"And Then there were none" Part one.

I finished reading the "Part one" of the book. I found out that the part one was about 10 main characters' background. Thus chapter 4 through chapter 8 are about each character's information. However, the last chapter was different, it was about one old man who was writing all the characters' names in the book. He said to the person who was sitting next to him that "Watch and pray. The day of judgement is at hand." Then the part one finished.

I was wondering　why the chapter ended with "Watch and pray. The day of judgement is at hand.". Remember? Last week, in my blog, I was thinking that people will gather at Soldier Island. I think this quote prove that people will gather at there. Do you think so?? Or What do you think the meaning of that quote?

And Then there were none ch2-3

this week i read two chapters. The sch 2 is about Vera and Ch 3 is about Philip. Vera was looking for new job and finally she got a letter foam someone that she is able to get a good job and that job relates to Soldier Island. In ch 3, Philip decided to go to Soldier Island because he thinks that it is interesting.

Interestingly ch1, 2, 3 are not connected each other at all. At first I thought that the story is going to be about Mr. Wargrave, but now it seems that Vera and Philip are main characters. what's are the connection between these tree characters? I think the connection is Soldier Island. Somehow, these tree characters are talking about that island. Thus I assume that even though they do not know each other, they will meet at Soldier Island and will talk about their connections.

New book & All the years of her life & Enchanted Garden

Independent reading

I started to read the new book called "And then there were none" written by Agatha Christy. I read only one chapter yet. Therefore I am not sure about the meaning of the title. The story is about one man whose name is Mr. Wargrave. In the train, he is reading the newspaper about “Soldier Island”. He thinks that this is a news and after he read the news, he fell asleep.

When I looked at the cover page of this book, I think of Black Hole because in the cover page, the thing similar to the black hole is drown. I consider that this book is going to be something sad or dark. The reason why I decided to read this cook is that Dai recommended to me. Dai always chooses the good book. Even though the story seems quite sad, I am exited reading this book.


All the year of her life ( response for ( what strategies did I use)

I was thinking that if the gender of the characters are different, the story is very different. For example, if the mother was the father, the story will be changed. The father may be strict so that as a result a boy may be caught by the police If we change one thing of the story, we are able to see the story from many different aspects.

The strategy that I used was “I try to guess or make a prediction what the text is about before I read it.”. Before I read this story, in the class we thought about our mother. So that I was able to guess that the story is going to be about mother.


Enchanted Garden( evaluation)
I think of the theme of this story. I thought that the theme of it is freedom. However, in the class Pueng told in the class that the theme can be that the life is not easy and I agree with it. The reason is that even though the rich boy want to play in the outside, he can not because he is sick. Thus he is not happy. On the other hand, Two children are not happy because they were playing in someone else’s garden. Both of case, they envy each other.

The strategy that I used was “ I use pictures in text to help me understand better what I am reading” because in the story, there is one picture that is like a garden and thanks to that picture, I was able to think the picture of the story.

Gardens

A Garden ①

A Garden (Japanese Style)

Last blogging for The Chocolate War

I finally finished reading the book. I read about 15 chapters this week.

Jerry still continued refusing selling the chocolates even thought the last week of the selling. Sometime, his mind was unstable because some of his friends said to him that it's better to sell them. However, he did not. Because he was the only one who is different and wired, he was not accepted from other students at his school expect his best friend. After selling the chocolate, Archie gave him a chance to stand up in front of everyone so that everyone might change the attitudes toward him. That chance was that he would fight with another strong guy. There was a special rule for this and as a result, Jerry deiced to do this match(battle). At the end of the story, Jerry was almost dying because he was punched, kicked and so on. However there was one teacher who was able to stop this fighting. The teacher found out that Archie was doing something bad. Later on Jerry wen to hospital.

I do not like the ending of this story because it is unclear for me. I expected the book to be happy ending. However, this story is not like that. I thought that this story would be that Jerry would spend the great time with his friends even though he did something unusual. However, even the story ended, the book did not tell me that whether Jerry is fine or not even though he was almost dead at the ending of the story (that's why he was carried to the hospital). Is that means that readers can guess what would happen next in the story?? Or is it just because the author got tired? I want to read the books that have good ending or good, understandable ending and conclusion.

