Literacy Circles- Chocolate War Illustrator

For our first meeting of Chocolate War, a book by Robert Cormier I had the job of the illustrator.

I illustrated how growing up influences what you do and what you buy. The main character, Jerry Renault went to a magazine store (chapter 3) where he bought a rather inappropriate magazine. He used all his budget to buy this magazine. This demonstrates how, at different ages, we all have different needs. Jerry Renault's is at a stage of puberty and buying an inappropriate magazine was something that he felt the need of buying.

Here is the picture that I llustrated-

Jerry Shopping at the Magazine Shop

Literacy circles- Connector

My connection was from chapter 23 when the goober wanted to quit playing football in the Trinity.  When i was nine years old i was playing soccer at a club for a few years.At the beggining everything was going really good we had good coaches and good players. One day the best coach of the club left and the one who came instead of him was not really good. Many kids did not like the new coach and they left the team and the things were getting worse by time. I also wanted to quit until i realised that a few good players were left and I was one of them so if we quitted one by one the club would turn out to be awful. So i stayed and the next reason the club did better. That is why the goober should re-consider about quitting the team maybe they need him more than he knows.

The chocolate War - Summarizer

The beginning of chapter 20 is based on a scene that happened earlier in the book. When the Goober unscrewed Brother Jacques’ room, the room broke down in the beginning of the chapter. Archie was satisfied with himself and felt triumph but the other students were not convinced. Then, at a different setting, a kid by the name of Kevin Chartier had gone to half a dozen houses to sell the chocolates but had sold only one box to his aunt, who had diabetes. So he called up one of his friends. His friend, Danny, hadn’t had any luck either. The two talked about how Jerry was doing well to annoy Brother Leon. How Jerry was rebelling against the school, the spirit of Trinity. The chocolate sales were not going well, obviously. The kids either did not have the spirit or just could not sell the chocolates. So Brother Leon complained about the sale to Archie, who was also very mad. But little did they know that something would happen to the sales. Then came the discussion between Jerry and Archie. It was a very long chat. Archie tried to tempt Jerry to selling the chocolates. But Jerry would not listen. He will continue declining the chocolate sale. A day after that, a junior by the name of Frankie Rollo was called to a chat with Archie. Archie asked for his name because it was ritual to call for the name but Rollo thought this was kind of joke and got all smart about it. And the two got into a big argument about it and Carter, Archie’s bodyguard, punched Rollo in the face and Rollo fell flat. He was ignored then because the bell rang. When Jerry came back from football practice, in his apartment, he got a call. But when he said hello, no one was there. He repeated. And then a small chuckle came out of the phone. Jerry was scared. But suddenly hung up. Later that night, he got the same call, but his father picked up. The same thing happened to his father but he regarded it has some sort of joke. But Jerry was not so sure. The next day at school, Jerry opened his locker and the locked was trashed. Everything lying in the wrong place, marks on the locker wall. Hours later, something miraculous happened to the chocolate sale. The numbers went up and Brother Leon was delighted. They had sold fifteen thousand and only needed five thousand left to sell before the sale was completed.

Chocolate War - Vocabulary Enricher

                                                           The Chocolate War

I was vocabulary enricher for the my group and were reading the Chocolate War. The words I chose were:

Resentful: Full of or marked by indignant ill will.

Buoyant: Characterized by liveliness and lightheaded.

Ravenous: Extremely Hungry

Tardy: After the expected or usual time.

Disadvantage: The quality of having an inferior or less favorable position.

I am satisfied with my group for telling me the definition of most of these words. They guessed four out of five. 

Adam Chocolate War- Vocabulary Enricher

villainous-relating to, constituting, or guilty of wicked or criminal behaviour.( Evil)

muss- messy

quarterback-  a position in American football. ( Main character in the team)

Swayed- a motion, movement

This meeting I was vocabulary enricher and I am very happy with the knowledge of my lit circle group. They knew all of my words. I also put these words because they seemed knew form me.

Connector - Vishesh

This time we started reading Chocolate War. I was the connector for this time and I made couple connections with the words and some paragraphs. Here are the connections I made.

Chapter 3 (18): Afraid his mother would find the magazine.

Once while playing with my friend I found one of my belongings at his house which was stolen so I stole it back and still hasn’t gotten into trouble.

Chapter 5 (37): Archie

At this point in the book I remembered comics in which the protagonist is a redhead called Archie.

Chapter 6 (42): Leon

One of my friend’s online aliases.

Chapter 11 (70): The racket was deafening

The festival of lights (Diwali) is always a deafening racket.

Chapter 12 (78): There was a legend in school that the coach does not accept you until he calls you a son of a bitch.

The swearing and the sport team tryout environment description sounds like something in the absolutely diary of a part time Indian.

Adam- Real Life Diary of a Part Time Indian- Connector 2

For the second blog post I was connector. I could connect with most of the happenings in our book. I expireinenced friend loss and getting the friend back. My fathers mom died when he was very young.
Lately my fathers brother died so I expirienced death of a family member.

I have competitions in sport so I feel his nervousness.

I never expirienced a near death expirience in a sport.

I have already been hit with a basketball in the face.

I also believe in certain myths.

I also experienced wild adventures.

