Monday, January 25, 2010

Monday, January 25

Today, we began class by collecting your "Poetry Out Loud" logos paragraphs. Some of you didn't have them, and they are due as soon as possible. Please see last Tuesday's blog post for copies of the assignment and a description.

Next, in preparation for reading our next novel (To Kill A Mockingbird), we began a "3-2-1-Bridge" thinking routine about the American South from the period 1900 - 1940. We asked you to write down 3 words you associate with the American South during that time period, 2 questions that you have about it, and 1 metaphor, analogy, or simile that you could construct about it. You worked on this for about five minutes, and then we shared some of the items you wrote down. We'll return to these tomorrow to see how your thinking has changed.

We then talked briefly about some important dates and events that figure into the American South -- the Emancipation Proclamation, post-Civil-War Southern society and economic structure, and the rise/emergence of Jim Crow laws.

To illustrate the latter, we began reading Richard Wright's autobiographical essay "The Ethics of Living Jim Crow." Find a copy at the link below:

The Ethics of Living Jim Crow


We read through the first section, and focused discussion on the narrator's mother -- why she reacted so strongly and so (to our way of thinking) bizarrely to the narrator's experience. We then read halfway through the next section.

For homework, we asked you to finish reading the essay -- due tomorrow.