The Chocolate War ( until chapter 15)

Leon and Archie finally told to all the students about selling the chocolates. According to the Leon, He does not force students to sell the chocolates, however, his attitude shows that everyone must sell the chocolates. He called all of the students’ name one by one. When Jerry’s name was called, Jerry said that he does not want to sell the chocolates. Even the week past, he continued refusing.

Before chapter 10, there were two part of the story. One was about Jerry, and the another one was about Archie and Leon. However, from chapter 10, these two stories are connected each other.

This story reminds me of some of my friends. They also refuse everything that teacher said. Therefore they got trouble. Then I have a question!! Why do you think that Jerry refused to sell the chocolates. I think it is because that Jerry’s life was boring so that he wants to do something interesting. Refusing selling the chocolates would be very interesting because in the past, there was no one who refused to sell the chocolates. Thus by doing unusual thing, he may be satisfied.

The Chocolate War ch7-9

This week, I read ch7 through chapter 9. Chapter 7 and 8 is not important because these chapters only describe new characters, one whose name is Emile who is also selfish like Archie. However, he obeys Archie, even though everyone is afraid of Emile. Another character called Leon who is the vice principle. Chapter 9 is very important. This chapter talks about what the important thing for Jerry, What he wants to do. He does realize this because he was talking with his father at home.

Aha! Now I understand what the Chapter 3’s mean. In this blog, I wrote that I do not understand the point of ch 3. However, I could make a connection between these two chapters. In chapter three, Jerry doesn’t care what the important things for him and what he wants to do. But now, He began to think that there should be something that is important to him and he should do something meaningful. In chapter 9, it does not tell me these answers. So I can guess!! My guess is that he will try to be against Archie because I think that Jerry wants to do something meaningful so that by opposing to the Archie, he is able to be satisfied.

Girl by Jamaica

This story reminds me of the book that I saw on TV. That book is about one mother who would died when she gave the birth to her child. So she left the words to her child such as do this, do that, don't do that. therefore I think that the story of the "Girl"'s mother really cares about her child. I did not expect that I use the background knowledge because usually it is hard to make a connection to my experience and the story; however, but this time, I could make a connection immediately so that I could understand this story better. I think that the mother really loves her daugher. Also I think mother wants her daughter to be happy. In my guess, mother told the things that she could not do, so she wants her daughter to do instead of her.

About the Chocolate War

The book so far is about that Jerry is the member of the football team and there is one mean man called Archie. Archie does something mean to people. One day, he decided to impose to other students to sell the chocolates which harder than last year. After that the story takes place in the room of football and talks about the football members.

So far, I am doing fine with reading the book. However, there are some confusions. These are that why Archie is afraid of the box, what the chocolates and the football's relations, and who is the main character.

On Monday, I talked with the teacher and the friend about Archie's characteristics. They think that he is pritending that he is afraid of the box because he is the one who is always does everything he wants. Maybe they do not trust the author. However I THINK that he is really afraid of the box because I think that the reason he is so mean, selfish is that he wants to hide some facts that he had before. Because he was weak before, he wanted to change his environment, that is why he tries to be mean, selfish. The box shows me that there are some unknown fact about Archie' past.

Secondly, Football and the chocolate's relation is not clear for me. Is it because author likes to play football and he wants to talk about it in the book even thought the story is about the chocolates? I think that the author can write about the story without writing about the football.

Lastly, I do not know who the most important character is. Even thought the Jerry is the telling the story, the story is about the Archie. First I thought that the main character was Jerry but now I am considering that the main character is Archie. If Archie is the main character, then why Jerry is telling the story? Jerry knows everything??

the chocoate war ch6

I can not use internet at Japan. So I am typying in the airport. I read the chapter 6. Archie was thinking about himself. Even though he was the one who can do everything he wants, he does not think that he is perfect. Later on, THE BOX appeared. Do you remember that he was afried of thie box? There were 6 storns in the box. 5 of them were black and 1 of them was white. If he picked up the black ones, it means that it's bad for him. The white is opposite. Finnaly, when he picked up the ball, it was the white. It was tough for him. He was almost crying. He beated the box.



