Sam P's Blog

TKAM

Sam P — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 19:28:47 +0000

The children learn right from wrong through many events in the novel, but Mr. Dolphus Raymond teaches them specifically about how people don’t have to give in to the racism that’s all around them. In the county of Maycomb the people are very racist, they treat African American people with great disrespect, but Mr. Raymond is married to an African American woman and has mixed children which shows that he doesn’t want to live up to the discrimination that everyone all around him are enforcing, he wants to be different. “It helps folks if they can latch onto a reason” (200). This quote happened during the trial when Dill started crying because Tom Robinson was being treated unfairly. Scout had to take him outside because he was making too much noise and when they went outside, Dolphus tried to sooth Dill by having him drink something that was in his bag. Everyone thought that Mr. Raymond carried around whiskey but it turned out to be only Coca cola. Scout asked him why he let people think that he was an alcoholic and he said it was because people wouldn’t understand why he chose to have mixed children. He said that it people could never understand that he lives the way he does simply because he wants to.

Mr. Dolphus Raymond also teaches the children that differences can make people act in very mean ways. “The simple hell people give other people- without even thinking” (201). He teaches them that differences can make people mistreat others without them even realizing that they’re doing it. When a person grows up in a prejudice household then it is more likely that that person will be prejudice themselves. They might not even know that they are mistreating others, they are simply just acting the way their parents/ guardian did. This is a very important thing that Dolphus taught the children. They learn that the household you grow up in is very important in terms of who you will be when you’re older. I think that he made them have a discussion on what kind of ‘folk’ there were. Jem said that there was “four kinds of folks in the world. There’s the ordinary kind like us and the neighbors, there’s the kind like the Cunninghams, the kind like the Ewells and the Negroes” (226). Scout that there was only “one kind of folks. Folks” (227). This conversation was very mature for children of Scout and Jem’s age and I think they wouldn’t have had it without Scout talking to Mr. Raymond. Mr. Raymond taught the children many things but he taught them specifically about how people don’t have to give in to the racism that’s all around them.

Uninvited Q and A

Sam P — Fri, 27 May 2011 15:03:38 +0000

Uninvited

Describe the plot of the book.
- What is the major conflict in your book? The major conflict in the book is person v person and person v self.
- What causes the conflict to occur? What are some of the obstacles that lead to the conflict? The thing that causes the conflict to occur is that the main characters boyfriend died and came back to her window as a vampire and keeps asking her to invite him in. She has to battle with herself with her drug and alcohol addiction and with keeping herself from letting her boyfriend in.
- What is the most exciting part of the plot? Is this when the conflict is resolved? The most exciting part of the plot is the end when she goes outside to a party and sees her boyfriend there. She has to battle him to keep him from turning anyone else into a vampire. This is when the conflict is solved.
- How is the conflict resolved? Is this what you expected? Explain. The conflict is solved in the end when she has to fight her vampire boyfriend and overcomes her fears of him. This is what I expected to happen.
Describe the setting in the book. What visual images do you see in your head? Give examples in the book that lead you to these images.
- How does the setting relate to your own world? It only relates a little bit because part of the setting is in a high school.
Describe an important symbol in the book. What is the symbol? What does the symbol represent? An important symbol in the book is the silver cross that she gets to keep her boyfriend away and the wooden stake that she makes to finally kill him. These symbolize safety and freedom.
What effect do the events in plot have on the characters?
- How do the characters change throughout the book? The main girl changes a lot because she eventually kills her vampire boyfriend and finds another guy and stops taking drugs and drinking
- Do some of the characters not change? Why? Explain. Her boyfriend doesn’t change at all. He is still mean by the end of the book and he still tries to get people to follow him.
- Describe a questionable action by one of the characters. Do you think they were right or wrong? Why? A questionable action would be when the main girl gives her boyfriend to come in. She does it because he threatens to hurt her friends and I think it was with good reasoning but I didn’t expect it.
Were there any words that you did not know the definition? Did you look the word up in the dictionary? If you didn’t, how did you determine what the word meant? There weren’t any very hard words in the book and if there were than I knew what they meant.
Was there a moment in the book when you were surprised, angered, upset, excited or happy? Describe the scene and what evoked this emotion. In the end I was happy because her vampire boyfriend is gone and she doesn’t have a drug and alcohol problem anymore and she has a new, better, boyfriend.
Are there any parts of the story that are confusing? Why? There weren’t.
If you could ask the author one question, what would it be and why? I would ask the author why she gave the main character so many problems to deal with. I think that its bad enough that she goes to high school, her boyfriend is a vampire that want to kill her, and her mom doesn’t care about her, but the author had to add a drug and alcohol addiction on top of all that other stuff.

