DD's class just finished reading "The Outsiders," and doing various types of analysis. DD did many of these short assignments on her own, and in general she did pretty well. I think it helped that they were broken into smaller, more manageable chunks, rather than the larger projects they are often assigned.
We did have some interesting ones, for instance, the opening line says something like, "I had two things on my mind when I walked out of the theater that sunny day: the movies, and Paul Newman." So when the assignment was to list the main characters in the book, and their role, the first one she listed was Paul Newman as the leader of the gang. Well, I suppose that cultural reference is going to become more and more obscure to the coming generations.
Last night's assignment was to answer three questions. The second one was, "How does the title of the book relate to the story? Can you think of a better title for the book and why?" (For those who haven't read this, it's written from the perspective of a teen aged gang member back in the 60's(?), talking about the tensions between the "greasers" (poor kids, delinquents) and the Socs (rich kids, but troublemakers)).
She sat there looking stumped, so I rephrased the question: "Why was the book named, "The Outsiders." DD's answer was, "Well, they spent a lot of time outside, for lunch and things."
Fortunately, once I talked her through what the teacher had in mind for each of the questions, she did a great job answering the questions on her own. Only minor editing were needed. This is huge progress!
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2 comments:
Classic.
I'm glad you helped her get past the hurdles and understand better what the questions were asking. And how sad that these young people don't know who Paul Newman is!
~Kari
Our girls just did this same book this fall. Both really struggled with the names of characters and the roles they played. We didn't get a chance to really work with them, they did most of the work in class so unfortunately they didn't "get" much of the story. By now most if not all of the information is long gone, to some far away memory storage unit that will open at the strangest times.
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