Even though the problem of the box was solved, I still do not know what the means of the box. Is there any associated memory of the box with Archie?? Maybe, I will know later on....I want to know the end of the story but I do not want to see the end because if I just look at the end, there is no fun. So I will read the book step by step. I think I should read more pages otherwise I won't finish. I will read faster.

After Thoughts

First, I thought that the man fell in love with the girl which is the wife now. However, in the class discussion, I knew that it was wrong. Truly, what He had done was that he fell in love with another girl who was 14 years old at that time. This shocked me too. I do not understand why he did not feel sorry for the society and the world. However, my thinking about the author hasn't changed.This reading is quite unique because usually, readers can predict what will happen next; however, this author wrote what readers did not expected to happen. I think it's one kind of betrayal actions. Can you believe the author now? Probably no. But I think this is one kind of way that makes readers to read the book more. For example, this book, in paragraph 14, author doesn't write about the man's apology however, later on, readers may know whether the man feels sorry or not. Authors are good at playing with the word, I think. Therefore even though author betrayed the readers once, s/he may write about a story that recovers readers' trust. Thus my thinking has not changed.

Reading "Wisdom of Toad"

I read the Wisdom of Toad written by Ken Lamberton in English class. This is that the main character is digging at the prison to give the toad to this daughter as a present. Then my question is that why must he give the present to his daughter even though he has difficulty to find the present. Why he is in prison? The wrong thing that he did was that even though he was a teacher, I fall in love with the girl who was 14 years old.

I used "I use a dictionary to help me understand what I read" because the text contains many vocabs that I do not understand. If there are only a few words that I do not understand, I just guess but there are lots so I used this strategy. Secondly, I also used "When I read, I think about ideas and information in both English and my native language." As I said before that this is hard to understand due to the limitations of the vocabs, so I try to get idea both in English and Japanese. It helped me to understand better. Lastly, what I used was "When text becomes difficult I re-read it to increase my understanding". I think I read more than 3 time per paragraph because if I did not get the idea, I could not think deeply and hard to have my own opinions about the reading. These are three strategies that I used this time.

I was little surprised about the reason why he was in the prison. Even though it surpried me a little, I thought the reason why he is in prison was more serious because in my country, there are many incidents similar to this incident. 14 years old is not an adult but not too young. If this happens at my school, I can not trust any teachers and can not respect them because teachers have to be the models of the students. I also can not trust the writer. Can you trust the teachers who fall in love with the student?

The Chocolate War ch 5

This week, I was so busy that I could read only one chapter. The chapter 5 is about the American football. Archie is really good at playing it. He always gets score and everyone respects him. However, sometimes, he gets tired. After students played American football, Archie brought a black box. Nobady knows what the box is for.

I also do not know what the box is. Is that for American football???? or Is it for the chocolates selling?? Not sure yet. I will try to guess what this is. However, this book gives me some hints about the box. that is that one of the students afriad of that box. So I guess that that box gives bad things to the students.

Reading for the Theme

Do you know what Fiji is?? Probably, most of people do not know what is it. Today I read the story called The Summer the Sun Did Not Blow Up written by Birmati Lakhan. This story took place in Fiji. Fiji is located next to Australia. When I think of the title, it reminds me of the folk tale called Sun and the Wind" because the title of this article contains both the "sun" and the "blow". This is about young kids tried to find out the way to survive when the world's end comes.

The story begins with the talks between the kids and the aunt. The aunt told to them that the world will be end in next month. Kids were shocked. I read the story for two times. Surprisingly, when I read the first, I could understand the story but I could not understand deeply. However, when I read second time, I knew that where I should focus on. Therefore I could understand the story more. Back to the story, after kids knew that the world's end is coming soon, they talked what they could do and how they survive. When they told to the elders of the village, elders was surprised because they did not know the rumour. Then Elders told them not to be silly. Later on, they found out that the rumour was about the world will be end in next millions years, not next month. Even the next day came, it was fine. I think this story is quite easy to understand because the theme is easy to read. I think the theme of this story is that "it is easy to fool people, especially children" . Children are easy to believe the things because they are pure.

