SEM 2, W3, #2: FOREVER IN DRAFT

All of you have turned in a significant piece of original poetry (along with 3+ rough drafts) this past week.

With that in mind, I’d like for you to share part of this poem with the rest of us…plus offer all of us a few elements that you’d still like to improve if you could continue with the drafting process.

Challenge:

1. Copy/paste ONE stanza from your final poem into your comment here.  It is up to you which stanza you share.  If, however, you are not sure which stanza to share, pick the 1st one (that focused specifically on the scene in nature).
2. Identify (5) things you’d like to improve or continue revising about this specific stanza.  Be specific in how you explain what you mean.

W10, #3: THE WRITTEN WORD

Who: All periods

Set-up: While we spend a great deal of time on the ‘techniques’ of writing, we must never forget that writing is as much an ‘attitude about life’ as it is a set of skills.

Challenge: Pick one of these quotations about writing that catches your eye.  Offer a reaction.

Length: 7+ sentences:

Option 1:

“It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? For the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone. That is where the writer scores over his fellows: he catches the changes of his mind on the hop.” — Vita Sackville-West

Option 2:

“The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible.” — Vladimir Nabakov

Option 3:

“Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” — Anton Chekhov

W9, #7: THE WRITTEN WORD

Who: Periods 1, 2, 3, 4, & 7

Set-up: While we spend a great deal of time on the ‘techniques’ of writing, we must never forget that writing is as much an ‘attitude about life’ as it is a set of skills.

Challenge: Pick one of these quotations about writing that catches your eye.  Offer a reaction.

Length: 7+ sentences:

Option 1:

“The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say.” — Anais Nin

Option 2:

“A word is not the same with one writer as with another.  One tears it from his guts.  The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket.” — Charles Peguy

Option 3:

“What I like in a good author is not what he says, but what he whispers.  — Logan Pearsall Smith, “All Trivia”, Afterthoughts, 1931

W7, #5: “LORD OF THE FLIES” MINI ESSAY FEEDBACK

Set-Up: Did you get that sneaky suspicion that this week’s in-class essay challenge — the group paragraph — covering chapters 5 & 6 in Lord of the Flies felt strangely familiar?

Sure, on one hand each of you had practiced this experience a week ago in a 2-day test run.  Hopefully this made it easier for each of you to sort out a) the how to organize group dynamics and b) how to translate many creative ideas into a single, well-worded, focused argument within a very short period of time.

But did you also get the sneaky feeling that the class experience itself was meant to mirror something on a much deeper level?

Hint: Maybe you’ll find the answer inside the text.  Perhaps Simon will tell you.

Challenge:

• Read all 12 of the mini group student paragraphs found below.
• Pick the 7 paragraphs that you believe are the most effective.
• Identify 1 specific strength from each of the 7 paragraphs you selected.
• Optional:  explain why each strength is particularly effective to the overall paragraph the group wrote.

Length: as appropriate

Ch 5: “Beast from Water” & Ch 6: “Beast from Air” small group mini-essay paragraph writing challenge (in lieu of the typical in-class essay).  Note:  all links can be found on the class wiki in the Lord of the Flies section:

Link: original quotations and assignment

• Title 1: “A State of Disarray”
• Title 2: “The De-evolution from Civilization to Savagery”
• Title 3: “The Menace Within”
• Title 4: “Descent into Darkness”
• Title 5: “Metamorphosis into a Tribal Civilization”
• Title 6: “Animals Can’t Make Fire”
• Title 7: “The Beast Within”
• Title 8: “Loss of the Supernatural Authority”
• Title 9: “Evolution of the Conch”
• Title 10: “The Call to the Wild”
• Title 11: “Devolution of the Conch”
• Title 12: “Unknown Danger”

W7, #4: MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE

Set-Up: Apologies to romantic Kevin Costner films and a classic song by the Police, I’m going to bring out the “message in a bottle” concept to see how each of you can play around with the mindset of one of the character’s on the island at this point in the story.

Challenge:

• Pick a character that you are beginning to figure out in terms of their inner feelings and motivations.
• Write a private letter from them to ’someone’ in the real world.  Note:  they have secretly put this note into a bottle that will to be  tossed into the ocean in hopes of being read one day.
• Offer a hint of how this character is privately seeing the events on the island unfold and what they really think about the group dynamics, chances of survival, etc.
• Bonus: can you write it so that it ’sounds’ like their personality (as well as what they are thinking)?

Hint: Tell us right away how far you’ve read so that we have a sense of what you are familiar with as the letter is written. Try to focus on their inner mind, not just the plot of the story.

Length: 7+ sentences

W7, #3: STEADY PROGRESS

Set-Up: Now that we’ve begun to challenge what we mean by being writers/thinkers on many fronts, especially now that we’re in the midst of a novel that demands our radar remain on at all times, I’m curious how you see your own growth in this class.

Challenge: Share with us one way you have definitely grown as a student of English so far this year.

It can be something very specific or a big picture item.  Likewise, it can be something internal or external.  Finally, it can be something that has dramatically evolved or something that you think is on the verge of being an important part of how you’ll continue to write/think/debate in the future (but may be in a raw state currently).

Length: 7+ sentences

W6, #6: ANALYTICAL GROUP THINK

Set-Up: In class this week, all of you were put into random groups with the challenge of anaylzing a quotation found in either Ch 3 or 4.  Additionally, each group had to write a single paragraph (7-10 sentences long with the topic sentence acting as a thesis) that fully analyzed the significance of the quotation.

