Oliver Twist Vocabularly, Chapters XXII to XXVI

       imp (134), aperture, sufficed (136), matron (138), equanimity (138), villain (140)  infirmary (140), amorous (142), dignity (142), prudent (142), shriveled (145), lamentations (146), latent (147), witticism (149), irrepressible (152), morsel (152), prominently (155), illuminated (155), boisterous (155), loathsome (156), profligacy (156), ferocity (156), vexation (158), torrent (158), wholesome (159), supposition (159), destitute (160), feeble (160), throttle (161), vehement (162)

IMPORTANT: HOW TO REGISTER FOR TURNITIN

I gave you some bad info in class on how to register for turnitin. Here's how to do it right:

For Period 5:
class code: 4554682
class password: Oliver1

For Period 9:
class code: 4554685
class password: Oliver2

Victorian poverty homework

Go to this site to read the piece on Victorian poverty and respond to it.

Oliver Twist vocabulary list #1

Enviable (1),  Hitherto (3),   Perversely (4), Atrociously (5)
Stupefied (11), Consolation (12), Extraneous (14), Magistrates (18)
Preliminary (19), Parochial (19), Acquiesced (21), Philosopher (24)
Countenance (26),  Atrocity (29), Merriment (31)

For those in the grammar group ...

Go here to continue to work on grammar exercises.

Secret Life Final Vocab Words

Chapter 8:
High-caliber, 137, Kamikaze, 151

Chapter 9:

Ambitious, 165

 Chapter 10:

Anguish, 199, Vigil, 200, Ritual, 205

Chapter 11:

Dillydallying, 214, Sauntered, 224, Quiver, 225, Taunting, 239

Vocabulary for Chapters 1-7 Secret Life of Bees

Chapter 1:
Imbecile, 11, Smirking, 13, Oblivious, 21, Impersonation, 31

Chapter 2:

Brazen, 38, Beseeching, 40, Pious, 44, Blaspheme, 44

Chapter 3:

Speculating, 63, Consternation, 64

Chapter 4:

Corrugated, 71, Meander, 80

Chapter 5:

Naïve, 84, Bona Fide, 85, Righteous, 87, Indignation, 87, Eclectic, 90

Chapter 6

Ingenious, 104., Deliverance, 107, Solace, 109

Chapter 7:
Incessantly, 120, Consignment, 125

Who's a bully?

This article from last week's New York Times offers a different take on bullying. I'd like you to read it for class Wednesday and we'll discuss how it relates, or doesn't, to our novel.

Vocabulary Galore!

monarchy, unwittingly, harassing, trepidation, lorries, foyer, integrity, squabbling, gnarled, imminent, demise lumbering, insomniac, embodiment, bazaar, drone, shrouded, withered, stench cretin, permeate, cardamom, tarpaulin, suitor, carcinoma, palliative, metastasized, chastise

Tonight's homework

Read pp. 80-109. No questions! But come to class ready to discuss our reading so far. Bring your best insights!

　

　

More vocabulary words

Add these words to your vocabulary list by Friday:

affluent, tapestries, chandelier, vaulted, congenital,
perpetually, skeptic, scoffed, virtuous, intricacies'
exhilarating, liability, melee, jostled, vehemently
revving, nemesis, obstinacy, irony

Homework for Thursday

Read to the end of Chapter 7 and answer the following questions:


1. Why is kite flying so important to Amir?

2. Explain the significance of Hassan frequently saying to Amir, "For you a thousand times over."

3. Why doesn’t Amir help Hassan when he is attacked? What does this show about him?

Homework for Wednesday

Read to page 47 (end of Chapter 5) and answer the following questions:

Homework #2

1.What kind of relationship do Hassan and Amir have? Give at least 3 details to prove your point.
2. Who is Rahim Khan? What kind of man is he?
3. How does Assef treat Amir and Hassan and why?

Vocabulary words for Wednesday

unscrupulous, notorious, hemorrhaged, garrulous, carcass, corpse, liability

Signing up for Engrade ...

Grades for this class will be recorded on Engrade, the online grading system. How to sign up:
1) Go to Engrade at www.engrade.com.
2) Click on Sign Up, and then click on Student.
3) In the box provided put your information: teacher name-student id-special access code. Example: mrvilbig-284950604-5403.
4) Note: mrvilbig is spelled with no capitals or periods; I'll give you your special access code in class.
5) Click next and set your own username and password. Once you are registered, you and your parents or guardians can check grades at any time.

Contact

I can be reached at (718) 724-8500. Leave a message, and I will return the call as soon as possible. A more effective way to reach me is to write an email using your Engrade account. Or you can email at my Dept. of Education email: pvilbig@schools.nyc.gov.

Grades!

Grades will be based on the following:
Tests and at home literary essays and projects: 40 percent
Classwork, quizzes, and homework: 60 percent
Total: 100 percent

How we'll work: For each book or literary work we read, you’ll be expected to read about 25 pages a night. In addition you will sometimes have homework in which you'll be asked to write brief responses or answer questions about your reading or topics for class discussion. You can expect that for each book or literary work, you'll write one at-home essay and have one to two tests. Pop quizzes occur whenever the teacher (me) gets the sense that students are not reading the material!