I have one thing that I do not understand even though I read for three times. That is the paragraph 10, which is "Later on my mother told us tat id we ate our food we'd be given a boat just before the sun broke." However, other parts of the story is easy to read. Next time, I will look carefully the metaphor, the simile,and the personification. My process of reading the book is that I reread. Before I found the useful strategies, I always visualized. But I found out that reread the sentence(s) is much more useful to understand the contents of the reading. Thanks to reading books lots, I could find one useful "tool" of reading.

The theme of The Chocolate War

The theme of the book is that people have their own choices and they can do anything they want. Even though I only read until chapter 4, I do understand what the theme will be about. According to the book, it seems very difficult to sell the chocolate. Probably, the main character, Jerry will think why do students need to sell the chocolates for school profit.

The reason why "free to decide what s/he wants to do" will be the theme of the book is that adolescences want to do everything that they want. They do not want to listen to others. However, this could be different. I do not think that Jerry refuses to sell the chocolates because I do not think that it doesn't seem that Jerry is a person who breaks rules.　But I am concerned about the chapter 3. That is that Jerry realized that the life is boring. Therefore he may want to change something to make life more interesting. That could be the reason why he will refuse selling the chocolates. In another word, he wants to do something else instead of selling the chocolates. That's why the theme can be "free to decide what s/he wants to do".

The Chocolate War Ch 3 and 4

Basically, chapter 3 does not give the useful information. It just takes about Jerry's life. One day, one man said to him that didn't he get bored. The reason why the man asked this question was that Jerry did same think over and over. After the man asked him about his life, Jerry rethink about his life.

The chapter 4 is very important because this chapter talks about the chocolates. According to the vice principal named Leon, this year's chocolates are different from last year's. Until last year, the school sold ten thousand chocolates and each chocolate was 1$. Therefore, the students needed to sell 25 for each. However, this year, everything is even the price, the amount of the chocolates. This year's chocolate is special because the chocolates are Mother's Day's chocolates and he bought them at the bargain price. Archie and Leon was talking about the how to sell them and finally they came out with the idea.

In chapter 2, I was able to know the relation between "the chocolate" and the story. Also in chapter 4, I could predict what "The Chocolate War" means. It means that each student needs to sell 50 of chocolates so I think there will be competition such as who sells chocolates the most.
Back to chapter 3, Even though I read chapter 3, I could not find the main point of the chapter because this chapter doesn't tell me anything. However, Every book's ever chapter has some meaning. I will try to find out the meaning of the chapter 3 later on.I'm still interesting in reading this book so far because I want to know whether my guess is right or not.

The Lady or the Tiger?

The article that I read was called "The lady or the tiger". This story is about one accused man who must choose the whether the door of the lady or the tiger. The princess knew which door is the lady and the tiger. Though she knew the secret, she could not know which one to choose because if she opens the tiger's door, the man will be killed, but if she chooses to open the door of the lady, the man has to marry with her. That was not good for her. As a result, she opened one door, but readers can not tell which one she chose because the article did not tell to the readers.

In this reading, I used the strategy called "I try to picture in my mind what I have just read to help me remember what I read" because it will be easier for me to visualize the stories so that I can understand what's going on. Also "I think about what I know to help me understand what I read" helped me to understand better. For example, there are many stories that characters have to choose one of two ways. Such situations, characters consider lots to get better choice. I always see like that situations in the comic book. That is why I try to use what I already know.

I think the princess chooses the tiger's door because if the accused man died there, the princess will be the only one who saw him the last, which means that the man become hers. The reason why she will not choose the lady's door is that the princess feels jealousy. I guess that it is much harder for her to see the man with another woman. Therefore my opinion it that princess will choose the tiger's door.

