Non-Fiction Group Work, Report Cards, Career Fair

Here's how today began:

• I collected students' answers to Q1-4 from the HW over the weekend ("The Washwoman")
• I also collected the Career Fair Permission Slips for this Wednesday.

Then students took out their textbooks and worked on the Literary Analysis: Personal Essay sheet concerning Singer's "The Washwoman."

Q3 was the hardest, because it dealt with the author's purpose: why did he write this? What was Singer trying to achieve? How are we, his audience, supposed to be different at the end?

If I had to give an answer to that question, here's what I'd say:

Singer wrote "The Washwoman" to extol the virtues of hard work and dedication, as demonstrated by the washwoman, who embodies a spirit of duty to responsibility that transcends her lowly station. I can tell, because of her commitment to finishing that last load of wash, and the way he describes her saintly passing in the final paragraph of the piece. 

And here's what the actual Key says:

"But Mr. Tidyman, what exactly is dignity?"

Lastly, before students left, I gave them their Q1 Report Cards (see me if you didn't get yours), my Q2 MNPS Syllabus, and gave out the HW. See below -->

• The HW for tonight was to read "New Directions" by Maya Angelou, and answer the Close Reading Guide questions that accompany that piece of non-fiction.
• You do not have to bring your textbooks to class tomorrow, but you do have to bring the questions from the bullet point above.
• And I would like to have ALL of the Freshman Career Fair Permission Slips turned in tomorrow.