TKAM Movie Review

Sam P — Wed, 18 May 2011 16:14:11 +0000

The character from the book that was best portrayed in the movie, I think, was Scout because, in the book, she talks with a huge vocabulary, she is afraid of Boo Radley and just the Radley house in general, and she cares about her family. Her character is best portrayed in the movie because in the movie she has all of the characteristics that she has in the book. There were also some characters that didn’t fit their book characterization. Dill was the major one. In the book he is head-over-heals in love with Scout, he even said that he was going to marry her and he kissed her but in the movie he was actually mean to Scout. He ignored her on more than one occasion.

The movie is very different from the book. There is one whole section in the movie that isn’t in the book. When Atticus brings Scout and Jem to the Robinson’s house and when a southerner came up to the car and called Atticus a bad name. That whole section wasn’t in the book. There were other parts that were a little bit different. The part with Tim Johnson, the mad dog, had some differences. Scout going to school for the first day was also different, we didn’t get to see anything that happened, only the part with Walter. The main difference was the knot in the hole of the tree by the Radley house. In the book Scout was the one to find the things in the tree and she told Jem right away. In the movie Jem found the objects and only told Jem when they went to the tree together. In the book they found dolls carved out of soap of the two children. In the movie they found dolls carved out of wood. When they found the dolls Mr. Radley came out and filled the whole right away without even giving them an explanation. In the book he filled the hole a day or two after they find the dolls and when the children asked them why he said the tree was dead and when a tree is dyeing then you have to fill it with cement.

My favorite scene from the movie was when Jem rolled Scout down the road to the Radley house in a tire. It is my favorite because it shows that Boo has a sense of humor and that he is reaching out to people so that he isn’t so lonely.

I was not disappointed by the movie at all, it was a very good movie and I would definitely watch it again.

The Loneliness of Boo

Sam P — Fri, 13 May 2011 14:46:40 +0000

For my visual analysis I chose loneliness as the theme to portray and I chose to portray it in a drawing. In my visual I wanted to show that the loneliest character in the book, in my opinion, is Boo Radley. I chose him because he is stuck in his house all the time and people keep making up rumors about him so I imagine that if I was in his situation I would be very lonely.

I decided that I wanted my visual to have a sad or angry look because when someone is alone they are usually either sad or angry. I think Boo Radley looking through the window shutters represents him trying to reach out and not be so lonely and seeing other people. I also chose to darken out his eyes and around his face to represent how only a small group of people truly know what he looks like and people just make assumptions from rumors that are spread. His eyes are the most important part of the image because they symbolize loneliness, anger, fear, and rumors, that is why I put them in the center of the picture and made them darker than the rest of it. Jem said, “Miss Stephanie Crawford said she woke up in the middle of the night one time and saw him looking straight through the window at her…said his head was like a skull lookin’ at her” (12-13).

