440 pages to read divided by 24 days =18 pages per day.
I hope you're getting dirty wherever you are.
I'm heading for the White Mountains today to camp 'til Thursday with Amy, Liam, and Sadie. Looks like we'll be tenting in the middle of a bunch of thunderstorms. Oh, that's great. I'll have to be sure to use all of my metal tent poles. They're watching for tornadoes in Kansas and Minnesota. Does that sound familiar? Check out Accuweather.com to follow the tornado watches.
So, we have three books to go and three and a half weeks to read them. If you start The Homework Machine today, and you read about 18 pages per day, you will be done by next Thursday.
According to our schedule, we would then read Room One in just one week, and end our Summer Book Club with Escape from Alcatraz on August 26th. But, let's talk next Thursday. It may make sense to drop either Alcatraz or Room One so that we're not frantic the last two weeks.
Please comment: do you think you'll want to read all the books or drop one (and which one)?
Happy reading!
- Mr. Bolger
That's it for now. Can't wait to hear from you.
-Mr. Bolger
7 comments:
Monday, Aug. 2nd,
(Question of the day for pgs. 1-50)
This book is unusual in that all the characters take turns narrating the story. You can really tell what they are like. Do any of the characters remind you of anyone you know? Explain :)
I don’t know anyone like Sam, Kelsey, Judy and Brenton. Sam is kind of mean and doesn’t listen unless you yell at him. Kelsey likes homework. Actually, my brother Grant likes to do homework. Brenton likes to wear ties to school and he made a homework machine that does your homework for you. He also doesn’t have any friends. I don’t know anyone like that.
Also, I would like to keep Alcatraz instead of Room One.
Sincerely, Chase
It sounded like a stampede.
Just returned from three nights of camping in the White Mountains, and man, did it pour.
About 12:30 a.m. every night, we woke up to the sound of rain pounding towards us, and then we'd just get hammered. The rain, the thunder, the lightning: it was deafening.
Luckily, our tent kept us pretty dry, and Sadie and I rigged up a huge tarp over the picnic table, but it kind-of wore us down -- the soaked clothes and the nightly drama.
I was glad to have read Night of the Twisters, though; I could lie there and think, "This is about 1/10 the experience those poor people had in that town. I don't have it too bad." Reading the book with you guys in the book club made this camping trip more interesting than disappointing.
Looking forward to getting caught up with you all on The Homework Machine.
Thanks for the input, Chase, on Alcatraz vs. Room One. What do the rest of you think?
Mr. B
ps: one of you posted a comment about Sable, but signed it as "anonymous", so I couldn't tell who you were :) Can you please resend it, check "Name/URL,", and then sign your name? That helps.
Happy reading, everyone!
-- Mr. Bolger
I finished Sable, and I started reading Night of the Twisters and Alcatraz. I like Alcatraz.
-- Anthony
Hey, Guys!
You need to be posting comments. You should be responding to the questions I post. That way, you share your thinking with each other, and it makes the reading more fun.
Question of the day:
In The Homework Machine, there's something weird that happens to Kelsey. What it is? Explain.
Mr. B
Wow! What a surprising ending! It turns out the Homework Machine is a deep book that raises many questions:
1) How do parents inadvertently, sometimes, help kids get into trouble?
2) Is it ok to break a promise?
3) How in the world can four kids who are so different end up really liking each other?
4) What does it feel like to be guilty?
5) Would the D Squad have been better off if they had told their parents early-on or would they have been worse off?
6) Look how one little thing -- a little invention by Brenton -- brought these four kids together. Their whole year would have been different. Would their lives have been different?
7) As you got to know Brenton, Judy, Kelsey, and Snik, how did your feelings change about each of them?
8) How did their feelings change about each other?
9) They say that best friends become a little like each other. Who did Judy become more like? Who did Brenton become more like? Who did Snik become more like? And who did Kelsey become more like?
These are the questions we'll talk about as we eat our GARLIC CHIPS and FRESCA today. Think about them.
Try to answer at least one of them before our meeting by posting a comment.
See you soon!
Mr. B
Hi Guys!
Wow, the week has flown by. I finished Room One yesterday. I'm sorry I haven't posted any questions. I have been working very hard to get my classroom ready, and I have had workshops and meetings 'til late every day.
Well, this isn't an adventure book. It's not a fantasy book. It's not a book about animals. It's not even about prisons.
But it IS about a boy pretty-much like any of you. He starts out just being on a paper route, and before long, he has to make a whole string of decisions, and they turn out to be very big decisions -- like should he tell his mom? Should he get help for the family in the farmhouse or should he keep his promise not to?
Question: pick one choice that Ted Hammond made, and tell whether you would have made the same choice.
See you all tomorrow at the library at 4 pm for our last book club meeting of the summer :(
-- Mr. B
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