Habits of the Mind Summer Reading Project

Habits_of_Mind_Summary_Outline

If so, here they are (again).

Period 1:

We discussed the Katniss and Peeta-in-a-cave scene, and explored how Katniss is changing as a person as a result of her experiences in the Hunger Games.

We also finished our study of all of the vocabulary.

Periods 3, 4, 6, and 7:

We finished at different places in pretty much every single class! Everyone had a chance to talk about the week’s words through #25 – the last five are up to you to do over this weekend. (The PowerPoint with the questions and the word list is in Monday’s post – and remember, your answers to those questions are due on Monday before your test.)

With our remaining time, we continued our discussion of gender in The Hunger Games, looking specifically at how both Katniss and Peeta conform to and defy stereotypes about what girls and boys are supposed to be like. In periods 3 and 4, we got the chance to begin comparing and contrasting how gender and teen relationships are depicted in HG as opposed to the Twilight saga – in 6 and 7, we’ll discuss this next week.

I also had two big reminders for you – first, that your secondary summer reading project is due on Wednesday (the instructions are in an earlier post in case you lost your paper copy). And second, our test over The Hunger Games and the vocabulary from this week will be on Monday.

As promised, here is a mini-study guide for The Hunger Games exam – some things that are important for you to keep in mind as you study:

• This will be a STAAR-type exam that assesses your comprehension of the book. So it’s not a “gotcha” type of test, where you need to recall what color shirt someone was wearing. Don’t try to memorize details, but instead make sure you understand what happened over the course of the book and why. One of the things that I often do in my own reading outside of school is, after I have finished a book, I go and read the Wikipedia plot summary and analysis. That way I can see if there’s anything that I didn’t pick up on, parts of the book that I wasn’t able to appreciate on my own. Then I go back and look at the sections that were particularly different from my interpretation.
• Be comfortable with thinking of the book in terms of “flashback” (when the narrator interrupts the present action to tell you about previous events) “symbol” (when something stands for more than itself) “figurative language” (as opposed to literal description), “sensory language” and “imagery” (the ways that a writer will describe the world in terms of the five senses), and “characterization” (the way that a character is developed over the course of a story).
• Think particularly about the themes of power and resistence in the book.

Finally, I HIGHLY (highly! hiiiiiiiiiiighly!) recommend that you do the optional vocabulary study guide that I gave you in class on Friday. If I could clone you, then place your second version in an alternate universe, and have your second hald do that study guide and you just tear it up and use it for gerbil shavings, I predict your doppelganger would do much better than you would on the exam.

“But Ms. Chapman,” you say. “I foolishly left my vocabulary study guide in my locker and cannot retrieve it this weekend.”

Here’s an electronic copy. Boom. I’m not saying I am the best and kindest teacher in the universe, but you can.

HG Vocabulary List 4 Review

Have a good weekend! 🙂