The Trial

Sam P — Thu, 12 May 2011 14:46:17 +0000

In CE9 we are reading To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Each week we are assigned to read a section and at the end of the week we discuss that section in our literature circle. In the circle we are assigned a role to play and questions to answer. This week I was assigned Illuminator and I had five questions to answer. The first question said to describe an important symbol from this section of the book and what it stands for. An important symbol would be Mr. Dulphus Raymond, he represents equality amongst all people because he is in love with an African American women and he has mixed children. The second question asked me to describe one of the conflicts in the book, state what type of conflict it is, how I think the author made the conflict intense, how did the author solve the conflict, and why do I think it was solved this way. One of the most important conflicts in the book is Tom Robinson vs. Ewell which is person vs. person. The author makes it suspenseful by spanning the problem throughout the entire book and the conflict was not solved in this section. The third question asked me to describe the way in which the author creates a setting that I can clearly picture in my mind. I said that the author uses sight, smell, and sound to create a setting. The fourth question asked how does the author create emotion in the book, and what is the primary tone of this section. The author creates emotion by bringing about things that we care about such as equality, the primary tone of this section is more business like because this section is in a court. The fifth question asks if one of the characters from the story was in your literature circle, describe how you know they would act or talk based on their character in the book. I chose Atticus Finch to be in our literature circle. He would act wise and educated. He would speak in a soft toned voice and he would stand up for what he believes in. he wouldn’t be afraid to disagree or tell it like it is.

In our literature circle we talked about the trial and what we think the verdict is going to be. Someone made a connection to our neighborhood because we have a court very close to us. Someone also said that the events in this section, the trial, influence the story majorly because if Tom Robinson was not accused of rape then Atticus wouldn’t be his lawyer then Scout and Jem wouldn’t have learned anything.

In the story Tom Robinson is accused on very high charges of sexual molestation, simply because he is black. This shows human nature because, as humans, we blame other people for our problems and the first people that we blame are people that are different than us.

Jem is like my brother

Sam P — Tue, 03 May 2011 18:38:45 +0000

In CE9 we are reading To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. We, as students, are responsible to read a certain section of the book and discuss that section in a literature circle that consists of three others. In the literature circle we are assigned a role and in the role questions to talk about. The section of the book that we had to read was chapters 12 through 15 and my literature circle role was connector. As the connector I had 5 questions to answer. The first question asked what connections I could make between the book setting and my home, school or city. In this section the setting is in Maycomb County. This is similar to my neighborhood because it is very small and we all know each other. The second question asked what connections I could make between the conflict in the text and those in my life. In the book Scout has to deal with living with a twelve year old boy that thinks that he’s all grown up and that he knows everything. I had to go through this same thing with my brother; he would eat all the time, order me around, and push me away. The third question asked how the characters in the text are similar to those I have met in life. As I said before, Jem is like my brother. Mrs. Stephanie Crawford is just like my Aunt. My Aunt gossips all the time about things that she doesn’t even know about, which is just like Mrs. Stephanie. The fourth question asked how the text is similar to other books that I have read. This book is very unique and it isn’t like any other book that I’ve ever read. The fifth question asked what is one connection that I can make that no one else in the literature circle has made before. I had to grow up with a brother that acted just like Jem.

In this section Scout and Jem get themselves into dangerous situations simply because they are curious. Scout practically saved Atticus’ life because she talked to Mr. Cunningham about his entailment and his son Walter. I think that all adults have a ‘soft spot’ for children no matter what they do.

Figurative Language

Sam P — Mon, 02 May 2011 19:11:42 +0000

“It was like a Saturday. People from the south end of the county passed our house in a leisurely but steady stream.” (158) This shows Simile because they are comparing the day of the trial for Tom Robinson to a Saturday, because so many people from the south are coming up to the city, using the word like. This shows how important the trial really is by saying that there are a lot of people. “I [Miss Maudie] am not. ‘t’s morbid, watching a poor devil on trial for his life. Look at all those folks, it’s like a Roman carnival.” (159) This also shows Simile because Miss Maudie is comparing the trial to a Roman carnival by using the word like. This shows the reader that the trial is going to be extremely crowded only to watch an African American man go on trial.

