Brandon

Decided that I'd mix Brandon's obvious liking of videogames (see post after the one linked) with the observations in his post (which was very impressive). You can see the comment here.

Wow, great post! From what I can see your a pretty bright kid. So I won't spare the hard questions.

You say that his [Ponyboy's] senses are dulled from all the traumatic experiences. Do you think that virtual experiences (video game/movie violence) can end with a similar kind of psychological numbing?

The experiences you have in life and how you respond to them give one definition of who you are; how have the experiences Ponyboy has gone through define him (What kind of person has it made him)? So how do the experiences and how you react to them in video games and movies define/effect us?

Cheers,
GreyM
Student Mentor

Tyler

My first mentoring comment for the "Thinwalled classroom" blog, and I must say that it took a while to analytically dissect the students' posts to find something I could constructively comment on to help them with their educational endeavors. This first post was in response to a post on Tyler's blog which can be found here, in which he presented a synopsis of the final chapters as well as his interpretation of the story's finale. Here is the comment in full:

"Hello Tyler!

First off, I’d like to say that you did a good job summarizing of the final chapters of the novel. In fact, it turned out to be a great review of the novel for me (it’s been quite a while), so I thank you for that! (= There was one thing that caught my eye in your post, however.

Towards the conclusion of your post you stated that “Survivel best tells these chapters”. How do you believe that this characteristic (Survival) fits the ending of the story more so than any other? What idea or event in the final chapters of the story do you think best signify survival? Moreover, how do you think that the story or it’s ending would have changed if survival didn’t play such a large role in these chapters?

Don’t be discouraged to think outside of the box or to try to take on a unique perspective on something. It’s great to expand the way you look at things, since there isn’t always one definite way to approach an idea or concept.

Take care,
MrSiwWy - Student Mentor"

I know the format is very similar to Graeme's, but I thought consistency throughout the blog shouldn't hurt anyone.

Brianna

Post on Brianna's response to the end of the novel. Really latched on to how she didn't want this book to end. Love that kind of book. You can see her post here.

Hello Brianna!

Seems that you really liked this novel! You say, "I really wished there was a chapter 13", well what would be in it? Are there any loose ends in the story that are not covered? Anything that you'd like to know more about? If you had free reign on one last extra chapter what would you add personally?

Ciao,
GreyM
Student Mentor

Keplyn

Second mentoring post, can see a problem in the future, lack of ideas pertaining to a small set of subjects... will have to be creative. You can see the comment here.

Hello Keplyn!

I was skimming through your post and this caught my eye:

"... the definition of frienship once again is: the state of being a friend; association as friends: to value a person’s friendship."

In this definition of friendship you use the root word (the word the other is derived from) and the word itself in the definitions. Is this the best way to define a word? Take this for example:

Ataraxia - the state of being ataraxic

Do you know what ataraxia really is from that definition? In the case of friendship we can assume that most people will know what a friend is so using friend in the definition is probably okay. But try to define friendship without using friend or any of it's other forms. It's a bit harder but would be clearer to anyone who doesn't know what friendship or friends are (even though those people may be few and far between).

P.S. Look up ataraxia, a bigger vocabulary never hurts

Hannah

First comment on the "Thinwalled classroom" blogs. Kind of weird switching off math and turning on English online, requires a bit of different thinking. You can see it here.

"Hello Hannah!

First off I'd like to say that this is a great post as it refreshed my memory of this book very well. Secondly, your word for these chapters is "Friendship" and you linked it to Wikipedia. It gives many different viewpoints (some debatable) on what friendship is but what is yours? (What makes a friend, difference between friendship and acquaintance and so on...). Lastly, did your name is a special sort of word/phrase? You should find out what type it is, a couple other examples are "racecar" and "Was it a cat I saw"?

Cheers,
GreyM
Student Mentor"