Sunday, November 25, 2012

All Boys, All Blogged: November 26, 2012

Focus: Student-led discussion of A Long Way Gone, Chapters 3-6

1. Warm-up: Creating annotation bookmarks for A Long Way Gone:

  • Give yourself a title that incorporates your role (ex: If Sam had chosen the "Outdoorsman" task, he could call himself "Sam vs. Wild").
  • Create a symbol for your particular focus as an annotator and draw it carefully on your bookmark.
  • Write your own motto, or use the one I gave you, or look up a new one.
  • Write three role-related questions that you should be asking yourself as you read (ex: How is the land described?  How does that description reflect what's going on with the narrator here?).

2. Signing up for one-on-one essay conferences

3. Fishbowl Discussion #2: Chapters 3-6 of A Long Way Gone

HW: Start on Thursday's reading assignment and annotations; bring your book and annotations to class tomorrow; book talks; start preparing for this Friday's List 7 SAT vocab. quiz.

72 comments:

  1. Why did the rebels attack the towns so fiercely? What was their goal?

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    1. I think it was to completely wipe out all revolution by anybody.

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    2. Maybe because of how they attack every other town. To drain them of food and water.

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    3. I think that the main goal is to get people to join their cause, whether the villagers want to or not.

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    4. @John
      I believe they were attacking the towns so fiercely to distill fear in surrounding towns and to take supplies as they please. They want everyone to fear them so they are in control.
      -Matt Myers.

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    5. There goal was to get in fast to force the villagers to stay in the village to be used as human shields against the government forces.

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  2. On page 38 when they play the rap cassette it says, "you down with the OPP. What does OPP stand for?

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    1. opp is a song by naughty by nature and the words themself's mean nothing. but its an acronym.

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  3. "People were terrified of boys our age. Some had heard rumors about young boys being forced by rebels to kill their families and burn their villages". What does it mean for these boys that, even though the boys are barely teenagers, that everyone is afraid of these kids?

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  4. On page 37, Beah writes, “This was one of the consequences of the civil war. People stopped trusting each other, and every stranger became an enemy.” Can we relate to this feeling?

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    1. Yes. There is alot of conflict here weather it is school or government or gang violence.

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    2. I think we can because when something bad happens, like the Aurora shooting, people stop trusting people, people didn't feel safe in public places and security forces of America also lost the trust of the people.

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  5. Do you think Junior would have killed Ishmael in the book the rebels tell Junior and other boys to kill the people not chosen. "We are going to initiate you by killing these people in front of you."(Beah 34)

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    1. No i think that he wouldnt have because he too mentally strong to give in to their commands of murdering people.

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  6. on pg. 29 it says " I wanted to blame someone for this particular predicament, but there was no one to be blamed." Why cant they blame somebody else for, could they blame the rebels.

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    1. This part of the book was when the kids found out that they couldn't get food from the stands and then Ishmael said that he wished that someone could be blamed but it wasn't really anyones fault.

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  7. On page 28 it says " Drop the bag and hurry, the rebels are coming. Come on." Why are they things the kid took from his house so important to him that he might risk being caught by the rebels?

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    1. I think that the boy did not fully understand how if he carried all of those things it made him an easy target.

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    2. The kid wasn't able to give up what he had, let the material things go and survive. His instinct was to get everything he could so that way he wouldn't forget. He was afraid of not having those things.

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  8. Page 30 says, "We were so hungry that it hurt to drink water and we felt cramps in our guts. It was as though something was eating our insides..." My question to this is why does the physical pain the endure not change their mentality of survival?

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  9. "Being a group of six boys was not to our advantage. But we needed to stay together because we had a better chance of escaping the day-to-day troubles we faced." Do you think being in a group or being by yourself would be better in this situation?

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    1. I think being in a group of 3 or 4 boys would be best that way if something happened to one of them they can help one another. Also the group is small enough to move without being caught.

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    2. I think being alone would be better because you don't have to worry about anyone but yourself in addition there is more food for yourself to survive.

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  10. When the rebels said,"Since we were fighting for you"(Ishmael Beah 22)why were they killing them?

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  11. Why do they go back to Mattru Jong just because they are hungry? Why wouldn't they hunt or go somewhere else because each time they go back they barley escaped death.

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  12. do you think that all the villages going to get destroed?

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  13. On page 18 the author says "the air smells of blood and burnt flesh". How can people just get used to it.

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    1. I don't think people can get used to the smell but if the smell it enough they are a little less bothered by it.

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    2. I think that people can get use to any smell if they are around it a lot. Like certin people are amune to smells.

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  14. "Before the war, people raised a thumb to say "One love" to each other"-Page 21. How does raising a thumb symbolize "One love" or peace?
    -Matt Myers.

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  15. Does remembering the old days help them deal with what is happening to them or does it make them realize they are in such a bad situation?

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    1. I think that remembering the old days makes them sad and realize how bad of a situation they are in.

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  16. on page 21 it says "the letters simply informed the people of mattru jong that the rebels were coming and wanted to be welcomed, since they were fighting for us." this raises two questions for me. one is why would the soldiers warn the people they were coming, and two how can they say they are fighting for the people when they are shooting down their villages?

