First Impressions: September 6, 2017

Focus: How does Steinbeck introduce his characters?

1. Warming up with your favorite characters

• Left side: A character you love
• Right side: A character you love to hate
• Middle: A character you're not sure how to feel about

• Quick follow-up: Listening to each other's lines and thinking back to your Venn diagrams from yesterday, what parallels can you find between the way Steinbeck describes the characters and the way he describes the land they live on?

2. Questioning Steinbeck's first chapters with a Bucket List

Level 1 Bucket: questions for clarity--what's confusing you about the plot?

• Who is the narrator? Is it Steinbeck himself?

Level 2 Bucket: Socratic-style questions

• On page __, what do the descriptions of Samuel Hamilton's strengths have in common? Why might Steinbeck emphasize this particular pattern?

"What Would Foster Say?" Bucket

• After being beaten nearly to death by his brother, Adam lies briefly in a stream of water. What would Foster say about the significance of this "baptism"?

3. Circling the wagon to discuss your Bucket questions

4. Wrapping up with your Biblical story of the day: Cain and Abel

• (Re)read Verses 2 and 4 from Genesis. Describe Steinbeck's allusion to Genesis: How, specifically, does Steinbeck dramatize the first few verses of Genesis? What parallels can you find, and what does he alter?

HW: 
1. For catch-up: 

• Finish composing your first Big Question blog; spend time simply freewriting on your question (why'd you pick that one?), then use it to analyze/react to Oedipus Rex. Make sure you hit the orange "Publish" button.

• Augmenting your vocabulary with Quizlet: Click HERE to join our class.

• Staying on top of your game with Remind: Click HERE to join (if you haven't done so yet).

2. For next Friday:

• Read (and annotate) Chapters 4, 5, 6, and 7 in East of Eden.

3. Ongoing: Stop in for a conference on your college essay!