Colon rules

The colon is, as one of my graduate school professors once said, a "classy piece of punctuation." When you use a colon correctly, you show you have some writing style. Here's a link to Grammar Girl's advice about using colons. Please read it and be ready for a quick quiz. Also make colon corrections to your Significant Event papers before finishing your document design.

Significant Event Paper Document Design

Thanks to Mrs. Robertson, we are lucky at PGHS to have access to a desktop publishing site called "Heritage Makers." On Heritage Makers, you can use type, titles, headings, captions, color, graphics, images, photos, space, layout, and text to create a "book" about your Significant Event. The Significant Event Paper Grading Rubric has the criteria I'll use to grade this assignment. Here's the schedule for this assignment.

11 Dec--Writing Lab
14 Dec--Writing Lab
16 Dec--Writing Lab
18 Dec--Present "book" to class on my laptop and projector (Tiffany, Melissa, Kathie, Becca, and Trevor).
22 Dec--Present "book" to class on my laptop and projector (Brittany, James, Nate, Katie, and Kyleigh).

During your presentation, rather than retell your story you should explain to the class what document design features (from the list above and the rubric) you used to enhance your story and why you made the choices you did.

Since this will be a celebration of your story and "book," and since these presentations precede the holiday, feel free to bring treats on the 18th and 22nd!

Jeannette Wall's new book

Here's Jeannette Wall's new book based on the story of her grandmother--her mother's mother. If you'd like to read a review, here's a link to the New York Times.

Class Dec 3 & 4

BELLWORK: We each chose a quote from the back bulletin board and commented on it.

PEER REVIEWS: We peer reviewed James' and Nate's papers.

SIGNIFICANT EVENT PAPERS: Thanks to everyone for your thoughtful compliments and suggestions during peer reviews. It's not easy to have everyone read your writing; it's embarrassing at first, but each of you helped the writers see their strengths and made constructive suggestive for revision. These papers are due Dec. 8. Please turn in your revised copy on top of all the peer reviews you received so I can review them.

Hyphen Use: Playing with Words and Leaves

On this blog, artist Christoph Niemann names the shapes of leaves. Notice how he uses hyphens to link compound adjectives like "Cloud-That-Actually-Resembles-A-Car Leaf" and "Rob-Blogojevich's-Flair Leaf." According to the OWL at Purdue, the rule is generally to use a hyphen to link words that are brought together to modify a single noun, such as chocolate-covered peanuts or well-known author. Note, however, that you don't hyphenate if you place the same words after the noun: "The peanuts are chocolate covered" and "The author is well known."

Significant Event Paper Peer Review Schedule

The paper you submit for peer review should be the third draft of your paper and the best paper you can write. On the day your paper is scheduled for peer review, bring 11 copies of the paper to class. Your paper should show what you've learned from class skill presentations, spotlights, class discussion, and the textbook. I will give your peer review third draft a possible 10 points depending on how well written it is.

Nov. 23 (Monday): Tiffany, Trevor, and Melissa
Nov. 30 (Monday): Kyleigh, Katie, Brittany
Dec. 2 (Wednesday): Kathie, Becca, James, and Nate

If you are not prepared for your peer review, you will receive a 0 and your paper will not be rescheduled for another peer review due to lack of time.

Class Nov 17 & 18

Class Nov 17

SPOTLIGHT: compressing time in a narrative

TEACHER PRESENTATION: writing strong conclusions to your narrative

TEACHER CONFERENCES at Writing Lab
Kyleigh
Katie
Brittany
Tiffany (if time)

Writing Quote of the Day

"And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt." (Sylvia Plath)

Class Nov 13

READING QUIZ: Chapter 7 (A&B)

PRESENTATIONS:
Revising locally (Katie)
Expand your repertoire of styles (Becca)

TEACHER CONFERENCES at Writing Lab:
Melissa
Trevor

Grading Criteria for Skill Presentations

Skill Presentation Assignment (10 points):

1. Be prepared on your assigned day.
2. Use the text.
3. Incorporate the board or other visual(s).
4. Involve the students in learning exercises.
5. Assess learning: students should produce something (a quiz, a practice exercise) that you can grade (worth 5 points).
   

