A few important announcements about extra credit:

1. This Friday afternoon’s movie will be the second half of the Odyssey. We’ll start at 3:30 and finish up a little after 5:00. Come by to see what happens when Odysseus confronts the suitors (and earn 10 points of extra credit for next week’s quiz!).
2. You also have the opportunity to earn 10 points of extra credit on one of your summer reading essays by attending the practice PSAT session this Saturday at Bellaire. Sign up here.

Speaking of the PSAT, we’ll be taking that this upcoming Wednesday, so classes that day will be very short. The PSAT is a great way to see if you are ready for the real SAT and to earn National Merit status, which might qualify you for some bug scholarships.

In class, we started with a discussion of the big battle scene in the great hall of the palace of Ithaca! With our remaining time, we discussed the majority of the vocabulary words on Odyssey List 3. Please remember that you can be practicing those by going to Vocabulary.com.

Homework for tonight is that portion of the Odyssey (Books 23 and 24 Reading Guide).

We did a big recap of what’s happened in the Odyssey so far, in advance of the big battle scene you’re about to read! Students also read the short story, Blindness – if you were absent, please come get a copy.

Tonight’s homework is the reading guide for Books 21 and 22 (Books 21 and 22 Reading Guide).

We began today with a quick discussion of Books 11 and 12 of The Odyssey. Then students watched this short film:

and answered these questions (The Science Behind the Myth of Homer’s Odyssey).

With the remaining 20 – 25 minutes, I gave students a chance to get a head start on tonight’s reading guide (Books 15, 16, and 17 Reading Guide). Most of you said that you were able to finish half of that in class.

And as a reminder, this week’s extra credit film on Friday afternoon will be the second half of The Odyssey.

Today we took our second vocabulary and grammar quiz. Homework for tonight is to read Book 12 of the Odyssey (Book 12 Reading Guide) – we’ll discuss it tomorrow!