Innocence

Sam P — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 14:13:29 +0000

In CE9 we are reading To Kill A Mockingbird and discussing it with three other people. For this week we had to read chapters 1-7 and discuss them, during the discussing I had the role of Discussion Director and had to answer four questions. For my first question I had to say what I thought about during the reading process. At first when I was reading this book my mind wondered a little and I found it hard to pay attention but when I read more I really got into it and I found that I couldn’t put the book down. I thought about how the first day of school is hard for everyone and how rumors can leave a huge impression and can make you even fear someone that you’ve never even met. For my second question I had to select two passages from the week’s readings and tell why I selected them. For my first passage I selected the part when Miss Caroline (Scout’s first grade teacher) punished Scout for knowing how to read and write, I chose this passage because I thought that, since she knew more, that she would be bumped up a grade or be rewarded for it but instead she was punished and I don’t think that that is a very good system of teaching. For my second passage I selected the part about Burris Wells, a dirty farm boy that’s been flunking first grade for a while now, and how mean he acted toward Miss Caroline, I chose this passage because it changed my opinion about Miss Caroline and it made me think that some people really hate school. The third question asked me what I thought the most important ideas of the section were. I think that the most important ideas of this section are that Scout is going to school for the first time and she already got in trouble on the first day and that Scout, Jem, and Dill are all afraid of Boo Radley even though they have never met him. The fourth and final question asked what questions I would ask the author if they were in the literature circle with us. My answer was that I would ask her if Scout and Jem were ever going to see Boo. I would also ask her why everyone thought of Atticus so poorly just because he is the lawyer of an African American man.

The discussion in our literature circle was, overall, thorough. Our connector made a connection to his first time going to school and how he was excited yet scared, just like Scout. Our illuminator said that they tree on the cover symbolized the children curiosity but it also showed foreshadowing by showing that in the future the book is going to have something to do with a tree and the things inside of it. Our group also discussed Boo Radley. We discussed why we think he is locked up in the house, if we think he is ever going to come out, and his just plain mysterious house. We concluded that Boo might be in the house because he did something terrible and, because of his religion, he is being punished for it by being locked in the house.

Scout, Jem, and Dill are all afraid of Boo even though they have never met him before. This shows how naive and innocent children can be and how, when someone tells them something, they will believe it no mater how outrageous. I think this is important because the children are losing their innocence.

Christmas, mad dogs, and ladylike?

Sam P — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 14:13:14 +0000

In CE9 we are reading To Kill a Mockingbird. We are assigned certain sections to read and certain roles to play in our literature circle. For this section we had to read chapters eight through eleven and I was assigned the summarizer. As the summarizer I had three questions to answer. The first question asked what the setting of this section was. This section had many settings but the main one was at the Finch’s house, some other smaller settings were the Finch’s Landing in Maycomb, the elementary school, and the Finch’s neighborhood. The second question was what was the most important events of this section, why they were important, and how they influenced the plot or characters involved. One of the important events was Christmas, Atticus, Jem, and Scout had to spend Christmas at the Finch’s Landing where all the other family lived. This is important because this is when Scout got in a fight with Francis because he was calling Atticus names, this influenced Scout because she felt terrible for getting in a fight when Atticus told her not to and she feared that by doing so she had let him down. Another important event was when Tim Johnson, Harry Johnson’s dog, went mad and started going down the street to the Finch’s house. Atticus ended up having to shoot Tim. This is important because this is when Jem and Scout realized that their father had a great skill for hunting and that he could do something more than just sit around and read. The third question asked what the tone or mood of this section was. The mood was mostly angry because Scout and Jem were getting fed up with how everyone talked about Atticus.

In our literature circle we talked about a lot of things in this section. We talked about why we thought that Mrs. Dubose was a drug addict and if she hadn’t been would she be nice and have friends. We discussed why we think that Atticus doesn’t hunt anymore. An again we discussed why we think Boo Radley is locked up in the house.

