After today's SSR, I did a short book talk over two recent reads: Walter Dean Myers' Street Love and Ellen Hopkins' Impulse. I need to hold on to Impulse so that I can book talk it with the sophomores, but Street Love was snatched up right away. I love it!
We read in Speak to page fifty-three. We discussed quite a bit as we read, but our most important discussion in terms of Melinda's situation centered around "IT". At first, some of you thought that she was talking about Rachel, her ex-best friend. But when we reread the "IT" passage, you all realized that IT is her rapist. We decided that she probably can't bring herself to say his name because she' not ready to talk about/ relive that night yet. We also talked about the emotions she must've felt in seeing IT walking down the school hallway. Fear and anger were the two that you mentioned.
After this reading, we moved on to writing the first letter in our series. These letters will be collected and used to create our final project over this text. We'll discuss that in greater depth later. For this first letter, you all needed to use any three (or more) of your vocabulary words in a letter from Melinda to Rachel. This letter could reveal everything that happened the night of the rape, or it could center on the fact that Rachel is ignoring and judging Melinda. Either way, your letter should express the emotions and feelings that Melinda is currently unable to express for herself.
Our list of vocabulary words is posted in this entry as a photo. If you were absent, please see me about completing this letter!
