Fear as a Form of Power?

Today, we are exploring how people can wield fear to gain or maintain power, as The Taliban does in our novel The  Breadwinner. First, we did a Quick Write to explore the question: Is fear always bad, or does it serve a good purpose as well?

We then had a discussion / debate regarding the uses of and interpretation of fear. You all shared powerful ideas and experiences of how fear can be a helpful, cautionary, or even inspiring thing--yet also how it can condemn and destroy.

We then connected to our text and the Taliban's use of fear as a form of control.

Our word of the day today is TACITURN, which means silent by habit. It is a synonym for another of our words, laconic.

For homework tonight, be sure to read Chapter 10 in The Breadwinner (only four pages!) and review for our vocab quiz tomorrow on the following five words: THEME, FALLACY, VOCIFEROUS, VOCATION, LUGUBRIOUS.

Have an awesome rest of your day, and peace!

Mr. R

Stand and Deliver!

Today, you shared your symbols for the characters within Nothing but the Truth. Symbols like: fire, snapping turtles, storms, cooking pots, slippery slides, and many more filled your artistic pages and I loved hearing your ideas and your analysis of why these characters could be symbolized so.

Then, we dove into Chapter 16 of our novel and found that Miss Narwin is getting a whole host of hate mail--much of it containing half-truths.

For tonight, be sure to read up to the start of Chapter 17 in the novel (for most versions of the book, this will be page 200).

After you read, share your insights on this question: How can people hold onto what they know to be true in the face of hatred or anger from many others? And how do people know when to change their ideas or stick to them?

Consider the characters in our novel, and why they choose to stand firm or else change their ideas. How do they determine which is the right course to take. How do YOU?

Our word for the day was DORMANT, which is an adjective that means 'a state of being at rest, but possessing the capability for action. And example of the word in a line is: Sometimes, we all possess the capacity to love deeply, but it lies dormant due to fear or hurt.

Stumbling Over the Truth

Today in class, we explored Winston Churchill's famous line, "[People] stumble over the truth from time to time, but most pick themselves up and run off, as if nothing ever happened." We connected this notion to our novel, Nothing but the Truth, and discussed how finding something that is deeply true can also be deeply, well...scary.

We did  a Quick Write on a prompt based on this idea--what truth have you stumbled over in your life, and how did it feel?

For tonight, be sure to study our five vocab words for the week: LOQUACIOUS, IMPERTINENT, IRONY, RENAISSANCE, and RESPLENDENT (so bright it positively glows!).

Yesterday, we read in pairs from Avi's Nothing but the Truth and watched a brief clip about the Asch Conformity Experiment, then connected the experiment to our reading.

Have a fabulous evening!

Peace, Mr. R.