Wednesday, September 11th, 2013 (1:10 Dismissal)

Welcome, AP English Peeps!  J

·      Wednesday, September 11^th, 2013

Business

1.      Sign in, por favor!

2.     Please make sure your name is on your CP/Amy Hempel packet, then lay it on my circle table, please.

3.     Grab a They Say/I Say packet.  I know—it is a jacked-up mess. 

They Say/I Say—Writing an Essay Preparation 

1.    Read and annotate pages 1-13.  Make at least one annotation per page; I want to see evidence that you’ve read and thought about the whole chapter.

2.    What information presented in these pages will be helpful when we write our in-class essay Friday?  

3.    Write three sentences in the blank space to the left of page one that SYNTHESIZES the most helpful information you learned in this chapter.

Homework for Tonight--read and annotate through page 13, whatever you didn't finish in class.

Minimalism—Sources for Your In-Class Essay (Friday)

SOURCE:  “A Few Words About Minimalism (Excerpted); pages 22-3 or your text

1.      From John Barth (minimalisms of unit, form and scale)

a.     Short words

b.    Short sentences and paragraphs

c.     Super-short stories

2.     From John Barth (minimalisms of style)

a.     A stripped-down vocabulary

b.    A stripped-down syntax that avoids periodic sentences, serial predications and complex subordinating constructions

c.     A stripped-down rhetoric that may eschew figurative language altogether

d.    A stripped-down, non-emotive tone

3.     From John Barth (minimalisms of material)

a.     Minimal characters

b.    Minimal exposition

c.     Minimal mises en scene

d.    Minimal action

e.     Minimal plot

4.   SOURCE:  Our List (to Flesh Out Barth’s)

a.     Leaves the reader with more questions than answers

b.    Packed with meaning, even if not packed with words

c.     Limited backgroundhogs

d.    Limited punctuation

e.     Pronouns instead of proper names

5.    SOURCE:  Ernest Hemingway’s Iceberg Quote (page 24; your journal entry)

6.   SOURCE:  Deron Bauman

·      “Minimalism is the effect of a conscious effort to present written elements with the fewest words necessary to deliver the maximum readable impact.

7.    SOURCE:  Chuck Palahniuk’s “She Breaks Your Heart”

a.    “Every sentence isn’t just crafted, it’s tortured over.”

b.   “No silly adverbs like ‘sleepily’, ‘irritably,’ ‘sadly’, please.  And no measurements, no feet, yards, degrees or years-old.”

c.    “Burnt tongue”—“forcing the reader to read close, maybe read twice, not just skim along a surface of abstract images, short-cut advers, and clichés.”

d.   “recording angel”—writing without passing any judgments.  Nothing is fed to the reader as fat or happy.  You can only describe actions and appearances in a way that makes a judgment occur in the reader’s mind.”

e.   “Simple list of facts, presented in the first person”

f.     “…a story is a symphony, building and building, but never losing the original melody line.”

g.   Less is more.  Instead of the usual flood of general details, you get a slow drip of single-sentence paragraphs, each one evoking its own emotion reaction.”

h.   “on the body”—to give the reader a sympathetic physical reaction, to involve the reader on a gut level

Class Discussion

·     Hempel’s “The Harvest”

Merriam Webster: Definition of METAFICTION

: fiction which refers to or takes as its subject fictional writing and its conventions

Oxford Dictionary:  metafiction

Pronunciation: /ˈmɛtəfɪkʃ(ə)n/

noun

·          fiction in which the author self-consciously alludes to the artificiality or literariness of a work by parodying or departing from novelistic conventions and traditional narrative techniques:

Welcome to Creative Writing!

Ø  Happy Wednesday, September 11, 2013

When You Come In

1.     Please sign in.

2.    Please make sure you have a big (not a wimpy baby) dictionary under your desk.

3.    Open up to your list from yesterday, and to page 16, pretty please!

Review

Writing Lesson #1:           Avoid clichés.

Writing Lesson #2            Use precise words--not general, relative, or vague ones.

Writing Lesson #3:          Diction matters.  Use Vocabulary Variety.

Writing Lesson #4:          Revision (Around the Block—1^st to 2^nd; final revision upcoming)

Writing Lesson #5:          Build your vocabulary—freerice!

Writing Lesson #3—

Diction = WORD CHOICE

Big Idea for Today = Diction

Sharing Out

1.     Jiggery-pokery

2.     Zebrawood

3.     Crumpet

4.     Supercalafragilisticexpialadoucious

5.     Acquiesce

6.     Stargazer

7.     Malefic

8.     Carpe Diem

9.     Inspiring

10.  Lurk

11.  Razzmatazz

12.  Accolade

13.  Silhouette

14.  Gesundheit

15.  Somber

16.  Henna

17.  Block-head

18.  azurite

Writing Workshop:  Death of Language

(page 16)—thirty-five minutes

1)     Re-read the five models at the bottom of page 16.  That’s what your answers should look like.

2)    Spend the first thirty-five minutes of class looking through the dictionary, then picking ten of your words out, and writing rationales for them. 

3)    By the start of class tomorrow—have at least ten strong answers (look and sound like examples on page 16) to share on google drive for two other people (sharing in trios) to comment on.

·      Guideline = three detailed sentences per word you’re keeping

·      Time management = your choice of two activities; but I’ll check you on LAN school, so you need to be working on those two things only

4)    E-mail me if there is someone in class you’d rather not be paired with, if you think your list will be too personal.

5)    By Monday—all twenty words are due, typed, and in the same format as you see in the examples on page 16.

w/me in library—read aloud Earliest Memory poem

Diction Practice = Free Rice

Ø  Reminder #1:  Make SURE you click on the link on my blog for your class, and make sure that your class group is showing in the right corner of your screen when you play.  Otherwise, I cannot see your grains, and you will not receive any points.

Ø  Reminder #2:  Do not restart at Level 1 every time you play.  Start at the level you stopped at the time before. 

Ø  Reminder #3:  This is an activity that takes you from where you are right now, to as far as you can go—it’s personal.  You are not in competition with others for levels, and what level you’re on is only your business and mine.

Ø  Reminder #4:  The LARGEST INDICATOR of reading comprehension is?  Guess what?  VOCABULARY!  The more you know, the better you comprehend.

Ø  DUE DATE: 17,000 grains by MONDAY.  (Today is Wednesday.)  J

1:10 Dismissal Schedule

8:10 – 9:15

You did a solid job with your academic conversations yesterday on the motif sheet!  Well-done!

Howdy, College-Prep Reading!

Wednesday, September 11^th, 2013

When You Come In

1.      Sign in.

2.     Pick up extra Vocab War sheets, if needed. 

Backbone Literature:  Greek Mythology

College-Prep Note-Taking

·      History Channel’s Gods and Goddesses

o   What strategies do you have for note-taking?  Look at a few people’s notes on the big screen.

o   How are you connecting all the dots from our Greek myth study?

o   Some of what you’re about to hear will be familiar; some won’t be. 

o   __________ = Lesson:  What is a motif?  (handout from yesterday)

@ 8:55--Read Professor Foster’s Chapter, “It’s Greek to Me”.

1.      Annotate.

2.     Look up and define in your annotations words you do not know.

3.     Look up and note allusions (references with which the writer assumes the reader will be familiar).  Wiki is a friend for this type of thing..

4.     You annotations should look AT LEAST as detailed as the model I show you on the big screen.

5.     The vocabulary you research will be our next set of vocab words.

Homework

Ø  Finish annotations on “It’s Greek to Me”.

Ø  Play freerice.  (17,000 grains due by Monday)

Ø  Play Vocab War, and update your grid.