Senior Learners Class Notes

The senior learners are settling into their friendships and classwork and are enjoying 

being together. We are ad-justing to our routines of hand-washing, physical distancing, 

and when appropriate, mask-wearing. We’re mov-ing along with it all and will 

continue to do so. We began our read aloud, Echo Mountain, by Lauren Wolk, a 

Depression-era novel told from the perspective of a young girl named Ellie who 

moved with her family to the mountains in Maine after losing her home and 

possessions. This is a wonderfully written novel full of gorgeous figurative language, 

outdoor adventure, and struggle in which the strength and grit of children move the 

story forward. Although there is much to enjoy while listening to the novel, we’ll also 

take time to analyze and appre-ciate Wolk’s stellar writing. As comedians, we are 

exploring comedy writing tools such as absurdity, metaphor, simile, puns, and next 

week we’re moving onto slapstick. I promise all of you a slapstick performance of 

sorts - we’ll see what the kids develop. (Stay tuned.). We’re watching short video clips 

of comedians using the tools we’re exploring, and the kids are doing some 

experimental comedy writing of their own. They are beginning to loosen up a bit and 

share their ideas with one another in class. The senior learners completed their first 

critical review this week of Amy Tan’s short story, Fish Cheeks. Tussling with ideas 

such as point of view, cultural dif-ferences, and the dominance of one culture over 

another, they crafted their thoughts and opinions into a piece of writing with the 

intention to inform an audience of readers. We’re moving onto movie reviews this 

week and will begin exploring writing on the sentence level in our writing workshops.