Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

CREATIVE WRITING

Warm-Up

• Alliteration (p. 55)--we took a few minutes to record words that begin with the same letter, and we talked about how those sounds make us feel, and what they suggest.  I talked about the difference between dissonance and harmony, and we experimented with hard- or harsh-sounding letters (b; d; p; k; hard g )  and soft-sounding letters (h; m; n; s; sh; v; z)

Writing Lesson

• I read the Dickens passage aloud, and people circled strong diction, underlined imagery, and noted alliteration.  We discussed each of these things.
• Show, Don't Tell (pp. 66-7)--I read some explanation from the pages, and Kelsey and Josh acted out a telling scene, and then acted out a showing scene.  We talked about the differences

Writing Assignment

• Snapshot Poem (p. 70)--I went over the requirements, and I read Kaylee's poem and Kodey's poem as models.  People worked for about fifteen minutes on a typed rough draft, then saved them in the student volume folder for me.
• Perfect Moment Revision--I passed back the first drafts of the Perfect Moment Memoirs, and I put up a checklist of what people needed to do for revision, and we had about twenty minutes to work on it.  We handed in both drafts when we finished.

Organization

• We passed back papers, and we logged things into our folder.

Homework

• Portfolio

HACAW

Due

• Rent-a-Character

Begin with the End in Mind

• I handed out the rubric for the short story, and I discussed it a bit.

Characterization

• Facebook Character sheet--I handed these out, and I had everyone say one thing about their character.  We talked about how just because you list in on your FB profile doesn't mean you have to use it in your story--but you as the writer SHOULD know all these details.
• We spent fifteen minutes working on our FB profiles, then sat down with a partner for pair-share--three minutes each to talk about our character and a little bit about our stories.

Point of View

• I assigned everyone a role (realtor, thief, or child-welfare worker), and we watched a virtual tour of a house.  Everyone noted details his/her character would be paying attention to.  Afterwards we compared notes, and we talked about how WHO you are, and WHOSE eyes you're using, affects WHAT you see.  Point of view matters!

Writing Workshop

We had thirty minutes to work on the following, in the following order of priority:

• Facebook Character Profile
• Purple Short Story Proposal (due tomorrow--conference with me about during class)
• Two-page typed start of your short story (due when you come in to class tomorrow)

Homework

• Everything listed under "Writing Workshop"