Challenge:

• Select a different group than you were in that wrote something you respect or learned from in a positive way. It does matter if it was the same quotation you had to analyze; additionally, it does not matter which period you select.
• Offer constructive feedback or a reaction.  The key is ‘constructive’:  useful, respectful, suggestive, specific, etc.  Note: negative or dismissive responses will not be published or given credit.

Note: Paragraphs will be in ‘rough draft’ mode until the end of class on Thursday.  Please comment on the ‘final copy’ of the group you select – this can be done anytime from Thursday afternoon forward.

Length: 5 constructive ideas/reactions (1+ sentence each)

Ch 3: “Huts on the Beach” & Ch 4: “Painted Faces and Long Hair” small group brainstorming & paragraph writing challenge:

• Per 1 Gr 1: “You let the fire go out.”
• Per 1 Gr 2: “If you’re hunting sometimes you catch yourself feeling…”
• Per 1 Gr 3: “Meetings. Don’t we love meetings?…”
• Per 1 Gr 4: “They walked along, two continents…”
• Per 2 Gr 1: “They don’t smell me. They see me, I think…”
• Per 2 Gr 2: “If you’re hunting sometimes you catch yourself feeling…”
• Per 2 Gr 3: “They walked along, two continents…”
• Per 2 Gr 4: “Meetings. Don’t we love meetings?…”
• Per 3 Gr 1: “Meetings. Don’t we love meetings?…”
• Per 3 Gr 2: “If you’re hunting sometimes you catch yourself feeling…”
• Per 3 Gr 3: “As if the beastie, the beastie or the snake-thing, was real. Remember?”
• Per 3 Gr 4: “They walked along, two continents…”

TIME TO START YOUR GOOGLE DOCS ACCOUNT

Note:

This is NOT a blog entry to ‘respond to’ for credit for Monday.

This is an assignment in addition to the weekly blog entries.

Due: next Wednesday (9/17)

Assignment:

1. Required: Start your own Google Docs account (which you can start here for free). You can either use a Gmail email account (which you can start for here for free also) or any other email address you may already have. Let me know if you have trouble getting your GDs account started. We’ll figure it out together.
2. Optional: If you haven’t watched the short video on the start page, watch it now.
3. Required: Send me an email — longchristian@gmail.com — telling me that you’ve successfully started your Google Docs account. This will also be the email address you’ll always use to ‘invite’ me to read and comment on all of your Google Docs essays this year.
4. Optional: Consider keeping an eye on the “Official Google Docs Blog” to learn some cool tricks and ideas that may help you using GDs in all of your classes.  And if you find out anything interesting, tell us about it.
5. Optional: If you want, you can create a “new” document and send me an invitation to “read” or “collaborate” (i.e. comment/edit) to see how it works; look under “Share” in the upper right of any document you’ve created or uploaded. Note: If you do this, make sure you unclick these 2 options: a) “Collaborators may invite others” and b) “Invitations may be used by anyone” so that you can be assured that ONLY the person/people you invite have access to this specific document.

Explanation: Starting next week, we’ll start using Google Docs on a regular basis. The purpose is to:

• give you a way to submit papers to me digitally/on-line (as well as turning in paper copies)
• give me a way to leave comments ‘inside’ your paper
• give you a way to easily revise formal essays and send updates to me
• give you/I a way to review all of your old essays throughout the year

W4, #3: PG 300 OF YOUR AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Set-Up: Next year — as an 11th grader — you will begin to think about the process of applying to colleges and universities around the United States (or beyond).

Part of the application process requires writing essays to help the university learn something intriguing about you. Not only do they want to learn facts (grades, SATs, etc.), they also want your creativity and attitude.

One of the typical essay questions you may have to answer asks you to write “page 300″ of your autobiography. Strange, huh?

This means:

• you have to decide what would be taking place on page 300
• you only have one page to write everything
• you need to figure out how to make your reader interested in the process

Challenge:

• Creatively begin “page 300″ of your life story — aka your autobiography — in such a way that it will catch the attention of a college admissions team
• Be creative.

Length: 10+ sentences

W3, #5: HOOK ‘EM EARLY

Set-Up: Playing off our collective need — as Honors English II students — to (rigorously) improve our ability to:

• grab our reader’s attention with a unique argument (the moment they start reading our essays)
• analyze new literature from many perspectives (without being bogged down by plot summary)

…let’s take on the following writing challenge:

Challenge:

• Write a compelling movie ‘trailer’ (a.k.a. television advertisement) that will inspire someone to want to read Beowulf (or at least go see the movie of said text).
• Focus on the first 5 chapters (from “The Monster Grendel” to “The Monster’s Mother”).
• Use actual text — i.e. real quotations, my lovely friends — from the story.

Length:

• 3-4 sentences.  You may go for 5+, but only if every word truly matters.
• # of Quotations:  2 minimum, 3 is slightly better, 4 is crazy great!
• Keep in mind:  you do not need to use the entire line/sentence as a quotation.  Just use the key phrases/lines.  And make sure that you use quote marks.

Hint: While plot matters, you do not have time to waste in plot-summary-land in this short piece of writing.  Instead, use what you know about the story — tone, underlying ideas, metaphors, etc — to ’sell’ the story.