3rd Hour Scribe for April 14th

Today at the very beginning of class, Mrs. Moritz returned our PLJ’s. Also Mr. Orsmond came and observed our class today. He is a teacher from South Africa. He teaches 9th-12th grade English and 9th grade history. This is his first trip to the United States. After reviewing our PLJ grades, we went over the grammar packet. Some students asked questions about things they did not understand. Today Patrick, Jeff, and Alyssa presented on pages 167-224. However Alyssa was not here, so it was just Jeff and Patrick. They started out by giving a five question quiz. Afterwards they collected everyone’s discussion questions. The room was set up like a fishbowl with an inner circle and an outer circle. Questions were then asked and people in the inner circle had a discussion, but others could come in and tap them out so they could talk. During the discussion, there were many topics that were brought up, such as trust and the discovery that Mr. Charrington is part of the Thought Police. We also talked about the book Winston read that was given to him by O’Brien. The inner circle compared the government in 1984 to our own government. There were some shocking similarities. The issue of airport security was also brought up. The final question asked was whether people thought Winston would be willing to give up his life for Julia. After our discussion, the class was able to ask Mr. Orsmond some questions about South Africa and the work he does there. It was very interesting to find out about the life in South Africa and some of the poverty that is there. It really makes people think about life and how often we can take things for granted. My favorite question was when Kenna and Lisa asked him if when we talked it sounded like we had accents, and he said we did. I thought that was interesting, plus he had a really cool accent. Overall I think the day went pretty well and we had a good discussion and had a good conversation with Mr. Orsmond.