The Giver by Franny C

Picture by Franny Cochran, kindle version- The Giver

I’m 12 years old. This means that if my world was like the world in The Giver, I would have my “assignment.” I think that if the Elders were watching me, they might see me doing a lot of writing in my free hours. This is because I love to write. With this information, I think they would make me something that has to do with writing. Maybe scribe, or novelist, or something like that. Unfortunately, I’m not sure what kinds of writing jobs there are in the “community!”

With the jobs we have in our world today, I might be assigned teacher. This is because they might also see me doing things that have to do with teaching. I want to be a writer or teacher, or both in real life, so if I were in The Giver, I would probably get Instructor, or something to do with writing. Like I said before, though, I’m not really sure what those jobs would be! Really, I think I’d like to be surprised!

 

The Giver By: Sam G.

 Currently in the class of Language Arts we are reading a rather strange yet fun book called The Giver. It is about a boy named Jonas who is about to go through what is called The Ceremony of Twelve where Jonas will be assigned a job for the rest of his life by the Elders. He has talk with his parents about what it was like for them to go through The Ceremony of Twelve and the job they got was what they expected. But Jonas is still concerned on what his job for the rest of his life chosen by the Elders would be? If I were Jonas living in basically a perfect society I would stop and think about what I am best at…. for me that is probably dodgeball. You guessed it I would want to be the funniest, loudest, nicest, smartest gym teacher ever.

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Westing Game By Katie C.

In LA class we read The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin. As a extra credit we could dress up as one of the characters. I chose to dress up as Turtle Wexler. Since in the book  they don’t talk about what Turtle wears, expect that she is a tom boy, I had to guess at what to wear. We had to bring a prop with the costume, so I carried a striped candle, that lit the bombs. Most of the girls who dressed up, dressed up as Turtle Wexler, too. I had fun dressing up.

The Westing Game by David P.

Photo From: http://www.flickr.com/photos/38838670@N08/5187233083

In class, we read a book called The Westing Game. It is not a very long book, but it is so intricately compiled and written that it matches the detail of a book twice its depth and length. It is categorized as a “cozy mystery”, which means that it is set in a small town, with wealth, and there is death with no gore and detail. I enjoyed reading it and finding out the possible solutions to the Westing Game Mystery.

The actual answer is so off track from what I had surmised that I was shocked. It was not a suspenseful or exciting book, but it was interesting all the same. We learned the elements of a mystery in class. They are Family, Information, Games, Patriotism, and Identity. Family plays a part because of the main character, Turtle. She is in a family in which she is not the favored child, but instead, quite the opposite. Information plays a role where some characters try to find out all about the other Westing Heirs. Games play a huge role. Sam Westing was a chess master, and he was famous for the queen’s sacrifice. When someone is playing chess with Theo, Doug finds out who it is, which leads to an important discovery. Patriotism is also very important. Sam Westing was a huge patriot who was famous for his Fourth Of July pageants. This novel is short, but it is amazingly detailed.

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The Westing Game by: Davi

When I first started reading The Westing Game, I thought it was just going to be another mystery, where you know who committed the crime halfway through the book. As my class progressed through the book, I started to realize that The Westing Game was much more complicated than I thought. Ellen Raskin, the author, writes so many clues; some are hidden, and some are put right under your nose, but you don’t notice them. Simple words such as rose (don’t worry, this is not a spoiler) suddenly become blaring clues. It’s amazing how such a simple book can be so complex. The Westing Game may seem like just another mystery book, but I strongly recommend that you read it.

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The Westing Game By Nathan G.

Our latest project in Donnelly Language Arts was a book called “The Westing Game”. I had already read the book and didn’t really enjoy it so I was not excited to read it again. Part of the reason I didn’t like it was that it was so confusing and hard to keep up with all the characters. There are over 25 characters and in order to understand the book you need to know well!
I was very shocked to find that I actually enjoyed the book on the second time around! The book is so complicated that even though you know what happens in the end you never stop finding all these little hints and clues. For instance, there are 16 heirs in the book and that’s how many pieces one side has in chess! This is something that is very neat because the main character who dies loves chess.
Another thing that really helps in understanding the whole book more was using an app called Trading Cards. Using the information given in the book we made drawings of the character and filled out details and facts about each character in the form of a trading card. It was hard work to make 26 of them but it payed off in the end! Also, we went over “mystery” vocabulary words that helped with this cozy mystery. So now I would recommend this book where as before I would not!!

 

Hero Books by Joanna

We just finished making a book and writing about our heroes. Our heroes are people in our lives who have a big impact on our life. My hero is my brother. He is kind and extremely smart. We started making our hero books with figuring out our hero. Then we got all of our information about them and started thinking about which moment with our hero we were going to depict in our book. Finally, Mrs. Gignoux came to help us with making the actual hero book during one period of Language Arts, while in the other period we wrote about our hero over several days. Then when we were finished with our books and our writing, we pasted the story into the book. Yay! Our books were finally done and ready to be put in the Frank Gallery in Chapel Hill, North Carolina!

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Hero Project by Jenny

Photo by Mrs. Donnelly

In the sixth grade language arts class we did a project on a person who is a big influence in our life, in other words our “hero”. My hero is my dad. During this project we had to create a handmade book with a cover and back cardboard made by our lovely guest appearance “Peg Gignoux” who included our work with hers in the Frank Gallery. During this making we painted sheets of paper with stamps, and cut them up and pasted them onto our book of our liking. We then typed up paragraphs talking about our hero’s life story and how they are important to us. Once those got printed, cut, and glued in our book, our books were soon enough on their way to the Frank Gallery on Franklin Street for public views.

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Hero Project by Shaylen A.

Photo taken by Mrs. D

The whole sixth grade made hero books.  We had to choose someone who we were influenced by and interview them. I chose my dad. Also, we had to choose three words that our hero represents. I chose hardworking, responsible, and helpful. We had to make books that were made out of paper, glue, stamped paper, cut paper, and some scissors were involved. After we finished everyone had to write a story and include the three words with examples. Also, we had to put the hero’s childhood in the story and I chose to put my dad’s hobbies. That was the process of making the hero books.

There were some parts of making the books I didn’t like and some parts I really liked. For example, when making the book it took a lot of glue and I hated getting my fingers sticky. Also, all of the paint would go everywhere. I liked interviewing to get information about my dad. One more thing was I really enjoyed the artwork even though I got dirty and I liked the way my book turned out.

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Hero Books by Nate V

Photo by Mrs. Donnelly

Over the past month in Language Arts we worked on hero books. To make them we stamped paper and then ripped it. We made books that had a front scene, like sand, and a back scene, like water. The books were about a hero, like a relative in our life. My hero is my grandpa. After we made them, they were displayed in the FRANK Gallery in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. There was a reception and kids brought their family members and their heroes.

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