December Information This Friday, December 12 th is the last day to turn in any late work. The dates for missing assignments to count toward the next mystery reader are: December 1 to January 15 th. Reading Semester Test will be an overview reading test of 8 th grade skills. English Semester Test will be a timed writing test. Wednesday, December 17 th will be a class review for both tests.

What does the mood of a story mean? Give an example of what type of mood this excerpt is: Simon dropped the screen of leaves back into place. The slop of the bars of honey-colored sunlight decreased; they slid up the bushes, passed over the green candle-like buds, moved up toward the canopy, and the darkness thickened under the trees. With the fading of the light the riotous colors died and the hear and urgency cooled away. The candle-buds stirred. Their green sepals drew back a little and the white tips of the flowers rose delicately to meet the open air. Now the sunlight had lifted clear of the open space and withdrawn from the sky. Darkness poured out, submerging the ways between the trees till they were dim and strange as the bottom of the sea. The candle-buds opened their wide white flowers glimmering under the light that pricked down from the first stars. Their scent spilled out into the air and took possession of the island. Lord of the Flies by William Golding

Mood= natural, serene, and peaceful

What is the mood of the following poem? Cold Fear As I came home through Drury’s Woods, My face stung in the hard sleet. The rough ground kept its frozen tracks; They stumbled my feet. The trees shook off the blowing frost. The wind found out my coat was thin. It tried to tear my clothes away. And the cold came in.

Mood= terror

Words in context Adapted from, "The Boarded Window" by Ambrose Bierce. In 1830, only a few miles away from what is now the great city of Cincinnati, lay an immense and almost unbroken forest. The whole region was sparsely settled by people of the frontier--restless souls who no sooner had hewn barely habitable homes out of the wilderness and attained to that degree of prosperity which today we would call indigence, than, impelled by some mysterious impulse of their nature, they abandoned all and pushed farther westward, to encounter new perils and privations in the effort to regain the meager comforts which they had voluntarily renounced. Many of them had already forsaken that region for the remoter settlements, but among those remaining was one who had been of those first arriving. He lived alone in a house of logs surrounded on all sides by the great forest, of whose gloom and silence he seemed a part, for no one had ever known him to smile nor speak a needless word. His simple wants were supplied by the sale or barter of skins of wild animals in the river town, for not a thing did he grow upon the land which, if needful, he might have claimed by right of undisturbed possession. There were evidences of "improvement"--a few acres of ground immediately about the house had once been cleared of its trees, the decayed stumps of which were half concealed by the new growth that had been suffered to repair the ravage wrought by the ax. Apparently the man's zeal for agriculture had burned with a failing flame, expiring in penitential ashes. Question 1 As it is used in paragraph one, the word indigence most nearly means… A. sustenance B. wealth C. influence D. poverty Question 2 As it is used near the end of paragraph one, the word suffered most nearly means… A. endured B. allowed C. instructed D. agonized

Words in context 1.poverty 2. allowed

When summarizing a selection, what would be the most important things to include? How do you determine the author’s purpose? What are some examples of author’s purpose? What are some different genres of text? What is the main idea of a selection mean? What does a moral of a story mean? What does the theme of a story mean? List some examples of reference materials. Define a footnote and the purpose.