Summary of what we've done so far

Hey guys,

our teacher recently gave us the task to summarize everything we did regarding to our novel (we had to do a few tasks at school, but also some at home) and to think about ideas how we would like to work with "Slam".

Before we started reading the book,  we were given a little worksheet on which we had to answer a few questions about us and our life, for example:

- Do you feel like your life is in balance at the moment?
or
- Has anything ever turned your life upside down? If not, what could turn your life upside down?

We answered these questions without telling the results anybody and I would like to keep this. I'm sure everybody can answer these on his own.

As we started reading the book I didn't know why we had to answer questions about OUR life. I mean, the book hasn't got something to do with me. I didn't see the reason behind it.
Now I got to know Sam a bit and I can tell that these questions are perfecty fitting to Sam's life. His life is turned upside down and I don't think it's in balance at the moment (where I stopped reading). Answering these questions should probably reminded ourself to times where our life hasn't been in balance or where something unexpected happened or we should imagine what this could have been. While reading about Sam's life I had to think about what I wrote down and I could empathize with Sam very good.

Describing the setting and the perspective of our book and analizing Sam's character has been our first real task. We worked it out at school, but wrote the post at home. It's been the first post I wrote and it felt strange at first. (okay. It hasn't been my first post at all, but the opening post doesn't count haha). I've never done something like this before. Sharing my thoughts and feelings online. But I start to like it more and more :)

Our second task has been to characterize the relationship between Sam and his mum. I really liked this one because for me it's really interesting getting to know something about a relationship that everybody experiences. The unique relationship to our mums...

One lesson we read chapter 3 together. We were split up in little groups and everybody had his own task: Summarizer, Character observer, Language observer and Speculator. We always changed the exercises after a few pages, so each of us did every job once.
Personally I didn't like this way of working very much. Hmm... I don't know if I can say that I didn't like it VERY MUCH because it sounds a bit too strong. I just prefer reading books at home because there it's more quiet and I can concentrate better. I also like reading without stopping and summarizing small parts so, the exercise has been okay - I just prefer reading on my own :)

Last lesson we were asked to deal with chapter 5.
Our teacher read out the beginning of the chapter and it has been funny to listen cause he imitated the different voices very good :D - I'd like to hear this more often haha.
In chapter 5 there appears the sentence

"I need 2 C U urgent Axx." (p.71, ll.28f)

 It's a text message written by Alicia. First we had to find one thought quote and one dialogue quote in our novel which expressed Sam's feelings after reading this. Then we had to sum up a conversation between Sam and Alicia and to typify their reactions to *a very important topic*. Lastly we had to think about why they acted differently.

*very important topic* - a topic I want to let you know in my next post. Sorry, but I just haven't got enough time to write this now haha, so be excited for the following post!

My ideas to work with the novel:

1. We could imagine being Sam and write a part of the story which fits into the book at one point, for example: a part between chapter 2 and 3. (we did this in our german lesson recently, that's why I thought about it)
2. We could write a letter to one character of the novel explaining what we think about his behavior/ actions/...

I hope you enjoyed reading this post, even if you didn't get to know how the book's going on :)

Have a nice weekend!

Maike