Charlotte Doyle Discussion 1

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When I first got my Charlotte Doyle book, I didn't think that I would enjoy it. I thought that it would be very difficult and my group wouldn't be that great. Of course, now all of those opinions were false. Actually, its the exact opposite. My group is the best, they are nice and intelligent. They help out with me if I don't understand what is going on. I thought that it would be very hard to write the discussion sheet. Looking at the example posted on Moodle, I thought that would be an A, but it was a B. I was thinking that I would get a B, instead I got an A+ and it was posted for an example on Moodle. That made me slightly embarrassed but I was happy that I got a good grade.

This discussion has definitely influenced my understanding of the novel. It opened to so many new ideas, Hyo Jin and Juanita had thought different things than me, its nice to just go out and talk to kids your age about what you thought. Abby is also in my group but that day she wasn't prepared so she couldn't join us. I prefer it when we have four people because then there are even more ideas, I was upset that Abby didn't join, maybe next time. It helped my understanding because when Juanita and Hyo Jin shared their ideas, I thought "Hey, that's another possibility." Hyo Jin and Juanita had so many ideas just like me, we ended up with so many, many ideas. When you have a lot of ideas it may confuse you, but it really gets you thinking. Sometimes its good to share your ideas, but other times it can be annoying because they don't agree and want to completely eliminate that idea. Some of our ideas were that the man talking to Mr. Keetch (at the end of chapter two) was Captain Jaggery who was hiding on the ship. Another is that Zachariah was a bad man who wanted to kill Charlotte.

A few of the connections that we made during the novel would be that Mr. Grummage may be working on the ship, or that Zachariah is a bad guy who wants to abuse Charlotte. We also figured that this doesn't really seem like a regular traveling ship, it seemed more like a pirate ship. It seemed like a pirate ship because the crew were all grubby and not so very polite. So from the book's description I thought that it was in the 1800's so pirates were probably common. The crew (pirates) might kill Charlotte eventually, but also it could be the other way around. Charlotte could kill one or more of the crew members.

We had predicted that the other two families who were supposed to come onto the ship were being held hostage. We also thought that Captain Jaggery could be secretly on the ship without Charlotte Doyle knowing so. Because at the last page of chapter 2 Mr. Keetch was talking to a mystery guy. We were thinking that that was Captain Jaggery because it was a new character that Charlotte hasn't met yet, which means its probably Captain Jaggery. But it also could have been a new character, maybe a random member of the crew, but it sounded like somebody with authority so it was most likely Captain Jaggery.

These discussions are very fun for me, I have a good understanding fun group who share ideas. Everybody contributes something, its not like one person is doing all the work, since everyone is doing it equally. I enjoyed it so much! I can't wait until the next time because I'm sure that it will be even more fun. I like to share my ideas and I also like to know what others are thinking, it makes me understand the book better.