IMPORTANT: Grades are cumulative. That means the grades you make now count as much as the grades later in the semester. So it's important to work hard from the very beginning and not dig yourself into a hole in the first weeks of our class.

We will use Engrade, an online grading system in this class. I’ll give you information shortly about how to register. You’ll have your own account, where I’ll post grades. Your parents or guardians should be given access to your account.

Welcome!

Welcome to English 1 and the beginning of your high school experience. We will be focusing in this class on helping you to become more adept and skillful readers and writers. In reading you will be introduced to a variety of classic and modern works of high literary merit. You will focus on developing your vocabulary and your ability to interpret and analyze literature. In writing, you will develop the ability to write a literary essay, sharpen your grammar skills and your understanding of how language and sentences work. You will become a skilled writer capable of expressing your thoughts concisely and creatively.

But beyond this, the goal of this class is help you begin to understand the role that literature plays in helping us to understand our lives, the truths we live by, and the nature of right and wrong in human society. In some ways, literature remains one of the best way people have invented to think about what it means to be a human being living in society. It addresses big ideas and deep questions, and this class has as one of its goals to help you begin to see how literature works to provide us with glimpses of truth that are often hidden from view or suppressed because they are difficult to face or make us uncomfortable.

Theme

As we focus on writing about theme in these last days of class together, I'd like to suggest you take a look at a video piece I did a while back on the subject of theme. This video looks specifically at Romeo and Juliet, but I think you can easily generalize -- in addition quite a few of you have read the play or are familiar with it. Take a look:

Vocabulary for The Good Earth

accursed, ardent, asperity, avail, bade, bartered, bedraggled, befits, begrudge, beleaguer, beseech, betrothed, blubbering, boisterously, bosom, bumpkin, buxom, cauldron, clamored, coddle, concubine consternation, contrive, coquettishly, daintily, dais, deceitful, delicacies, demurred, diffidently, dismay, dubious, dykes, eminence, engrossed, entrusted, expenditure, feign, fetid, finicky garner, gayety, gleaned, goaded, haggard, hampered, harlot, harrowed, haughty, hither, horde, hostile, hovels, idle, impudent, imputed, incessantly, indignation, lacquered, languor, lenient, lewdness, lief, loamy, lotus, magistrate, malice, marauded, marred, meekly, muster, offal, opulence, overweening, pagoda, parcel, parsimony, peevish, perseverance, petulant, pewter, placid, pock-marked, proffered, propitious, proprietors, quarreled, quavering, quiescent, quince, raiment, rebuke, receded, reeks, resolutely, respite, robust, ruddy, sapped, scampish, seethed, serf, sheaths, shrewish, spectacle, squeamish, steward, stolidly, stoutly, stupefied, subsist, sumptuous, sunder, surcharge, swarm, tallow, tendril, threshold, waddling, wistful

Writing Prompts for Homework

Due Thur. March 3 --
Choose one of the following and write a response:

1) Write a story in which you tell the story of Chapters 29-31 from the standpoint of: a) one of the characters besides Amabell; b) a character you make up.

2) write a letter to one of the characters in the novel;

3) write a eulogy for Wilner or Odette

Vocabulary Words for The Farming of Bones

ascertain, rambling, reprove, evading, larceny, prelude, ferocity, conciliatory, obstinacy, slacken, embellishment, prerogative, dissertation, gesticulate, saturate, stupor, serenity, condolence, eccentric, corroborate, lamentation, imposter, paroxysm

Homework for Monday

Homework: Read Chapters 8-12. Find one scene or moment in the story that you think is significant (this can mean "important to the story," or "well-written," or "surprising." You determine the meaning of "significant." Then write a short paragraph, explaining the scene (give page number) and why you chose it. Submit this homework assignment through Googledocs.

Remember the coding for the filename for your work: P[followed by your period number][followed by the first four letters of your name][followed by title of assignment -- Chapter8to12hw. So your filename might look like this: P2KlamChapter8to12.

Notice that there are no spaces.

How to Overcome Essay Writing Anxiety

Check this post out with interesting thoughts about how to reduce anxiety about taking an essay test -- but I'd say the advice might be helpful for all forms of writing anxiety.

Run-on sentences

Do the run-on sentence practice here. Due Monday.

Grammar and Writing Do's and Don'ts

Modified No-No list Revised Fall 2010
This is a list of the most common errors found in your writing. Don't lose it; you may use it every time you write something in class or at home. Proofread! Use a dictionary.

