Welcome to Mrs. Krich's seventh grade English class!
“The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb. The leopard shall lie down with the young goat. The calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.” (Isaiah 11:6)
A small child is the ultimate example of agape love and acceptance of all people, regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation, appearance or wealth. Parents will sacrifice to ensure that their child has every opportunity to grow and thrive. Love and sacrifice go hand in hand.
This year, we will meet many literary characters who selflessly sacrifice their time, wealth and social standing for others. These include Francie, George, Ms. Sook, Mama Younger and Atticus. These characters give us real life examples of people we should emulate. They are paragons of virtue, and we can learn many lessons from them.
(By the way, the child in the photograph is Little Chloe Krich.)
This year we will be reading great writers and by internalizing the impeccable diction, sentence structures and grammar of these greats, hopefully we will emulate their great writing techniques and improve our vocabulary, style and writer's voice. These great literary gurus include Truman Capote, Harper Lee, William Shakespeare, Lorraine Hansberry, Betty Smith, Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Bishop, our own Josephine Jacobsen and Adrienne Rich, John Steinbeck and many more.
We'll be strengthening our deep thinking skills and look at literature for its abstract qualities. Gone are the days of the book report! We'll be analyzing why characters do what they do and talking about settings that are so intricate to the drama that they are really characters to analyze in themselves. We'll be looking at the five kinds of conflicts, making real life connections from the literature, and learning literary devices great authors use, such as symbolism, irony, apostrophe, personification and pathetic fallacy.
By the end of the year, each girl will have built an electronic portfolio which includes her own writing in many genres, including poetry, flash fiction, creative and analytical essay, and drama.
It promises to be a banner year!!!