The class starts with a reminder of HOS grades. To receive a grade of MAS, a student must keep their camera on and engage in the class discussion. All students must work together in group work. When Ms. Peterson joins a breakout room, it is obvious when a group is dysfunctional. All groups must be productive, so nobody gets left behind.
Though submission is not required, annotation of the text today is imperative. Remember, highlighting a text is not comparable to annotation, however, annotation includes highlighting. There is an annotation rubric, which is recommended to be followed.
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Aim: How does a writer create effects through the connotations of words and images?
Do Now: Think/Share- What if life had a reset button?
I wrote about my building a computer and looking back at the parts selection. I impulsively bought a few parts instead of waiting another month to save up another $100. Here’s what I wrote:
“When I was building my current productivity PC, I bought an octa-core processor for my video editing. I wish I had waited another month to save up another hundred dollars to buy a deca-core processor with a different mainboard. Everything else in the system goes with no regrets.”
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The class then moved on to discuss the difference between denotation and connotation. A denotation is the literal meaning of the word, while the connotation is the feelings or ideas the word brings about. For example, the two words, “youthful” and “childish” both words have the same dictionary definition, although “youthful” gives a positive connotation, while “childish” gives a negative connotation.
The class then compared a few words with the same denotation with different connotations. For example, “curious” versus “nosy,” “aroma” versus “stench,” and “selective” versus “picky.” The first word in the selection in all these examples has the positive connotation, while the second word has the negative connotation.
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The class now breaks up into groups to analyze the undertones of a few given sentences out of the story Speak. For the sentence “I dive into the stream of fourth-period lunch students and swim down the hall to the cafeteria,” my group pointed out that this sentence has a negative connotation. The words “diving into” and “swimming through” give off feelings of claustrophobia and anxiety. My group also rewrote the sentence together to give it a neutral feeling. We wrote, “I turn out of my classroom into the hall and join the many students heading to the cafeteria for their fourth-period lunch.”
I realized that this related to the Do Now of today’s lesson. When you recall something you regret, you speak with a negative connotation.
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After this, we were assigned to annotate a short story on our own. The story is called Marigolds.
“When I think of the home town of my youth, all that I seem to remember is dust—the brown, crumbly dust of late summer—arid, sterile dust that gets into the eyes and makes them water, gets into the throat and between the toes of bare brown feet. I don’t know why I should remember only the dust. Surely there must have been lush green lawns and paved streets under leafy shade trees somewhere in town; but memory is an abstract painting—it does not present things as they are, but rather as they feel. And so, when I think of that time and that place, I remember only the dry September of the dirt roads and grassless yards of the shantytown where I lived. And one other thing I remember, another incongruency of memory—a brilliant splash of sunny yellow against the dust—Miss Lottie’s marigolds.”
I highlighted some words that gave me certain feelings, positive and negative. For example, “brown, crumbly dust” gives off a negative connotation, because “brown” and “crumbly” are words used to show dryness. Another example of words that give off meanings behind their definitions is “lush green lawns and paved streets.” These words symbolize fullness and maintenance. These are positive words, and when compared to “dirt roads and grassless yards” used later in the story, they provide a stark contrast.
Another use of words that I found to be slightly negative if not neutral is “abstract painting” when the writer was recalling her experiences as a child. To me, “abstract” means far away or distant.
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This concluded today’s class at 12:15 on Wednesday, March 3rd.
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