Blogger #14- Mohamed Hamad- Period 7- 3/10/21- Day C

 Aim​:​ ​How does a writer create effects through the ​connotations​ of words and images?

Do Now​:​ ​WHOLE CLASS DISCUSSION

Describe an event in your life that at first seemed like fun, yet after the incident concluded you were ashamed or disappointed with yourself. Why do you believe you felt that way?

Do now

We started class by taking attendance like we always do. Once attendance was completed we were prompted to answer the do now question. After a while the class had time to share answers but very few people participated. Lapyan was the first to participate. His response to the question was that he used to share random facts with the people in his class when he was younger and he regretted it now because he thought it was weird and it annoyed people. Personally I would enjoy having someone tell me a random fact at different times in the day. My response to the do now was that the first time I ever played pool I thought I was really good at the game because I was doing so much better than my friends. But later on during our game one of the people working at the billiards came and helped us out and when they shot the ball I realized that I wasn’t a good player at all and compared to the worker I was really bad at pool.

Ms.Peterson's story

In class Ms.Peterson shared a childhood story with us. She told about the time that she has damaged her family’s black lacquer piano. She told us that one day when she was 3 years old she had spilled white flour all over the kitchen floor. Her mother and aunt saw the mess she had made and got very angry because of how hard white flour was to clean. While her mother and aunt were cleaning the flour Ms.Peterson grabbed nail polish and put it all over her family’s beautiful balck lacquer piano. When her mother saw that she had ruined the piano she became extremely angry and wanted to hit the baby but Ms.Peterson's aunt helped calm down Ms.Peterson's mom and told her that she was just a baby and didn’t know what she was doing. Ms.Peterson then said that she regrets painting on the piano because she had to see the damage she did to the piano everyday and was upset that she messed up such a beautiful piano.

Kahoot!

After the do now discussion we started a 15 question Kahoot about the story “Marigolds” which is what we had to read for the previous cycles homework.

The winner of the Kahoot received 50 points for their team while the second place winner received 40 points and the third place winner received 30 points.

Breakout rooms

We were put into breakout rooms after the Kahoot results were revealed. We had to answer the 6 questions on the google docs that were assigned to us. The first question was the hardest and involved multiple parts.

My groups responses to the questions were-

1. “The Marigolds are the only good looking thing in a house that is run down and ugly. The children hate them because they were to Beautiful for the home they were planted at. The flowers show a theme of Beauty even in a bad situation. In the text it shows that the kids mess up the flowers because they don’t like that it’s the only beautiful thing in the old house.”

2. “The internal conflict was Lizabeth realizing that she’s maturing and that causes her to worry. The more Lizabeth realizes that she’s growing up the more she gets upset and nervous about it. To support this paragraph 55 states “I had indeed lost my mind, for all the smoldering emotions of that summer swelled in me - and burst.” This shows that all those emotions built up and she became so nervous and aggravated that she burst and let everything out.”

3. “overhearing this conversation added on to her worries and made her question everything because she had never seen her dad like that. Her dad was usually the one that supported everyone but this time he was the one who needed supporting. The consequence was that Lizabeth went to Miss Lottie’s house and messed up the flowers.”

4. “You can infer that Lizabeth had a lot of pent up anger and nervousness that she needed to let out and this final act of destruction helped her do that. It helped her mature in a way because she was able to let all her feelings out.”

5. “In paragraph 57 the text says “I leaped furiously into the mounds of marigolds and pulled madly, trampling and pulling and destroying the perfect yellow blooms.” Then it states “perfect yellow blooms.” This contrasts because Lizabeth destroying the flowers is a very ugly scene but then she directly contrasts this by showing the beauty of the flowers.”

6. “The reason why the marigolds were planted is to give hope in a place where there is no hope. That is why this line is figurative. It shows that you have to always have hope throughout rough times that are challenging.”

After answering these questions all the students were taken out of breakout rooms and asked to discuss their answers. Everyone that gave a good response during this time was awarded points. The most amount of points awarded to a single person during this time was 40 points. Ms.Peterson then shared with us what she believed to be a good reminder that Parents are often viewed as god-like people who can’t mess up but they often do mess up and children need to realize that their parents are not perfect. She called this “The teachable moment of life”

Last part of the lesson 

To end of the days lesson we were asked to answer the individual activity at the bottom of the doc. The question was: 

Brainstorm here! Try to describe the ​narrator’s ​voice​.

➢ Think of ways to explain how the writer’s diction and imagery create this voice.

➢ You might also mention other literary elements, such as juxtaposition, that contribute to the

narrator’s voice or point of view.

My response to this was “The narrator uses lots of imagery while telling this story. This paints a very vivid picture for us and really shows how life for them is of very low quality and how they live in extreme poverty. The author stated that a gust of wind could knock down the side of the house. This imagery shows how low quality and run down the houses were. Diction is used in the story to show mood and tone. In parts of the story where Lizabeth gets enraged the diction of the words help to convey this anger to the reader.”