War and Peace

This is the second blog posting for the A Separate Peace unit and is due before class starts on Tuesday, Nov. 10.

A Separate Peace takes place during the beginning of World War II. In chapter six, Gene declares that "Peace had deserted Devon."

Just what does that mean? How does the war play a significant role in the novel? How about peace?

For your assignment, you need to write a response to those questions in the comments. Your response should explain what you believe that passage to mean in context of the novel and a discussion of how war and peace play a role in the novel.

For students who have read The Kite Runner, you have an option with this response. You can write about A Separate Peace or apply those questions to The Kite Runner.

Competition and friendship

As we begin reading A Separate Peace, we will be exploring the different components of friendship, competition, and jealousy.

To help us get started, we'll explore how competition can affect friendship. For this prompt, write a response of about 150 words that discusses how competition might affect a friendship. What happens when friends compete with one another? What impact does it have on the relationship. Use examples you might know from your own life, from television shows, movies, or any literature.

Remember to proofread your response before submitting it.

What was your favorite story we read

This is the third blog posting for the short story unit and is due before class starts on Friday, Oct. 2.

Now that we've read all the stories in the unit, we'd like to know which was your favorite and why. Select one of the stories we've read and explain what made it the favorite. Why did you like it? Make sure you point to specific examples from the story to support your reasons.

For your reference, here are the stories we've read: "The Moustache," "Through the Tunnel," "Initiation," "Marigolds," and "Rules of the Game."

Ranking the characters

This is the second blog posting for the short story unit and is due before class starts on Wednesday, Sept. 30.

So far, we've read about several teenage protagonists - Michael in "The Moustache," Jerry in "Through the Tunnel," and Millicent in "Initiation." Each have their own challenges and ways of overcoming them. Who had the most difficult decision? Take those three characters and rank them in order of who made the most difficult decision. In your response, rank the three characters and then explain why you put them in the order you did. Make specific references to the conflicts the characters faced and how they overcame them.

Remember, your response should be written in standard English with conventional punctuation and grammar. Put your first name only at the bottom of your entry.

What kind of person is Jerry?

We've begun reading several coming of age short stories, including "Through the Tunnel" by Doris Lessing. The story focuses on Jerry, a young boy vacationing with his mother, who envies a group of older boys swimming through an underwater tunnel.

As you know from our discussions and class notes, a coming of age story involves a young protagonist who begins the story as youthful and immature. The protagonist grows up during the story and undergoes a change. The above slide show contains the notes about the coming of age stories.

To get us started, let's take another look at Jerry from the beginning of "Through the Tunnel." How would you describe him? What is it about him that makes him immature or youthful? What are some examples from the text of his youthfulness? What does he need to do to grow up? Select a telling passage from the opening pages that helps illustrate how he is immature.

Write your answer in the comments section of this blog entry. Your answer should be a well-developed paragraph that fully answers the prompt and make direct references to the text and directly quote from the telling passage you selected. I suggest writing your response on a word processing program such as Word so you can spell check it and edit it before posting it to the comments section.

Welcome to Miller's English Blog

Hello English 10 students.

Welcome to our English 10 blog. This site was created several years ago as a way for me to use technology and forge new connections with our reading and writing. We will use this site in several ways.

Often, I will post a prompt as a new blog entry and ask that you write an answer in the comments section. Doing this will allow us to better share ideas and opinions about what we are doing in class. Just remember, I still expect you to follow all the typical rules of composition and writing. This is no place for text-message abbreviations or sloppy writing.

Another way we will use this site is as a central resource for the class. If you look around you will find almost everything you may need for the class. There are links to the calendar of due dates, ongoing vocabulary lists, and our classroom wiki page (more on that later). For those pursuing the honors option, there is also a link to the honors option web site.

Finally, you need to remember that what we say and do here is available for any of us to read - teachers, classmates, parents, members of the community, even others in the world. Look at that map of the world to the right and see where some of the visitors are from.

Keep this site bookmarked and refer to it regularly. Again, good luck this year.

Farewell English 10 classes

I hope everyone had a good year in English 10 this year. I certainly enjoyed all the work we did together, from our short story unit to our iSearch papers. Reading your final portfolios, I witnessed a lot of growth in your writing throughout the year.

Enjoy the summer and hope to see you next year!