

Learning Targets:

Using questions generated by me and my classmates, I can have a sustained conversation about a novel.

I can observe and evaluate a literary conversation. 

September: The Happiest Song

Activity 1: Discussion of 16 & 17

No Homework!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Examples of inferential questions from 2H novels: 

"He was familiar with that hollow feeling. He remembered it from the nights after they had buried his mother....the empty space of loss, regret for things which could not be changed." (73) How has this hollow feeling from Tayo's past returned to him? What do you think caused it? Do you believe that the empty feeling described is worse now than it was in the past? Why would this be?

‘When we gaze at the night sky’ he says, ’we are looking at fragments of the past.’  What does Stephen mean by this? Also, could that phrase (and some of what follows it) be relevant in some way to Elaine’s life as well?

1.  “After he has gone back, to wherever he’s going next, I think of getting him a star named after himself, for his birthday.  I have seen an advertisement for these: you send in your money, and you get a certificate with a star map, your own marked on it.  Possibly he would find this amusing.  But I’m not sure the word birthday, for him, would still have meaning (363).”  What might Elaine mean with this cryptic comment about the word “birthday”?  Is this comment connected to his speech on the universe?  Is the “star” as a “birthday” present significant in a symbolic way, or just something a theoretical physicist might like?