For all of you who love big words, here's one of my favorites. The cartoon isn't the funniest in the entire world, but on the other hand, I don't know that a big-word-spouting t-rex needs that great of a punchline.

It's also worth noting that there's an example of irony here--the cartoonist apparently knows how to use big words like "sesquipedalian," but not that "alright" is actually the improper form of the two separate words "all right."

Keep on integrating those vocab words into classroom conversation!

Pictures from Concord Bridge

No posts necessary--I just thought that for those of you who were interested, I'd post some pictures a friend of mine took while he and I were visiting the bridge in Concord, Massachusetts, where some of the first shots were fired in the Revolutionary War.

Tim O'Brien and Joseph Martin - Same Battle, Different Wars?

By now, you should have finished reading A Young Patriot, as well as the two Tim O'Brien pieces. The two works present very different perspectives on what war means; A Young Patriot tells the story of the American Revolution in broad strokes, while O'Brien tells a much more personal story. Spend a few minutes considering what the two different pieces have in common and where they differ in terms of what they say about war in general, and then post a comment sharing your thoughts with your classmates.

Some questions to help you get started: How do the two works give depth to one another? Or, in other words, what can you learn about one work by reading the other? After reading both, how has your understanding of war changed?