impressions+on+day

What were your thoughts on our Community Book Talk Day?
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To all participants: Thank you so much for taking part in our book discussion. It was impressive to see the adults and students engaging in such powerful, meaningful conversations. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.

Bing Miller Kathy Doonan Nothing can take the place of CONVERSATION, and that is what happened last Wednesday. It was a privilege to be with you all, students and community members alike, and I hope the tradition continues.E. Kaymen.

I found it really stimulating and thought provoking.Dr Peraro and I both talked about what a positive experience it was for us at The Board of Education meeting that night.All of the students I met with had very thoughtful comments about the books and the issues we discussed.I thought there was a lot of great energy in the room. I loved the delicious lunch at the end.When pizza was mentioned I imagined some kind of pizza delivery not a scrumptious home made pizza. It has raised a lot of questions for me around the pervasiveness of the digital world and how it impacts learning.In the past I was always focusing on the internet in terms of safety and students ,at the moment it is making me reflect on the impact on old fashioned reading and studying.I am also trying to be better re driving and chatting on the phone(via my bluetooth aka seashell)

Thanks for including me in such a special event.

All the best Sue Wharf

I enjoyed myself a lot during our group discussions. I enjoyed it not only because my english class could miss a day of school, but because it really helped me dissect the book further. As I read the book, I formed opinions and formulated connections in my head, but it was extremely satisfying to talk about the book with others. I found that many of the group members had a similar mindset relating to the group, and that we could all volunteer our own thoughts and opinions about the novel. Sharing with a group and meeting new people with similar ideas really reinforced my ideas about the book. Thank you for sharing you time, thoughts and ideas with my english class! Sincerely, Jena Greene

I really appreciated how all the community members took time out of their busy lives to come to BHS and discuss the books with us. It was nice to hear varied opinions about certain topics such as technology, reading, and the similarities and differences between the past and today. Although sometimes book talks can come to a standstill, not once did that happen. Communicating came naturally and was very easy to continue. From the discussion, I learned what the adults thought of reading in general. In our group, we discussed how it felt to actually hold a book itself in our hands, compared to a technology advanced computer or other "contraption". Once again, thank you for coming to visit our class at school and discussing the books with us! Sincerely, Emily Sears P.S. The excellent, homemade food was a great idea and added to the experience.

I would like to thank every one who came and made this day really fun and special. I really enjoyed talking about the book and going in deeper into what the story is trying to interpret. Discussing with all of you about what your views of the story and society today was really interesting and i learned a lot. I learned about what your views of the story were when you read the book in your time and how when we compared it too our views we came to the conclusion that our thoughts were not so different. It would be really nice if we could do this with every book we read because we learn more and while we learn we also have fun. Like Emily S. said nothing can replace what it feels to have a actual book in our hands. By reading from a book we can imagine our own worlds and our own descriptions and thats something we cant do with technology. Again thank you every one for coming and sharing your ideas and thoughts about the book with us and our class and i would love to do this again sometime in the future. I had a lot of fun and i hope you did too :) Sincerely, Deny Gonzalez Fuentes P.S Mr. Miller and Mrs. Doonan Rockkk!!! :)

I thought the book discussion was worthwhile and productive. It was nice to hear from my classmates but also from adults outside of the school. Being in a relaxed enviornment helped our group move our discussion along without having to use any of our prepared questions. It was interesting to see how everyone had similar ideas about the book. From our talk, I learned a lot about how much technology has influence in our lives and how we should be more alert about the warnings from __1984__. The articles Mrs. Kaymen brought in helped me relate the book to real life and realized that things that Orwell had predicted are occurring. Also, Mr. Smith encouraged the group to talk, which helped everyone become more involved in our discussion and his decipher of the book gave me a deeper understanding of it. Thank you for coming in and sharing your opinions about the book. Finally, thank you Mr. Miller and Mrs. Doonan for preparing the book discussion for us! Sincerely, Ashley Yoon

I really gained a lot from this book discussion and learned more things not oly from myself but from everyone else in the group. I think that what everyone else had to say int he group was very interesting and it was good to hear other ideas and look at things from a different perpective. In my group I think that we got a little off tracks sometimes but we were constantling talking and sharing our ideas with one another which was reallt good. From reading this book you learn a lot about society and what we must do to keep it intact and was ery interesting and important to hear the ideas of people who come from other generations because they have good things to say that add a lot of insight. Listening to the members of my group helped me relate a lot of the information to real life and I think that, that is very important. It was a very relaxed discussion and my group eased into converstion well with eachother and there was no akwardness or anyhting. So listening to everyones ideas and conversation gave me a better outlook on the book and how to connect it to my life. Thank you again for taking time out of your day and coming in to share your ideas with us. Sincerely, Jacob O"Connor

I honestly thought it was a great experience having the group discussions; not only from students from our class but adults who were willing to come out to spend the day with us. I appreciate them for coming out and being with us. It meant a lot to us and we enjoyed the time with them. I think it helped me open up to be able to speak with them about the noel. They were very friendly and did not make anything awkward for the students. My group got to realize how technology can be a huge distraction not only for us students but also for the adults. I would enjoy to do something like this again sometime and would recommend the adults to come out and be apart of it another time. But thank you again for spending the day with us and hopefully we will see you again. Sincerely, Victoria Rodriguez