Scout is not very lady like and many people in her town and family disagree with how she acts and dresses. At Christmas her aunt tells her that, to be a lady, she has to wear a dress and nice shoes and a pearl necklace. I think that this is giving Scout the idea that there is a visual definition of being a lady and I think that this will somehow influence the way she acts.

Food Culture: The School Lunch Crisis

Sam P — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 14:44:24 +0000

For this project I worked with Hanna L. We chose to study the pros and cons and nutritional value of eating lunch at school.

Many people may think that eating school food is no problem. And that they teach us to eat healthy, so why would they feed us unhealthy food? Well it’s simply not how it goes. Schools do however have Nutrition standards that they must follow, but they aren’t always followed the way they were written. Schools have already lost money to budget cuts, and lunch is one big part that schools must spend a lot on. In other words schools go for cheap before healthy and nutritious. Why must we suffer for this?! An average student eats lunch at school five days a week, but the average student is also not getting the needed nutrition.

As students we question what our lunches are made of many times. We wonder how it’s made, how it will taste, and why it looks the way it does. These are important questions to ask on a daily basis, but we shouldn’t have to ask ourselves this, especially at school. School is supposed to teach us about eating healthy, not to give slop to us that has been frozen and reheated. Some of our fruit is fresh, but most fruits and vegetables come from cans. “What schools put on our trays affects us in good ways and bad ways.” It’s time they gave us some more appetizing choices.

School lunches are a big part of students every day life but they aren’t as healthy as they seem. No matter what students say the schools, like Sheboygan Falls, do have to follow nutrition standards. Those nutrition standards are as follows: federally-reimbursable school nutrition programs should be the main source of nutrition at school; opportunities for competitive foods should be limited; and, if competitive foods are available, they should consist of nutritious fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and nonfat or low-fat milk and dairy products, as consistent with the 2005 Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA). “We encourage children to eat balanced meals. If your child chooses a snack or lunch from home, please include healthy foods.”Although there are nutrition standards, they don’t necessarily say how much nutrients students get.

Schools play an important part in a student’s daily nutrition. They provide food for a third of our needed nutrition, but we aren’t getting enough healthy food. In our diets we need to include the five basic food groups; fruits, vegetables, grains, dairy, and protein so that we can have the needed energy for the day. Schools don’t always provide us with those five groups without disguising the fact that it’s been premade, freeze-dried, frozen, reheated, and served to us in a (usually) brown “pooped out” state. Food can only take so much of this process, before it can’t take it anymore. “We are what we eat” you know.

To support our essay, we created a map depicting the different average lunch choices in ten different countries.

Works Cited

Better School Food – Welcome. Web. 10 Mar. 2011. <http://www.betterschoolfood.org/>.

“Is Chocolate Milk Losing Ground in School Lunches? | Fooducate.” Fooducate – Eat a Bit Better. Web. 10 Mar. 2011. <http://www.fooducate.com/blog/2010/08/26/is-chocolate-milk-losing-ground-in-school-lunches/>.

“Key Food Areas for Concern | The Health Education Trust.” Healthy Eating For Schools and the Nation. Web. 10 Mar. 2011. <http://www.healthedtrust.com/pages/keyfood.htm>.

“National School Lunch Act.” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Web. 10 Mar. 2011. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_School_Lunch_Act>.

“National School Nutrition Standards.” School Nutrition Association. Web. 10 Mar. 2011. <http://www.schoolnutrition.org/Content.aspx?id=8480>.

“School Food: Too Much Sugar, Unsafe Lunches? – Yahoo! News.” The Top News Headlines on Current Events from Yahoo! News. Web. 10 Mar. 2011. <http://news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20110104/us_ac/7526670_your_childs_school_food_day_too_much_sugar_unsafe_lunches>.

SNA-Wisconsin. Web. 10 Mar. 2011. <http://www.sna-wi.org/>.