Wednesday, 13 April 2022

EF56 38 class- Penny in the Dust lecture

 

English Foundations 5/6

Good morning, everyone.

We will get started at 8:30

 

Al Haley ahaley@vsb.bc.ca

Class blog: haleyshec.blogspot.com

Wednesday – IDIOM Hump Day

Wednesday- middle of the week, low energy, tired

Thursday- almost the weekend, feel excited

 

Today’s agenda

·      Begin “Penny in the Dust” discussion, individual work

·      Grammar/sentence/vocab work

 

Thursday

·      Test4 – paragraph about “Penny in the Dust”

·      Listening exercise

·       

 

 

Friday and Monday are holidays- Good Friday and Easter Monday

 

Tuesday

·      Five-paragraph essay

·      First Nations module

 

Wednesday

·      Five-paragraph essay

·      First Nations module

 

Thursday

·      Final test

·      Review

 

Friday (final day)

·      Marks day

·      Final reports

 

 

 

How to Read A Story

 

My experience. My approach

 

Take some time. Defend some time. Put time aside to do the reading.

Turn off my phone. Find a quiet place, if possible. Help yourself to focus, block out the distraction i.e. ear defenders, library, car, etc.

 

Read the story twice.

1.    Armchair- relaxed, cup of tea

-read the whole story in one go, don’t break it up, “unity of effect”, going to a movie theatre as opposed to watching Netflix

-reading for basic elements of the story: setting, major characters, narrator- first person? third person?, milieu (overall situation)

-read for plot- plotline

Plotline: Exposition, Rising action, Climax, Falling action, Denouement

-basic understanding of the structure and elements in the story

NOTE: story is told first-person, Peter’s perspective

nevertheless, we learn about the father’s inner life through his actions, indirect

 

2.    Desk- deeper reading – making notes, look for deeper ideas- conflicts – person vs ?

- nice passages, beautiful writing

- symbols, similes, metaphors

- repeated phrases, repeated words

-irony

 

REPEATED ADVICE: Defend time to read the story in one sitting without distractions. Turn off the phone. The phone is the enemy of your concentration.

 

defend time – set aside a piece of time to read, focus on one task

 

 

“Penny in the Dust” Notes

 

Exposition

-setting

          time- penny was valuable, used a wagon, cars (from 20-50s) 

place- field, rural- farmland -father working, animals, “brush”, “sun-still fields”(p1)

 

-major characters- boy

                               - father

- personality traits son – childish, “imaginative”

- personality traits father – quiet, “inarticulate”, taciturn, hardworking, competent, highly-skilled with his hands

INFER introverted, shy, hard to express his feelings

 

minor characters – mother

                               - sister

 

 

MOVIE- flashback, recalling an earlier event, remembering

 

Rising action –

Source of the main conflict

 

*son’s description of father (last para p1) – having trouble the adult son has describing his father to us – complex man- still waters run deep

throught the narrator’s struggle to explain his father to us, we come to understand how complex and deep the father is

‘reeling off’- talking quickly and freely

* “an articulate man a little at sea with an imaginative child”

 

-narrator looking back on his childhood/father with the understanding of an adult

 

page 135? “There’s no way you can tell it....” WHOLE PARAGRAPH- fundamental to the story

 

P1&2 establish the story- setting, characters, conflict

 

***penny – catalyst of the conflict

 

Nice writing “time of magic suspension...” (p136-7)

suspense – different meaning

simile- “like a kitten curled up on my shoulder”

simile- comparison using the words ‘like’ or ‘as’

peaceful, magical, quiet, relaxed, timeless, content

-the penny was his whole world for those few minutes

-lost in his own world, in his world

-in a state of flow (modern phrase), focussed, out of time

 

Rising action “What made you come up here and hide?” (p3)

upset, distraught, emotional

safe space

 

Climax “I had to tell him the truth...”

-he can’t not say it anymore, he has to express his feelings to his dad

--father listening, listening deeply, understanding his son’s deep emotion

 

fantasy about the car, spending time together “laughin’ and talkin’”

 

Denouement “Yesterday I knew”

 

 

 

penny – symbol – represents unspoken love between the father and the son, reminds the father of the son’s story, emotion, the son’s dreams of prosperity, son’s dreams of having a closer more pexressive realtiuonship with the dad, dream of father being less busy, less work, means a lot to the father, takes on whole other levels of meaning, closee connection, proud, pride

 

Do you have an object that you treasure?

 

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