IT’S ALMOST TIME!!!! YAY!!! I miss you all so much and can’t wait to be back. You? We’re counting days at this point. I can’t wait to meet my new crop of Juniors, and of course, see my now-seniors again!
And for all of you last minute folk, check out my Summer Reading tab… If you’re unclear as to how to go about the whole “journal” bit, I’m modeling one for you. Obviously there are several ways you can conduct a reader response journal–you may focus on a passage, summarize what you read, pose questions, relate it to another book you read/story from your life, etc (T/S, T/W, T/T). It’s really kind of an open thing. BUT, bear in mind that you will all be responsible for a project in a couple weeks, so the more you have in your journals, the better! Oh yes, and so you know, this is cross-curricular! Yay! So ALL of your teachers (not just the geeky English ones) have something in store for your related to their disciplines. This is really very exciting…and very community building. The results of this are most definitely going into the Fall edition of The Rampage, so the cooler your project, the better your chances are of being acknowledged by a 7000+ readership!
“While thought exists, words are alive and literature becomes an escape, not from, but into living”
–Cyril Connolly (English critic and editor, 1903-1974)
“Develop and interest in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music—the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.”
–Henry Miller (American author, 1891-1980)
“The crown of literature is poetry.”
–William Somerset Maugham (English author, 1874-1965)
“Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. They are engines of change, windows on the world, lighthouses erected in the sea of time.”
–Barbara W. Tuchman (American pop historian/author, 1912-1989)
“Literature is where I go to explore the highest and lowest places in human society and in the human spirit, where I hope to find not absolute truth, but the truth of the tale, of the imagination and of the heart.”
–Salmon Rushdie (Indian Born, British writer, b.1947)
“History is not the story of heroes entirely. It is often the story of cruelty and injustice and shortsightedness. There are monsters, there is evil, there is betrayal. That’s why people should read Shakespeare and Dickens as well as history—they will find the best, the worst, the height of noble attainment and the depths of depravity.”
–David C. McCullough (American author, b. 1933)
“There is first the literature of knowledge, and then the literature of power. The function of the first is—to teach. The function of the second is—to move, the first is the rudder, the second an oar or a sail. The first speaks to the mere discursive understanding; the second speaks ultimately, it may happen to the higher understanding or reason, but always to affections of pleasure and sympathy.”
–Thomas Carlyle
SOME FUN LINKS:
http://www.60secondrecap.com/
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/
http://www.poets.org/
