Wednesday, October 27th, 2010

MODERN PROSE


Housekeeping

• I sent over the Reading Guidelines (rules and regulations).
• I went over the Reading Record, and everyone filled one out, then handed them back to me.
• We went over the importance of getting your pink reading log off the table as soon as you come in each morning.
• We make our nametags for our desks.

Independent Reading

• We read for about sixty minutes today.

CREATIVE WRITING


Housekeeping

• I showed how to find this blog online, and I asked everyone to take the oath of I-promise-I'll-never-come-in-and-ask-you-"Did we do anything when I was absent yesterday?"  :-)

Writing Experiment #1--Around the Block

• I showed three models of this assignment, after going over the requirements.
• I explained how the writing experiments work, MLA format for heading, creating a new folder in the Student Volume for your work this term, and printing two-sided.

Writing Lesson

• Clichés--page 8--we talked about what they are, and we talked about why they're bad for our writing.
• We came up with anti-clichés on page 8, and we traded our answers three times for smileys.  We will continue with clichés tomorrow.

Homework

• Complete the pink worksheet over pages 4 and 5.

AP

Due

• Twenty-five Frankenstein vocabulary words, defined.  (I checked these, then handed them back so people have them during their reading.)

Writing Lesson

• The 128-Word Sentence--we looked at one of Faulkner's, we looked up what prepositions are, and we talked some about grammar, especially the dash.  Here's what I used in class:

The 128-Word Sentence

“They held the funeral on the second day, with the town coming to look at Miss Emily beneath a mass of bought flowers, with the crayon face of her father musing profoundly above the bier and the ladies sibilant and macabre; and the very old men—some in their brushed Confederate uniforms—on the porch and the lawn, talking of Miss Emily as if she had been a contemporary of theirs, believing that they had danced with her and courted her perhaps, confusing time with its mathematical progression, as the old do, to whom all the past is not a diminishing road but, instead, a huge meadow which no winter ever quite touches, divided from them now by the narrow bottle-neck of the most recent decade of years.”

William Faulkner

“A Rose for Emily”

1. Underline the prepositions (beneath, with, of, above, etc).

2. Draw a circle around words that end in ‘ing (believing; confusing).

3. Note how Faulkner uses a variety of phrases within a single sentence.

As a class, let’s try to write a very long sentence.

How can we use phrases and clauses to elaborate and extend an idea?

Frankenstein

• After lunch, I talked about what a FRAME STORY is (p. 7), and I read the first page of the novel.
• We had thirty minutes to read independently, and most people read five- eight pages.  We talked a bit at the end of the block about challenges.

Homework

1.     Your 128-Word Sentence:

2.     Frankenstein Reading, pages 1 - 14.

3.     There is a study guide you should use to quiz yourself today/tonight after you finish reading (pp. 9-11).