Happy New Year!

I hope you had a restful break! I enjoyed reading (and grading) your work last week :) Did you hand it in? If not, please do! If you were absent the Friday before break, you missed a quiz!

Agenda

1. Pass back work
2. Grammar Review: How to Find the Subject of the Sentence.

Here are some resources for you.
http://leo.stcloudstate.edu/grammar/verbsub.html
http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/

We will try and get through these agenda items by the end of third period.

3. Group Discussion Questions

Please work with a partner to discuss Dahl's The Witches. Use these questions to kick start your conversations. Take notes in your journals.

1. Why do witches hate children so much anyway? What have children ever done to them?
2. How would you have tricked the witches? Which of their weaknesses would you have played on? Could you come up with a plan better than the narrator's?
3. Grandmamma sure is chatty when it comes to witch-related information. What would have happened if she had never told our narrator all about witches?
4. Other than his starring role in a Roald Dahl book, what do you admire most about the narrator? Why?
5. What is Grandmamma's back-story? How did she lose her thumb? What was her childhood like? Imagine it all.
6. According to the author, all witches are women. According to many readers, this is sexist. Based on the rest of the book, do you agree?
7. How would you have illustrated this book? Draw a picture of The Grand High Witch and see how it stacks up to Quentin Blake's illustration.
8. Wait a second, weren't witches children themselves once? How does that work? Do witches hate witch children, too? This is a curious matter.
9. Based on your reading of this novel and your knowledge of other children's novels, what are the elements of children's literature?
10. Do you have any ideas for a children's story? Brainstorm these ideas now!

4. POST
Would you like to read another children's novel? Any title you would like to read next? Post your ideas on the blog!

Homework: Finish up work from today!