I Thought It Was a Punctuation Mark

Read the following words spoken by Macbeth in the play aptly named Macbeth.  He is on his way to the king's room to kill him when he sees a dagger floating in the air in front of him:

Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand?
Come, let me clutch thee!
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.

What is the purpose of the apostrophe in the above lines?

a. to show which weapon Macbeth will use to commit a murder

b. to show Macbeth's unstable state of mind

c. to provide imagery for the audience to envision the background

d. to show that Macbeth is not a killer

Scroll down for the answer.

________________________________

Two things are helpful in getting this question correct.  One is having read the story previously and the other is to know what an apostrophe is.  An apostrophe is speaking to an object that has no capacity to respond (similar but the not the same as personification).  Knowing this will lead you to think that if he is talking to a dagger that floats before him and cannot be touched, he must be freaking out.  That will bring you to either b. or d.  If you've read the story, you know that Macbeth is indeed a killer.  He starts the play by chopping a man in half.  The correct answer is b.  

You Get My Meaning

Read the following:

The Bundle of Sticks



An old man on the point of death summoned his sons around him to give them some parting advice. He ordered his servants to bring in a bundle of sticks, and said to his eldest son: "Break it." The son strained and strained, but with all his efforts was unable to break the bundle. The other sons also tried, but none of them was successful. "Untie the bundle," said the father, "and each of you take a stick." When they had done so, he called out to them: "Now, break," and each stick was easily broken. "You see my meaning," said their father.


What is his meaning?
a. together you are stronger
b. you will all die like me one day no matter how strong you are
c. life stinks
d. it is a shame to break good things








Scroll down for the answer.










____________________
a. is the correct answer

The Martian

In the following passage from Andy Weir's novel The Martian, we have excerpts from the protagonist's daily journal that he is using to record his efforts to survive.  The protagonist has been stranded on Mars and presumed dead.  He is trying to keep the equipment he has running and generate enough food and water to keep him alive until someone can rescue him.  Read the following selection:

LOG ENTRY: SOL 36
     I've now grown accustomed to hearing the alarms blare at all times.  The fire alarm has finally stopped, now that there's no more fire.  The low oxygen alarm should stop soon.  The high humidity alarm will take a little longer.  The water reclaimer has its work cut out for today.
     For a moment, there was yet another alarm.  The water reclaimer's main tank was full.  Booyah! That's the kind of problem I want to have!
     Remember the space suit I vandalized yesterday?I hung it on its rack and carried buckets of water to it from the reclaimer. It can hold an atmosphere of air.  It should be able to handle a few buckets of water.
     Man I'm tired.  Been up all night, and it's time to sleep.  But I'll drift off to dreamland in the best mood I've been in since Sol 6.
   Things are finally going my way.  In fact, they're going great!  I have a chance to live after all!

LOG ENTRY: SOL 37
     I am screwed, and I'm going to die!
     


What literary term is the author using to increase the intensity and suspense?

a. imagery
b. dramatic irony
c. foreshadowing
d. juxtaposition

Scroll down for the answer.








__________________________________________
a. is incorrect.  While there is some imagery involved, it is not being used to create suspense or intensity.
b. is incorrect.  We do not know what the protagonist doesn't know.
c. is incorrect.  While there may be some foreshadowing going on, we do not have enough of the text to see if it develops into anything.  
d. is correct.  Juxtaposition is when change in two different scenes has meaning.  Here, we are all set up to think that things are finally working for him.  Then the next entry shows differently. 


O.K., I admit.  I changed a word in order to make it appropriate for all the young impressionable children out there.  I hang my head in censorship shame.

NC EOC Update

 Never fear, dear teacher - your Daily Dose of EOC is just a scroll away, but I just got some news on potential changes to the test and wanted to run this by you.

With the new standards coming out, the potential for test change is there. I reached out to DPI and got this response:

Since English II is administered in both Fall and Spring, we won’t have any significant changes with the Fall assessment because we just have our Test Specifications meeting (where a large number of teacher weighed in on which standards to assess) on September 27.

We’re still discussing possible changes to the Spring administration and haven’t come to a consensus yet.

So there is potential for change as early as Spring 2027, but I was told if so, it would not likely be too significant of a change.

When I find out something new, you will be the first to know!

Does Anyone Really Know What Time It Is?

Read the following passage:

I was going to look for my missing watch, but I could never find the time.

This is an example of:

a. allusion

b. alliteration

c. pun

d. irony

Scroll down for the answer.

_______________________

c. is the correct answer.

~

Sun on the Daisssssies (Bonus points if you get the allusion)

Look at the statement below:

The sun kissed the flowers
Before the clouds closed its eye.

This is an example of:

a. personification
b. allusion
c. hyperbole
d. irony












Scroll down for the answer.















_________________________________
a. is the correct answer.  Personification means to give something not human some human characteristics.  Here the sun is kissing, which, being a ball of firey gases, it cannot do.


The allusion in the title is to Gollum in chapter five of The Hobbit.  They left it out of the movie.  :(



~

 Character Analysis D&D style!

 Never fear, EOCers!  Your daily dose of EOC is just a scroll away, but do check out this fun character activity!

The idea came to me when printing off some character sheets for my daughter's D&D group - this is the perfect platform for dissecting character!  So I started tweaking and realized that while the idea is sound, just modifying the existing D&D character sheet is not going to work for my purposes.  So I started just making one from scratch.  Here are a few partial screen shots - I think it came out pretty good!

So the whole thing is a page front and back, along with a detailed walk-through student instruction sheet.  I plan on having my students roll the die to get the attributes and then finding a character that matches closely (allowing for some tweaks here and there).  I made this for my AP Lit students, but the first practice run-through was on a group of middle schoolers at a Pre-College camp - they loved it!  My objective was to create a platform for character analysis, but the middle schoolers used it to create detailed characters for a creative writing campaign, so I was happy to see that it is quite versatile!

It took way longer to get this sized and laid out than I thought it would take when I first embarked on this idea, but in the end, I think it will become a mainstay in my classes.

Get it here: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/XET-Literature-Lairs-Character-Analysis-11913326?st=fb14def15bd606f53d6adaa1318e8e4c 

If you try it out, I would love to hear from you.  Drop a comment here or on the TPT site.  Every bit helps!