The Chocolate War Ch 2

Finally, I was able to know the connection between "chocolate" and the story of the book. Ch 2 stated about characters' personalities. Some of them were mean, weak, and so on. One of the important character called Archie was talking with Obie about the main character named Jerry. They decided to give the job to Jerry whether Jerry likes that job or not. And the job that Jerry got was something that related to "chocolate."

At last, I can understand a little about "the chocolate." I think Archie and Obie are older than Jerry because they knows lots about school. So I consider that they will force Jerry to sell chocolates at somewhere. However, the title of the book is called The chocolate War. What is "Chocolate War?" Is that mean that it is really hard to sell them? Or do students at Trinity School have competition about selling or buying chocolates? It is still unclear for me.

There is one thing that makes me confused. That is the word, "Therapy." First, I tried to know the meaning from the context, but I couldn't. So I looked at the word in a dictionary. However, I still do not understand. I mean I understand the meaning of the word, but that word does not fit in to the context. Archie said, "Know what he(Jerry) needs, Obie?" Obie did not know what Jerry needs so Archie answered, "Therapy." Do you understand this mean?? If so, please tell it to me.

About Mystery "Mystery 'iPhone Girl' generates Internet intrigue"

According to the website, the girl who was in the picture was not fired. Why?? I consider that she did not do anything wrong, but there is probability that she may be fired. The first thing that I thought was that the company may lie to Apple. As we all know that Chine is communism country and even thought there are some free economic system, not every single fact is not shown truly. The reason why I thought like that is that there was the news in Japan which is related to China. Japan found out that one Japanese frozen food which was made in China contains the poison inside. That was the big incident that occurred in Japan. Therefore Japan asked Chine what was happened. However, China did not give little information so that it is difficult to estimate what was happened. From that fact, I thought that this China may not say the truth about "iPhone Girl".

Usually, the company should give the comment to Apple but it does not. actually, if any company lies or give no comment to the another company, that another company can go to see the company why the company did not give the comment or lied. But it is not possible thing that we can do because Chinese government controls go in and go out for the company. Therefore even though Apple goes to see China to get the comment about the fact, it is not probable.

Using Reading Strategies

Using reading strategies to read excerpts of "The Telephone"


What I used to read excerpts of "The telephone" was the global reading strategies' "I check my understanding when I read new information" because the every single information that is given in this book was new for me. Therefore I asked myself whether I understand or not. So when I didn't understand the contents, I reread the book. Then asked myself the same question. I realized that when I read the book, I always use both "Global Reading Strategies" and " Problem Solving Strategies" at the same time. For example, this time, I used both of them which were "I check my understanding when I read new information" and "I read slowly and carefully to make sure I understand what I am Reading". It was very useful for me to use these strategies because I can develop my reading skills. Now I understand how important to read books. Before I knew the SORS, I just look at the meaning of the word by using the dictionary and if I have a question, I just skip the part that I don't understand. That's why, the reading was boring. However, by using SORS, I read the book more carefully and I was able to enjoy more than before. Because I read the book by no-thinking, I always got bored, but if I think carefully, I was able to enjoy reading.

The Chocolate War Ch1

From this week, I started to read the book called The Chocolate War. According to the back cover of the book, The book is about one young-adult called Jerry Renault who does not want to sell chocolates. The chapter one takes place at the field. I am not sure whether it is a field of American football or Rugby. The main character Jerry was practicing it. It seems that he does not like to play foodball because the book states, " he was stunned by the knowledge that pain isn't just one thing." He suffers a lots of pains. Even though playing the football seems hard for him, he doesn't give up because he is willing to be a football player.

It was amazing when I read the first chapter because the contents of the book doesn't relate to the book cover at all. It doesn't mean that I do not want to read. When I looked at the book cover, I could not expect that this book will talk about the football because the book cover shows one boy who has books in his hand. Interestingly, the narrator is the thied parson. So it makes me easy to read. However, I still do not understand the relationship between chocolate and the boy. I like this book so far because the main character is similar to my age, so there may be the situation that I can emphasize with his thoughts or opinions.