Shhhh...Silent Sustained Reading is in action!
Writer's Notebook:
View this picture by
babykailan. Now reflect on something in your part of the world on which you wish you could take a stand. (Important Note: Many of the pictures posted on
Flickr have no copyright! Yes, you may use them! BUT you should still give credit where credit is due!)
TOP 20 TERMS...for now...
- Today let's focus on litotes...pronounced lahy-toh-teez.
- A litotes is "an understatement , esp. that in which an affirmative is expressed by the negative of its contrary, as in 'not bad at all.'" (Punctuation question: why did I use single quotations within my double quotation marks?)
- "A figure of speech, conscious understatement in which emphasis is achieved by negation; examples are the common expressions "not bad!" and "no mean feat." Litotes is a stylistic feature of Old English poetry and of the Icelandic sagas, and it is responsible for much of their characteristic stoical restraint. The term meiosis means understatement generally, and litotes is considered a form of meiosis." (Dictionary.com)
- An understatement is "Restraint or lack of emphasis in expression." A form of irony in which something is intentionally represented as less than it is: “Hank Aaron was a pretty good ball player.” (Dictionary.com)
Grammar Time!
The Kite Runner, Chapter Two, Paragraph 1
When we were children,
Hassan and I used to climb the poplar trees in the driveway of my father’s house and annoy our neighbors by reflecting sunlight into their homes with a shard of mirror. We would sit across from each other on a pair of high branches, our naked feet dangling, our trouser pockets filled with dried mulberries and walnuts. We took turns with the mirror as we ate mulberries, pelted each other with them, giggling, laughing. I can still see
Hassan up on that tree, sunlight flickering through the leaves on his almost perfectly round face, a face like a Chinese doll chiseled from hardwood: his flat, broad nose and slanting, narrow eyes like bamboo leaves, eyes that looked, depending on the light, gold, green, even sapphire. I can still see his tiny low-set ears and that pointed stub of a chin, a meaty appendage that looked like it was added as a mere afterthought. And the cleft lip, just left of
midline, where the Chinese doll maker’s instrument may have slipped, or perhaps he had simply grown tired and careless.
REMINDERS ~ Homework for Tuesday, January 19
- Two blog posts due.
- Literary term examples due.
- Have you posted a pic of your duck?
- READ!
Enjoy your three-day weekend!
