After hearing and talking quite a bit about bullying and sexual assault, we were able to start reading Speak today. We had some time for SSR before we started in with Melinda's story. As we were reading the first part of Speak, we looked for signs that something bad had happened to Melinda. We saw that:
-kids glare at her
-no one will sit with her
-her old friends won't talk to her
-her old best friend mouths "I hate you"
-the entire cafeteria laughs at her
-she self-mutilates
This evidence was collected from the first fifteen pages of the book. We talked how Melinda sounds, her tone. Some of you thought that she sounded pretty sarcastic and angry. Others thought that she sounds bitter.
After Melinda receives her assignment from her art teacher, I paralleled that scene with a similar assignment. You all reached into my purple bag and drew out your first vocab word. You were each responsible for writing this word on one of the rocks for our Words Rock! vocabulary basket. You each have a word that we'll be using and working with through out the reading of this text. Some of the words you already know, others may be more unfamiliar. We'll add more words to our Words Rock! stash and use these words for a variety of purposes as we read.
