Journal for the Day

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What is your favorite scene in Alice in Wonderland? Why?

Chapter 12 Reading Response Questions

1. How does Alice feel about the trial at the beginning of Chapter 12? How do you know?

2. How does the King try to remove Alice from the courtroom? What argument does Alice make against the King?

3. What evidence from the text shows that the King is trying to incriminate the Knave?

4. What sense does the King find in the verses presented as evidence?

5. What can we learn about Alice by reading about her older sister?

Thanksgiving Break Journals

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Thursday: Write a story or poem about your Thanksgiving day

Friday: Freewrite!

Saturday: In what ways can you benefit by becoming more like Alice?

Sunday: Freewrite!

Journal for the Day

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Freewrite!

Chapter 11 Reading Response Questions

1. Who has been accused of stealing the tarts?

2. Who is the judge? Do you think the judge will be impartial? Why or why not?

3. Do you think the jurors will do a good job at the trial? Why or why not?

4. Who is the first witness? What does he report to the court? Is it useful to the trial?

5. What begins happening to Alice during the trial? How do you think this will impact the proceedings?

6. Who is the second witness? What happens when the King tries to question her?

Notes for Chapter 10, "The Lobster Quadrille"

- Alice stops herself from saying she has eaten a lobster
  - seems she has finally learned her lesson
    - with the mouse, she kept on about her cat and nearly scared the mouse away
    - with the birds at the caucus race, again she talks about her cat and how she would eat a bird as soon as look at it
- Lobster Quadrille
  - parody of a ballroom dance the Liddell children would have known
- Alice stops herself from saying she has seen a whiting at dinner
- Even though Alice avoids making references to eating animals, the chapter ends with the Mock Turtle singing a song about Turtle Soup

Assignment:


Answer the three questions you came up with for Chapter 10.

Notes for Chapter 9, "The Mock Turtle's Story"

- The Duchess continually tells Alice that there is always a moral if you look hard enough
  - this is a reflection of moralistic education of the early 19th c.
    - like the Busy Bee poem which tells children to work hard and stay out of trouble
  - the Duchess seems to twist the moral she wants, regardless of the conversation
    - ex: "The more there is of mine, the less there is of yours" regarding a conversation about mustard
- The Queen takes Alice to the Gryphon and the Mock Turtle
  - The Gryphon tells us that the Queen never executes anyone - "it's all her fancy, that"
  - The Mock Turtle's sorrow is also "all his fancy"
  - Carroll is trying to tell us that our world is shaped by the attitude we bring to it
- The Mock Turtle's story is a parody of Victorian education
  - took Reeling & Writhing (reading and writing)
    - words that describe suffering
  - took Mystery (History)
  - Drawling, Stretching, and Fainting in Coils (Drawing, sketching, and painting in oils)
  - Laughing and Grief (Latin and Greek)
    - Greeks also taught us about laughing and grief through comedy and tragedy (Greek drama)
    - the Mock Turtle's grief brings the reader laughter through his puns
  - Lessons lessen every day
- Each pun shows an emotion associated with the topic being taught

Assignment:


1. How does the Mock Turtle's use of puns help us understand his attitudes about school?
2. Choose 2 questions you wrote for Chapter 9, "The Mock Turtle's Story," and answer in paragraph form.

Journal for the Day

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What has your experience as a student been like so far (consider your whole experience)? What have you enjoyed? What would you change?

Homework (due 11/22/09)

Read Chapter 10, "The Lobster-Quadrille"

1. Write 3 questions about the chapter to share with the class.
2. Find 3 puns, copy them down, and explain them (you may also use puns from Ch. 9 for this exercise)

"The Mock Turtle's Story"

Read Chapter 9, "The Mock Turtle's Story," and write 5 questions about the chapter. These questions can be about details from the text, themes we have seen in the novel, or any other significant connections you can think of.

Weekend Journals

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Saturday: Freewrite!

Sunday: Write an imaginative adventure story.

Journal for the Day

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Freewrite!

Journal for the Day

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Freewrite!

Fariness in the Field (Download worksheet)

Download the "Fairness in the Field" worksheet from engrade.com. The name of the file is "Queen's Croquet.pdf."

Charter for Compassion

The Charter for Compassion calls us all to act compassionately towards each other with the understanding that it is only when we are able to truly empathize with others (by exercising our moral creativity and intelligence) that we will move forward as a culture and civilization. Compassion is the wave of the future, so practice it!

The principle of compassion lies at the heart of all religious, ethical and spiritual traditions, calling us always to treat all others as we wish to be treated ourselves. Compassion impels us to work tirelessly to alleviate the suffering of our fellow creatures, to dethrone ourselves from the centre of our world and put another there, and to honour the inviolable sanctity of every single human being, treating everybody, without exception, with absolute justice, equity and respect.