I am happy with my connections and I am happy that I have a lot of similarities with his adventures and his experiences.( not all)

Discussion Director

My job is to write a list of questions that we as a group might want to discuss about this part of the book. The best questions will come from my own thoughts, feelings, and ideas about this section of the book. I also need to write my own answers to these questions.  I was very satisfied with my group members, they answeared the questions very well and they knew what the book is about very well. In conclusion my group members answered the questions very long and thorough.

1. Is Jerry courageous? Who's the most courageous character in the book? Explain your answer. "Yes" Adam
2. Could any of the novel's villains transform into good guys? If not, why not? If so, which ones, and why? "Yes, because there going to change" Adam
3. If you were Jerry, would you do things differently? If so, what? If not, why not? "Yes, I would keep selling chocolates" Vishesh
4. Is The Chocolate War realistic? Why or why not? "No" Vishesh

The chocolate war vocabulary enricher

1. askew: twisted to one side

2. adulation: hypocritical praise

3. intimidate: make fearful

4. exemplify: be characteristic of something

5. radiance: the quality of being bright

6. bedlam: the state of extreme confusion

7. shambles: a condition of many bad disorders

8. tenement: a run-down apartment house with minimal standards.

9. tumultuous: characterized by disorder

10. Lopsided: having one side lower than the other.

11. discrepancy: a difference between conflicting facts

12. fidget: move restlessy

The Chocolate War - Travel Tracer

                                                            The Chocolate War

The action begins in a room where an assembly is about to start. The assembly is about a chocolate sale at the school spring "fair". All of the boys have to sell each 50 boxes of chocolate and make money off of it. But a boy by the name of Jerry Renault is declining at every meeting to sell chocolates. Basically the whole part of the book takes place in the school. But the most major events happen in that same assembly hall, with everyday going by with Jerry rebelling against the Brother Leon's wishes. The end of our passage takes place also in the assembly hall, with Jerry wanting to say yes and to start selling chocolates but he, for some peculiar reason, he declines. 

The Chocolate War - Travel Tracer

The Chocolate War 

Jerry Renault declines the chocolates everyday. He is rebelling against the school spirit. I Had a major rebellious moment when it was against the school rules to dye my hair though I still did it.

Summarizer - Vishesh

This was our second literature circle rotation. I am Vishesh and I was the summariser whose job as the title may suggest is to summarize the section read. This was my summary of the section I read.  

This time the section started off with Junior lazy because he had no friend at the beginning of the section. He eventually made a friend possibly the nerdiest kid at school and also the weirdest kid at school, Gordy. Soon enough he met Penny once again and one thing had led them to another and then they ended up dating.

There was a dance in the school gym where Junior had to show up wearing his father’s suit from the 70’s with bell bottoms. He wasn’t a good dancer but people still got jealous because he was dating Penny. After the dance the group Junior, Penny, Arnold and his friends went to have dinner in a restaurant, when they find out that Junior is poor. Despite such a big secret being revealed Penny and Arnold did not tell anyone else, they gave Junior a ride home instead of being cross with him showing their true friendship.

On the other hand Junior receives several emails from his sister informing him that she was in Montana and she was safe etc.

A few days upon finding out about the poverty Junior tries out for the basketball team. He gets chosen and his first game was against his own old school Wellpint, even worse the match was in Wellpint’s gym in the rez almost everyone despised Junior. This showed when it was his turn to play but even before he had contact of the ball he was knocked out by a quarter that was thrown by one of the audience members, which drew blood. His team lost because Rowdy scored a lot of points. They played against Wellpint some other time as well. This time the whole team had the determination to win and the anger from losing last time. What made it even better is that this game was not in Wellpint, it was in Reardan with a white audience, this audience was a very calm one unlike the last one. This game they won, the main reason for them winning was because this time Junior was guarding Rowdy. He got lucky and blocked one of Rowdy’s dunks. This left him dumbstruck and unable to concentrate on the game properly. Since he was the team’s best player and he had lost concentration the team lost. When they defeated Wellpint Juniour couldn’t help but feel guilty because he knew that Rowdy would probably get beaten up because of him but even worse some of them had just this game to make them happy because they are going through the roughest of times.  

All the Karma and god believer now could say that karma hit Junior hard. Later in the book we found out that Junior’s grandmother died and so did his sister. His grandmother died in an accident prior to his sister. The grandma was hit by a drunk driver. Grandma’s last wish was for him to be excused for his mistake. His sister died due to drinking which was a very common cause of death in the rez. She was in a party where she passed out. Her trailer where the party took place had caught fire but Mary was so heavily passed out that she sleep through her own death.

Rowdy had blamed Junior for his sister’s death. After all this some memories of Rowdy and Junior were shared with the reader, at the end of the book we found out that Rowdy and Junior became friends again when they were playing basketball 1 v 1.

Luka Tarlac, Illustrator-Literature

Illustrator-Literature

          My job was to draw some kind of a picture related to what I read in the assigned chapters. I drew a small sketch of the last chapter where the main character played basketball and I choose this because it was very important in the book.  I also wanted to draw this picture because it also related to something I like. OverallIi was very impressed with my group members and specifically with the summarizer because he described my picture very well.

Vocabulary Enricher Aleksa O.

My job as the Vocabulary-Enricher in Literacy Circles is to search for unfamiliar and "exotic" words. It is important to write words down in order to learn more about the book and the author's writing style. I was pleasantly surprised when I saw how many peculiar and unusual words my group-members were able to answer using logic alone.