1/17/08 8th

We started our day with an overhead journal entry. We talked about avoiding overused adjectives and adverbs--like really, very, nice, etc. Some words are used so much that they lose their meanings, or they become boring. Let's spice it up and use interesting adjectives. Find a decent online thesaurus here.

We discussed the worksheet from yesterday. We focused on the last question about Cole's name. What literary device is it an example of? Have you ever heard of a homophone? That's when two words sound the same but they are spelled differently. Cole's name is also a homophone. Cole, coal. What is coal? It's a mineral used as a fuel. Specifically, coal is burned for a heat source. When you burn coal, it doesn't flame up like wood. It glows and smolders and puts off a substantial amount of heat. Cole's anger is often referred to as a lit fuse, or as a smoldering fire. What color is coal? It's deep black. Black generally symbolizes something dark, unwelcoming, evil or repulsive. So it would seem that Cole's name is not random. It is a symbol. Let's take it a step further. What happens to coal when after it has undergone a large amount of heat and pressure deep in the earth? It turns to diamonds (it is more complex than that, but you get the general idea). So we can expect that Cole will also go through some sort of a transformation in our book. We can expect that the symbol of Cole's name is also a little bit of foreshadowing.

We read chapter 6 in the book today. If you missed, please catch up during reading time tomorrow.