WARNING: No resubmitted work from Sept, Oct, Nov will be accepted for a grade after Dec 3rd. This means that if you want to try and improve any grades before report cards - You need to do so soon!
------------------------------------------------------------------
Lesson Recap
Optional H/W - Work on your research
Membean Test Friday
------------------------------------------------------------------------
WARNING: No resubmitted work from Sept, Oct, Nov will be accepted for a grade after Dec 3rd. This means that if you want to try and improve any grades before report cards - You need to do so soon!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Optional: Read some of these pieces. Look at how students interpreted text here:
Jodi - impressive supporting paragraph
Often when people are faced with the difficult task of being a mother they show their love towards them. Yet Ashley’s mother was, “Occasionally checking her watch” on page 78 as Ashley was grieving about her pet birds death. This event clearly shows that Ashley’s mother desired to get away from Ashley as it is common knowledge that when people are excited to get away from something they occasionally check the time. Her actions of avoiding her daughter were faulty and incorrect, she should spend more time with her to show her that any task minor or significant can be faced. A similar situation on page 81 occurred when Ashley’s mother reassured, “Call me if you and Ashley need anything.” Often when a daughter is in a devastating loss of a prized pet most mothers would take the time to comfort their heartbroken child and would not result in leaving their child alone because they had to study. A song title from the beatles, “Money can’t buy you love”, explains Ashley’s scenario perfectly. Ashley’s parents seem to continually working and away even so she is living in a huge, immense house yet she has nobody to share it with her, nobody to cherish it with her. The definition of love is a strong feeling of affection in which Ashley’s mom is obviously lacking. Almost like the mother from, The Bad Sister, she evades appreciating what she has right now and replaces that with another matter, in this case her work. Ashley’s mother should enjoy what she has right now as in the future she could regret what she didn’t do while she still had the chance.
Nadia's excellent opening and SUPERB interpretation supporting paragraph.
A heart-warming story, ‘Thirteen and a Half’ by Rachel Vail exposes readers to the fact that without honesty, relationships cannot progress positively. Expertly showing two sides of a relationship, Vail compares how Ashley’s relationship with her mother went sour after her mother told her pretty lies over the ugly truth, versus the candor of the narrator.
It’s common knowledge that the majority of parents try to be trustworthy with their children to inspire them to live honest lives. In contrast, Ashley’s mother covers up Sweet Pea’s untimely demise by buying similar replacement birds that Ashley believes are Sweet Pea: ‘The mom smiled awkwardly. “Sweet Pea was sort of a series of birds.”’(pg. ) Much like a snowball rolling down a hill, the problem escalates and worsens when Ashley’s mother continues to deceive Ashley by creating a maze of elaborate lies.. Parallel to the Dursley’s in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter, the mother creates elaborate excuses for any misgivings, like pretending that Sweet Pea was molting when Ashley noticed his feathers were going from green to blue. I recommend that Ashley's mother follow the wise words of Taylor Swift's Bad Blood: 'Band-aids don’t fix bullet holes’—giving ‘band-aid’ apologies don’t fix ‘bullet hole’ problems. An appropriate action would be to act remorseful, but instead, she acts like her dishonesty was for Ashley’s own good and tries to justify it, stating that she ‘didn’t want to start explaining death to a three year-old’ (pg. ). The despicable actions of the mother caused Ashley an avalanche of heartbreak when the ugly truth was exposed from beneath a mountain of pretty lies.
2 comments:
We read Thirteen and a Half in eighth grade too, and discussed it in class. The interpretations from your class are really close to what I came up with (at least the ones you put on your blog are), but I'd like to add something on. Partly because I feel like I haven't written enough this week, and partly because... I want to, I suppose. It's rather fun to write reading responses – I've been feeling unchallenged lately and this'll be a nice break from that. I haven't written one in a while, though; I hope I haven't lost my touch. And this won't be too long. Anyway:
This story, 'Thirteen and a Half', is a tale that focuses around the idea of innocence: the difficulty of preserving it, the pain of losing it, and the wonder of retaining it. The author hints at this message through symbolism and softens it with humor. Basically, this is a story about growing up.
The tale begins with Ashley chattering naively. "She was telling me that when she grows up she wants to be a veterinarian and a movie star and travel all over the world very glamorously..." (page 1(?)) Big dreams for a little girl, but as a reader, we don't make much of it. After all, who doesn't dream of being rich and famous? Ashley pushes on, not suspecting anything is wrong, although a perceptive reader might notice how the whole giant house gives a slight impression of loneliness (giant rooms, nobody else around, huge house). Not that Ashley seems to care. She also seems to be rather uninformed about budgies, too; she does tell the narrator how Sweet Pea is a budgie and not a parakeet, but she doesn't seem to know very much about birds really (a budgie usually lives 5-8 years in captivity, and yet Ashley happily states that she's "had him since [she] was three", which would be ten years, and makes very little sense). So there they are in Ashley's pink pink pink room, and the bomb drops: Sweet Pea is dead. "It feels, it just feels like, like the death of my childhood," sobs Ashley (page 3(?)). And then it's discovered that the mother was lying to Ashley. She did have justification for her lies, however pathetic the reasoning seems to an outsider: She didn't want to "start explaining death to a three year old", or a five year old, or a seven year old, or... The mother wanted to keep her daughter a child. It's understandable – any parent would feel the same. Unfortunately, by trying to preserve her daughter's innocence, the mother just makes it a lot more difficult for Ashely when she finally finds out about Sweet Pea. Ashley is forced to face the fact that not only was Sweet Pea basically a lie, it was her OWN MOTHER who lied to her – more than once. And that's definitely an innocence-ruining experience.
However, even at the end of the story, Ashley doesn't lose her childishness completely. "Up on the hill, on the front lawn, Ashley was running around in big, loose circles, her arms spread straight out." (page 6 (?)) In stories and in the real world, everything is constantly changing and overturning itself. Parents divorce; family members die; families move; birds are discovered to have been actually many birds who all died. In the end, though, there are always the remnants of what was. Even as a child grows up and discovers that life is actually not as easy as their parents led them to think, there still remains some of that innocence – some of that will to run and pretend to fly.
Isn't life beautiful that way?
Ms. Beltinck said it has to be at most one page... but you say that it has to be at least 500 words. What's right?...
Post a Comment