Tuesday, 11/17/2009 (shortened classes due to ITEDs)

MODERN PROSE

• We read for about sixty minutes.
• I conferenced with four people about their books.

AP
George Orwell's "Shooting an Elephant"

• We had a turbo-great discussion about the essay.  People made lots of great observations and connections!  Well-done!  We will continue talking more tomorrow.

Organization

• We handed back papers and some Reading Journals, and I talked about what we'd do in class tomorrow.  I got a few volunteers for tomorrow's writing surgery.
• I made appointments with four people for writing conferences during first block tomorrow:  Brit, John, Sarah and Nick.

Quist

• We took the quiz/test = quist over A Christmas Carol, Dickens and the Victorian Era.

Homework

• Research the following for thirty minutes--Realism in American Literature; Naturalism in American Literature; Jack London.  Jot down notes for each, so we can discuss them tomorrow.

CREATIVE WRITING

Organization

• We stapled and handed in the WWYLN second draft, the big blue sheet, and the little blue sheets with your group's questions for you.
• We talked about what class would be like with no group work--and I stressed the importance of having quick, efficient transitions between group activities and other things.

Review

• We talked about why paragraphing is important.

Writing Tip

• We talked about how poetry is different from pmrose.
• We talked about how poems are written in stanzas sometimes, and how they have endline and line breaks.
• I modeled with McKenzie and Brad how to do page 35 (breaking blobbed poems into lines).
• We got into trios and worked on page 35.
• We got back together as a group and talked about the reasons we broke the lines as we did (pretty much all the reasons listed at the bottom of page 34).

Writing Assignment/Workshop

• Prompt Word Poem--I handed out the rubric, and most people went to work (due Thursday).
• Fiction Writing Ideas--I put this up on the overhead (due Thursday).