1. Avoid these words: "Nice," " a lot," "very," "I think."
2. Maintain verb tense. Use all past tense, all present tense, or all future tense. Avoid using “had + verb”. This means that of two things that happened in the past the one with the “had” came first. You can only use this tense if you have two verbs in the same sentence.20. Wrong: “He had gone to the store.” Right: “He went to the store.” Wrong: “He had walked home.” Right: “He walked home.”
3. "Good" is an adjective. "Well" is an adverb.
4. Don't use the expression "Being that"; it's slang for the word "since".
5. Avoid the conversational "you." Don't directly address your reader if he/she is not part of your story or essay.
6. All pronouns must have antecedents and all pronouns must agree with their antecedents in number.
7. Avoid run-on sentences and sentence fragments. Remember sentences must have subjects and verbs. Dependent clauses can't be written by themselves. Independent clauses may be written by themselves. Make sure each sentence expresses a complete thought.
8. Remember these homonyms:
to (direction)
too (also, excessive)
two (2)

there (place)
their (possession)
they're (they are)

know (to have knowledge)
no (negative)

through (to pass by)
threw (tossed, passed)

its (possession)
it's (it is)

your (possession)
you're (you are)

9. Do not confuse these words:
quiet (opposite of loud) and quite (rather or very)
then (a time in the past) and than (comparative)
lose (fail to win) and loose (not tight)
accept (to take as it is) and except (to leave out)
10. People are referred to as "who" or "whom" and not "that" or "which."
11. Avoid redundancies such as "The reason why is because . . ."
Correct: "The reason is . . ."
12. "Of" is never a verb. There is no correct expression as "He would of. . ." You may use: "He would've. . ." where "would've" is a contraction meaning "would have."
13. When you write the title of a novel, underline it. The Color Purple by Alice Walker is a great book. Titles of plays, short stories and poems should be placed in quotation marks.
14. In spelling, remember: "I" before "e" except after "c", or when sounded like "a", as in "neighbor" and "weigh." These words are spelled correctly: "relieve" and "receive."
15. Past tense of the verb “to use” is “used”: I used to go to PS 321.
17. Avoid using the conditional tense: The character would be considered a hero.
16. ALWAYS USE PARAGRAPHS. Every paragraph should have a topic sentence followed by supporting details. Indent the first line of each paragraph.
17 Events occur, they aren’t a time period. “Another example is when…”. Instead write: another example occurs when..
18. When writing decades don’t use an apostrophe: 1970s not 1970’s
19. People get hanged, pictures get hung.

Grades

Grades will be based on the following:
Tests and at home literary essays and projects: 40 percent
Classwork, quizzes, and homework: 60 percent
Total: 100 percent

How we'll work: For each book or literary work we read, you’ll be expected to read about 15 to 25 pages a night. In addition you will sometimes have homework in which you'll be asked to write brief responses or answer questions about your reading or topics for class discussion. In addition, you can expect that for each book or literary work, you'll some combination of an at-home essay, in-class essay and tests.

IMPORTANT: Grades are cumulative. That means the grades you make now count as much as the grades later in the semester. So it's important to work hard from the very beginning and not dig yourself into a hole in the first weeks of our class.

Welcome to English 2

Welcome to English 2. We will focus in this class on helping you to become more adept and skillful readers and writers. In reading you will be introduced to a variety of classic and modern works of high literary merit. You will add new vocabulary and develop your ability to interpret and analyze literature. In writing, you will hone your skills in writing a literary essay, sharpen your grammar skills and your understanding of how language and sentences work. You will become a skilled writer capable of expressing your thoughts concisely and creatively.

Weekend Reading!

Homework: Read Act 2, Scene 2 and then read Scene 3 to the line "Exeunt all but LeFeu and Parolles (toward the end of the scene).:

Scene 2 is quite brief, and simply involves a joking conversation between the Countess and the Clown. The Clown mocks the Court and its customs, and the Countess threatens to have him whipped. What is the Clown's critique of the Court?

Scene 3:
a) Begins with a conversation between Parolles and Le Feu, in which they get into an argument. It's a pretty dumb argument.
b) The rest of the scene (to the point where you're reading) is key: this involves the outcome of Helena's efforts to cure the King, and an important choice she makes. Make sure you understand what's happening here. It's critical.

Homework: Act 1, Scene 3

The scene is roughly divided in the following ways:
1) The Countess (the scene is set back in Rousillon) is talking with a clown -- remember our discussion of clowns in Shakespeare. The clown is asking permission to marry his love, Isbel. But what follows is a discussion about sex, marriage, and infidelity.
2) Next, the steward (a kind of administrator for the Countess who handles the business of her estate) tells the Countess something very important. Read this section carefully.
3) Helena then enters and speaks with the Countess. What do they talk about and what plan do they enter into? Again this is important.

All's Well That Ends Well

We'll be reading from an online text that MIT (the great university in Cambridge, Mass.) provides. Click here to find the text.

For tomorrow's class, read all of Scene 1. This scene breaks down roughly into:
1) a beginning section where we learn the basic situation of the play (We learn about who the COUNTESS of Rousillon is, and what her situation is, we learn about her son, BERTAM . We're also introduced to HELENA.
2) After BERTRAM and the COUNTESS leave, HELENA has an important soliloquy (a speech the actor makes to himself or herself on the stage -- it's as if we're hearing the character's thoughts). We learn something very important about HELENA.
3)Then a character named PAROLLES enters, and he and HELENA go through a long bantering conversation in which he tells her she shouldn't care about preserving her virginity, and she says she should. What arguments do both make?
4) There's then a section in which HELENA makes fun of PAROLLES' reputation as a soldier.
5) The scene ends with another brief soliloquy by HELENA.