Author Archives: lylew

To Kill A Mockingbird Chapters 11-15

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Write about one important occurrence/person came to light in this chapter, quote one thought-provoking passage, and one question that came to mind.

One important occurrence in this section of the book was the introduction and death of Mrs. Dubose. Mrs. Dubose appears to be an unusually nasty old lady who is very rude to Jem and Scout as they walk past her house on their way to town but later turns out to be a morphine addict who is trying to get off of the drug before she dies. She takes on a large role in the story when Jem looses his temper with her and destroys her flowers. Jem is punished by being forced to read to Mrs. Dubose everyday for over a month. During that time many questions are raised about Mrs. Dubose but they are all answered when Atticuz explains that she was a morphine addict. After the explanation, Atticus says to the children “I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do. Mrs. Dubose won, all ninety-eight pounds of her. According to her views, she died beholden to nothing and nobody. She was the bravest person I ever knew”. This quote also provoked quite a bit of thought because it really made me think about what “courage” is and how many people in today’s society seem to think “courage” is a man with a gun. A question that came to mind was “why did Mrs. Dubose feel the need to get off morphine when she knew that her death was imminent?

To Kill A Mockingbird Chapters 6-10

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Write about one important occurrence/person came to light in this chapter, quote one thought-provoking passage, and one question that came to mind.

An important event that occurred in chapter 10 was the shooting of a mad dog. It is important to the story because it reveals a lot about Atticus (scouts father). Scout and her brother view their dad as “boring” until they learn that he was once the best gunman in all of Maycomb. The mad dog incident does more than just reveal truths about Atticus, it is also a symbol of the anger the town has towards Atticus for defending an African american man in court. A thought provoking passage that I found was “Miss Maudie looked around, and a shadow of her old grin crossed her face. “Always wanted a smaller house, Jem Finch. Gives me more yard. Just think, ill have more room for my Azaleas now!””. This passage makes me wonder why Miss Maudie seems so happy, her house just burnt down. A question I have is: is Miss Maudie actually fine with the loss of her house or is she just telling the children that to try and make herself feel better about it?
How have the characters changed from how they were originally introduced?
 Both Jem and Scout have grown older and grown more mature. As the book has progressed a number of events have revealed surprising things about certain characters. Boo Radley still remains a mystery but during the fire he put a blanket around the children, proving that he isn’t a terrible person and Atticus has turned out to be very brave and strong when it comes to things he believes in.

To Kill a Mockingbird Chapters 1-5

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Write about one important occurrence/person came to light in this chapter, quote one thought-provoking passage, and one question that came to mind.
      Lots of things came into light considering we are talking about the beginning of the book, everything is new. The one event that stands out the most for me was at the very end of the first chapter. Dill dares Jem to touch the Radley house. It is important as it reveals many things about both the characters, the Radley house and it even does a little to foreshadow the events to come. It shows Dill’s curiosity in the Radley house/Radley family and foreshadows that the Radley house will play a large role in the story (I did an entire blog post on this earlier). A thought provoking passage that I found in the story was “turtles can’t feel, stupid”, this is said by Jem and it made me think because I found it somewhat alien how someone could assume this. It shows how little the kids seem to know about animals and reveals a little bit about Jem’s personality when he makes this assumption. A question that came to mind was “why is Dill so interested in the Radley house?” I understand that he is curious but I still find his obsession a little bit strange.
What did the first sentence of the book make you feel/think?  
      The first sentence of the book caught me a little off-guard, I wasn’t sure what to expect but I definitely didn’t expect the first line to talk about a broken arm. It seemed a little random. It made me feel a little surprised and set a bit of a dark tone.

Isearch

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I am currently five chapters into the book, To Kill a Mockingbird and I have discovered a pivotal event already in the story. This event ends the first chapter of the story. Dill dares Jem to touch the Radley house and after three days of thinking about it, Jem does it. This detail plays a massive role in the story as it is not only a great example of Jem’s honour but it shows Dill’s curiosity in the Radley house. There is also much foreshadowing to be found in this event. Dill’s interest in the house is a good example of foreshadowing but the best example is found in the very last sentences of the chapter, “The old house was the same, droopy and sick, but as we stared down the street we thought we saw an inside shutter move. Flick. A tiny, almost invisible movement, and the house was still.” (page 19). This line also helps to set a spooky mood to the story.

Apart from the foreshadowing, this event does a good job to bring the conflict into play. It demonstrates the mystery surrounding the Radley house, the fear associated with it and, like I stated before, it demonstrates Dill’s interest in the Radley house. It is my belief that the author put this event in the book to help the reader get to know the characters through their actions. The author is introducing the reader to the conflict between the characters and the mysterious house and ending the first chapter on a bit of a cliff-hanger to make the reader want to keep reading.

NHL Playoffs

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The NHL playoffs started not long ago and already the Montreal Canadiens have moved to the 2nd round. They Montreal Canadiens (Habs) are the only Canadian team that made the playoffs this year so naturally I am cheering for them! The bottom 4 teams in the western conference were all Canadian teams. The Oilers, Flames, Jets and my favorite team, the Vancouver Canucks. So although team Canada won gold in ice  hockey during the Olympics, it hasn’t been a good season for Canadian hockey teams. The Montreal Canadiens beat the Tampa Bay Lightning in 4 games and are currently waiting for the Bruins vs Redwings series to end. Montreal will play the winner of that series. I’m also about to start a new inquiry so I will be blogging a lot more often in the next few months. GO HABS GO!!!

Comments on my poster

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Today in digital media we all made posters that talked about what we would post online. On mine I talked about my twitter, on which I post things about hockey and music. After we made the posters we all put them on the wall. We were given sticky notes and told to stick comments on each others posters. The comments I received on my poster were somewhat helpful. Some comments said that I shouldn’t be so obsessed with hockey but I did get some that suggested I post links to hockey stats and stuff like that. Overall I think the things I could have improved on my poster would have been: I could have been more specific at times, I could have been a bit more serious and I could have been neater with my writing. Follow me on twitter! @LuongoRules121

Inquiry Update

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Well there hasn’t been all that much progress since I last posted an Inquiry update.  🙁  I have been sick for two weeks and missed that much school, The demo track that me and Nolan completed is ready to upload but its too big to upload on my blog. We are going to fine somewhere to upload it to, then ill post a link. We plan to pretty much finish the song this weekend so next time I blog hopefully I will have a lot more to talk about but for now there isn’t much to report.

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Today in digital media Heidi Gable taught the class about copyright. We were shown several examples of people/companies that used copyrighted material and were sued. The one example that I will talk about on my blog is a commercial for GoldieBlox that used a Beastie Boys song without permission in a commercial. The link is here:

http://www.wired.com/underwire/2013/11/goldieblox-beastie-boys-girls-removed/

 We also talked about if its legal to cover songs without talking to the artist first, I also learned that people are not supposed to take photos off the internet without making sure that the person who posted the photo is OK with use of it. The course was very good and I really enjoyed it.

🙂

Inquiry Update

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The inquiry I am currently working on with Nolan is going fairly well, we have now recorded our first full demo of the song we wrote! 🙂 The only thing we have left to do is to finish the song and to add/create a drum track. I do not play drums (not sure about Nolan) but I think the best idea is to use the recorder to make a drum track for the song. This is a bit of a setback because we still have to make drum beats for all the parts of the song and figure out how to add them in with the instruments. This isn’t going to be hard at all so I’m actually quite exited!

P.S. I will post the demo soon. 🙂