Paper 2: A Significant Event

Here's a description of the paper and the schedule we'll be following. I've updated the schedule so you can see what Skills Presentation assignment you have and what day you're having your Teacher Conference. Here's a copy of the Paper 2 Peer Review Grading Rubric.

Your comments about Glass Castle

• Her way of telling the story is interesting. It is organized and disorganized at the same time.
• I absolutely loved it, and I loved how you pulled in writing skills to learn while we were reading it.
• I like the way she writes it. In the beginning, she writes it like a child and how she viewed things when she was little. Then when she got older her perspective changed.
• I think you should have the next year's class read Glass Castle. It was very interesting to read and brought out many things to think about. You can learn a lot from the way the book is written: structure, organization, word choice. But I think the most valuable thing about reading the Glass Castle is it gets you thinking about the world. They will start thinking about the bigger picture. I really enjoyed the book.
• I learned a lot about life, how hard it can be, and how good I really have it. This book caused me to think, reflect, and evaluate my own life. ...There are some sad/disturbing parts, but they made a point.
• I liked the book; it really put an insight into the world. I especially liked the pace that we read it at and the discussions that we had. Maybe do more with WN; I felt that I spent a lot of time writiung in them, but never used that later in the class.
• I thoroughly enjoyed reading "The Glass Castle." It not only opened my eyes to a unique writing style, but it also broadened my vision of the world. It taught me to read, think, and reflect back on my own life, or look to the future.
• I never really enjoy reading--but this boook encouraged me to read; I really liked it! Besides being an easy read, this book brought the reader to question real world issues and was thought-provoking.
• I particularly enjoyed the writing style because it's as if the whole book is flowing from a childlike mind, and as the story progressed, we witnessed her mind mature to a point where she understood her poor situation.

UEA in Nashville

Medicine Boxes

In Native American Culture, some Native Americans kept Medicine Bags filled with precious and meaningful items: a swan feather, a root, a braid of sweetgrass, red coals for incense, or a stone. In some cultures, the Medicine Bags contained items that could provide healing. In English 1010, our version of Medicine Bags is Medicine Boxes (Chinese take-out boxes). These boxes hold trinkets that remind English 1010 students of important writing skills that, if applied, will help improve, or "heal," your writing: a kaleidoscope, a parachuter, a spider ring, an eraser, a ribbon knotted to a string.

These trinkets are symbols for the following:

kaleidoscope: examine sources carefully.

What is the author's angle of vision (bias)? What are the author's credentials? Who is the intended audience and how is the author trying to change his/her audience's view of the topic? What facts, data, and other evidence does this author cite and what are the sources for the data? What is omitted or censored from this text? (A&B 593-94).

parachuter: introduce quoted material with an attributive tag.

Introduce quotes with attributive tags that could include author's credentials, author's lack of credentials, author's political or social views, title of sources if it provides context, publisher of source if it adds prestige, historical or cultural information, or indication of source's purpose or angle of vision (A&B 619).

eraser: remember that most of writing is rewriting.

As writer Vladimir Nabokov said in a 1996 interview, "I have rewritten-- often several times-- every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers."

spider ring: Don't scare your readers away.

As John Trimble, author of Writing with Style, puts it, "be other-oriented. You try to understand your readers. You actively think of them, identify with them, empathize with them. You try to intuit their needs. You train yourself to think always of their convenience, not your own. You treat them exactly as you would wish to be treated, with genuine consideration for their feelings. And you keep reminding yourself, over and over, that good writing is good manners" (8).

 ribbon knotted to a string: link old and new information together

"Most sentences in an essay should contain both an old element and a new element. To create coherence, the writer begins with the old material, which links back to something earlier, and then puts the new material at the end of the sentence" (A&B).