It is also necessary in both public and private life to refrain consistently and empathically from inflicting pain. To act or speak violently out of spite, chauvinism, or self-interest, to impoverish, exploit or deny basic rights to anybody, and to incite hatred by denigrating others—even our enemies—is a denial of our common humanity. We acknowledge that we have failed to live compassionately and that some have even increased the sum of human misery in the name of religion.

We therefore call upon all men and women ~ to restore compassion to the centre of morality and religion ~ to return to the ancient principle that any interpretation of scripture that breeds violence, hatred or disdain is illegitimate ~ to ensure that youth are given accurate and respectful information about other traditions, religions and cultures ~ to encourage a positive appreciation of cultural and religious diversity ~ to cultivate an informed empathy with the suffering of all human beings—even those regarded as enemies.

We urgently need to make compassion a clear, luminous and dynamic force in our polarized world. Rooted in a principled determination to transcend selfishness, compassion can break down political, dogmatic, ideological and religious boundaries. Born of our deep interdependence, compassion is essential to human relationships and to a fulfilled humanity. It is the path to enlightenment, and indispensible to the creation of a just economy and a peaceful global community.

Journal for the Day

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Why does our society have different social classes? Do you think this is a positive thing for our culture? Why or why not?

Journal for the Day

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Write about a game or sport you enjoy. Why do you like it? What are the rules?

Chapter 8 Reading Response Questions

Read the first half of Chapter 8, "The Queen's Croquet-Ground," and answer the following questions"

1. Why are the gardeners nervous about the Queen's arrival?

2.What is the gardeners' punishment? Is it carried out?

3. Why is the Duchess "under sentence of execution?"

4. What items does one use in a game of croquet? What are they substituted for in Wonderland?

5. How do you think Alice will do at the croquet match? Why?

6. What makes it impossible for the Queen's croquet game to be played fairly?

7. Why does Alice seek to escape the croquet game?

8. Think about the orders the Queen gives and how many of those are carried out. What picture does this paint of the effectiveness of authority in Wonderland?

Journal for the Day

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What aspects of your life do you find unfair? What changes would help make your reality more fair in your opinion?

Weekend Journals

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Saturday: What makes some rules fair and some rules unfair? Use some examples from your experience.

Sunday: When is it ok to break the rules?

Journal for the Day

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Freewrite!

Puns and Homophones

Homophone: Two words which sound exactly alike, and may or may not be spelled alike, but which differ in meaning.

Pun: The use of homophones or words that are similar in other ways in order to produce a humorous effect

Class activity: Choose a pun from the list and make a cartoon showing the double meaning in the joke.

1. Did you hear about the guy whose whole left side was cut off? He's all right now.
2. I wondered why the baseball was getting bigger. Then it hit me.
3. He drove his expensive car into a tree and found out how the Mercedes bends.
4. A small boy swallowed some coins and was taken to a hospital. When his grandmother telephoned to ask how he was a nurse said 'No change yet'.
5. To write with a broken pencil is pointless.
6. What did the grape say when it got stepped on? Nothing - but it let out a little whine.
7. As the shoe said to the hat, 'You go on ahead, and I'll follow on foot'.
8. Police were called to a daycare where a three-year-old was resisting a rest.
9. Did you hear about the guy who got hit in the head with a can of soda? He was lucky it was a soft drink.
10. When William joined the army he disliked the phrase 'fire at will'.
11. Cartoonist found dead in home. Details are sketchy.
12. There was once a cross-eyed teacher who couldn't control his pupils.
13. A bicycle can't stand on its own because it is two-tired.
14. Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie.
15. A prisoner's favorite punctuation mark is the period. It marks the end of his sentence.
16. He didn't tell his mother that he ate some glue. His lips were sealed.
17. A baker stopped making donuts after he got tired of the hole thing.
18. When an actress saw her first strands of gray hair she thought she'd dye.
19. The magician got so mad he pulled his hare out.
20. In the room the curtains were drawn, but the rest of the furniture was real.
21. I used to be a tap dancer until I fell in the sink.
22. He had a photographic memory that was never developed.
23. Math teachers have lots of problems.
24. If you leave alphabet soup on the stove and go out, it could spell disaster.
25. How do farmers make crop circles? With a protractor.

Journal for the Day

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Think about a joke you know or have heard recently. Why did you find it funny?

Hole and Whole

Hole and whole sound alike, but they mean different things. We're going to discuss some tricks to use when you're trying to figure out which one you need in your sentence.

Hole

Hole is about emptiness, like a hole in the ground, or a hole in my grade book where there is a missing assignment.

You can also have a hole in your heart when someone breaks up with you, which makes you want to hide in a hole in the wall

Practice:

There was a four-foot ________________________ in front of my doorstep this morning.
Did that ________________________ in your ear hurt?
There is a huge ________________________ where the towers stood.

Whole

Whole is about completeness, like eating a whole candy bar, or a whole bag of chips.

A hole needs a “w” to make it whole, complete.

Two, to, and too

Two, to, and too sound alike, but they mean different things. We're going to discuss some tricks to use when you're trying to figure out which one you need in your sentence.