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    1. the issue is that the rebels goals and intentions probably were good but once you give a group of untrained people guns and tell them they are superior over someone they will abuse the people below and demonstrate that they are superior, it is human nature.

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  17. The rebels think that they are helping the population and it would be offensive to the rebels that they think that they are helping but no one wants their "help".

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  18. Page 26 describes the bananas they are eating and they say the bananas are raw and didn't have anything to season them with so they tasted bad. Don't we eat raw bananas all the time?

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    1. Well people have different ways to eat. like Sushi, some people like it and some people don't.

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    2. Not really bananas from the super market can be chemical enhanced and you never know what they do to your food before they put it on shelves.

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  19. On page 34 it says "We are going to initiate you by killing these people in front of you." It seems like this was meant to desensitize the children in order to make it easier for them to kill their former countrymen. I can't even imagine being in a situation like this but if I were I don't think it would make me want to kill my countrymen. It would make me want to kill the rebels. For this reason I wonder why Ismael doesn't kill the rebels once they give him a gun to fight with.

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    1. Ishmael isn't in the second group picked. He didn't get a gun and was one of the people that was going to be killed. Also, I don't think that the rebels would give a gun to the people that really want to kill the rebels.

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  20. When the rebels overtake Beah and his brother and friends, they submit them to two selection processes. Why? What were the rebels selecting for? What did they see in Beah and Junior?

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    1. They were selecting the people for soldiers and they picked a again because the first time they picked they were not happy because the kids were not tough.

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    2. The first selection was full of wimpy people so the rebels decided that they need a "re-vote" to get the strongest people of the bunch.

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    3. The selection process didn't seem to be a predetermined planned thing. The selection was random and the goal was to simply scare some and to try to harden the boys that they want to fight for the rebels.

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  21. Robert said it good, "If your'e in a group then you may be more loud but also more courageous."

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  22. Austin mentioned earlier the way war changes them and the other characters in the book. I think people turn their mentality from survival with their brothers to every man for them self and we see this when they jump the boy for his corn. Before the war they would have even been kind to the boy but now they are robbing him of his right to eat.

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  23. In chapter 4 they had to go back to get money Ishmael stored. Why did he not take the money with him when they originally left?

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    1. They were really in a hurry.

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    2. The attack came so fast that they weren't ready for it, so they just ran not thinking about what they might need to survive, later just what they had to do to survive right in the moment.

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  24. on page 31 it says "we didnt know the name of other towns andd villages and how to get there. So hunger drove us to Mattru Jong again. It was dangerous, but hunger made us not care that much." It is sad that they are so hungry that they almost don't even care about dying to get food.

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    1. Maybe dying from a gun was better then starving to death.

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    2. Why wouldn't they try something else anything instead of going back to a town that is covered with rebels.

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  25. why do you think that the villagers became certain that the rebels weren't going to come attack?

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    1. I think they just had strong hope that they wouldn't come, trying to push away the fact that they knew they eventually would come.

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  26. DO you think the book will ever be happier? Right now it seems like everything is going badly. Will it be happier? Or will it end up more like The Kite Runner and be mostly sad throughout the book.

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    1. Well he went through war and faced death and lived to tell about it. I figure that's pretty dang happy.

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    2. Well On the back of the book, it has a picture of him smiling.

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    3. I think that most of the book will be sad because in my opinion Ishmael wrote this book to inform people of the horrible things that people have to go through and how lucky we are. Although it does say on the back of the book that at 16 he goes to a rehabilitation center and things get better so hopefully it will have a happy ending.

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  27. After the rebels recruited the soldiers they needed, why didn't they immediately kill the extras? Where they going to torture them?

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  28. I don't agree with jordan that they could become rebels when they see a village untouched. they might steal some food when they need it but I don't think they will go any more extreme.

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  29. Why don't they learn to hunt?! They are in the jungle! There's no need to starve and visit villages for food where people are constantly dying when they have so much wildlife around them!

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  30. How could someone be so brutal to complete strangers.

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    1. They think that they are doing good while doing this.

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    2. In the case of the rebels they want to win this fight and wont let anything stop them.

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    3. thy don't mean anything to them. you woulden't be brutal to someone you know most likly, it would be someone you have never seen before.

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  31. Why didnt the boys stay with the soldiers when they offered them a place to stay? It seams to me like that is a lot safer and much easier than working on a farm for 3 months.

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  32. Why doesn't the government send many soldiers into one town so that they are able to take down a whole squad of rebels?

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  33. I agree with Philip B. in that, rebel attacks on the towns were to wipe out any revolution by anyone. Also when the little kid doesn't want to drop his bag, i think he just didn't understand that if he held on to it he would be found and killed. When Robert D. asked if being in a group or being alone is better, I think for surviving the land and getting food a group would be better, but if your being chased by people being alone would allow you to be more quiet and hidden. Later in the blog when Joseph S. asked: How can people get used to the smell of blood and burnt flesh? I think its just like in The Kite Runner when the Taliban is shooting everyone in the streets, the people have to get used to it. One question i have is: On page 31 it says, "The other two were dressed in jean jackets and pants, wearing baseball hats backward and new Adidas sneakers." How did they get NEW sneakers?

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