Two

Two refers to the number 2. Use it when the word is communicating that there are 2 objects or people.

It was two o'clock in the morning.
There were two slices of pie left.
There are two people in front of me in line.

To

To tells you that someone of something is going somewhere, or is moving towards something.

I went to the store.
She took me to the doctor.
We walked to the waterfront.

The idea that to is moving towards something is a little bit tricky. Notice this sentence:

He said that in order to complete the assignment, we should read the book.

Notice that he said “to complete the assignment.” This shows that he wants to move something towards completion.

We wanted to create a web page.

Notice that “to create” shows a desire to move towards creating a web page.

Too

Too is used to emphasize something. You can usually substitute too for also.

We'd like to go, too.
This, too, is important.
Shari wants to participate, too.

* Notice that too, when used like also, always has a comma before it if it is at the end of a sentence, and has a comma before and after it if it is in the middle of a sentence.

Too can also be used to express an excess of something.

There are too many of us here today.
I have too much homework.
There is too little being done to save the polar bears.

Journal for the Day

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Write a story or poem about living a good life.

Journal for the Day

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Freewrite!

Journal for the Day

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Write a story about a character who is mean and bossy. Make sure your character says, does, and thinks things that demonstrate these attributes.

Download Worksheet PDFs from Engrade

As you know, when I upload worksheets to this webpage, the formatting goes a little nuts. The good news is that Engrade allows me to upload PDFs of the worksheets I give you in class. So if you haven't signed up for Engrade yet, this is a really good reason to activate your account!

Download PDF worksheets from www.engrade.com!

Weekend Journals

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Saturday: What does it mean to live a life on the surface?

Sunday: How do you feel about authority figures? describe a situation in which you interact with an authority figure.

Journal for the Day

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Freewrite!

Where, were and we're

Where, were, and we're sound alike, but they mean different things. We're going to discuss some tricks to use when you're trying to figure out which one you need in your sentence.

Where

Where is about place. It is used to ask about the location of someone or something, You can remember that by looking at the word like this:

W(here)

“Where” is like “here” because both show a location. For example:

Where is the park?
Where are they going?
I want to know where they went.

Were

Were is a past plural form of the verb to be. It means that a group of people or objects was somewhere or in some state at a point in the past.

We were alone out there.
They were afraid of the dark.
Sam and Tom were not finished with their assignment.

In each case, notice that were is describing a past situation.

We're

We're is telling you that we are somewhere. You can look at it like this:

We're = we + are

Whenever you use we're, you should be able to substitute for we are.

We're not going to be late this time.
I don't know when we're coming back.
Did they say when we're planning to eat dinner?
How come we're getting less?

Your and You're

Your and you're sound alike, but they mean different things. We're going to discuss some tricks to use when you're trying to figure out which one you need in your sentence.

Your

Your means it belongs to you. You can look at it like this:

Y(our)

“Your” is like “our” because both express ownership, or possession. For example:

Your car is parked in an illegal space.
Your apartment is really close to the subway.
We saw your friends outside the deli.

You're

You're is telling you that you are somewhere. You can look at it like this:

You're = you + are

Whenever you use you're, you should be able to substitute for you are.

You're not going to be late this time.
I don't know when you're coming back.
You're not serious, are you?
How come you're getting more more than I am?

Journal for the Day

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How would you react if you took Alice's place at the Mad Tea-Party? Choose a scene and re-write it using yourself as the main character.

Journal for the Day

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Freewrite!

Chapter 7 Reading Response Questions

1. What 3 characters does Alice meet in Chapter 7? How is their behavior similar to that of other characters in Wonderland?

2. Re-read the argument Alice has with the Hatter, Hare and Dormouse. Why does Alice's argument (I mean what I say) make sense, and their arguments (eating, getting what you like, and sleeping) not make sense?

3. How does the Hatter try to fix his watch?

4. Why are the Hatter, Hare and Dormouse always having a tea-party?

5. How do the characters deal with the problem of dirty dishes? Which character benefits from this solution?

6. Why does Alice finally leave the party?

7. Where does she end up at the end of Chapter 7? What do you think will happen next?

Chapter 6 Reading Response Questions

As you read Chapter 6, "Pig and Pepper," answer the following questions:

1. A footman is like a butler; he opens doors and delivers messages. How do the footmen in Ch. 6 behave?

2. How is Alice usually treated by the characters in Wonderland? How does she feel about it. Why? Use examples from Ch. 6 to support your points.

3. How does the Duchess' treatment of her baby go against what you'd expect? Using your knowledge of how Wonderland characters behave, why do you think this is?

4.What is Alice's intention when she takes the baby out of the house? What happens to the baby? Why?

5. Do you think the cat's argument about madness makes sense? Why or why not?

Journal for the Day

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What have you learned so far from Alice in Wonderland? Has it challenged you to think differently? Why or why not?