Dialogue

After vocab experts today, we continued working with narrative features. By discussing and analyzing the narrative features of "Only Daughter," we reviewed the theme and how it haunts every moment of the narrator's existence, time and how the narrator utilizes flashbacks to show the inundation of parent apathy, characterization and how two characters can be the focus of a story, dialogue and how it can be appropriate or distracting, and imagery's effect on creating a fully developed text.

To continue with dialogue, we worked with how words and details can reveal much about a character. Given an age and gender, you created a conversational piece that utilizes details to provide characterization and audience understanding. We will read these aloud on Wednesday.

To continue with Wednesday's agenda, we will review vocabulary, read another sample narrative, and review punctuation rules utilizing highlighters and activities.

Adverbial Narratives

To begin class, you performed your adverb skits, utilizing a plethora of adverbs to show action and behavior. While each skit came into fruition, the remaining students jotted down all the adverbs used and then reviewed the adverbs aloud.

Next, we returned to vocabulary unit 3, in which we are at a total of 12 words. As a result, we will have 3 words tomorrow, review on our block day, and the quiz on Friday.

Then, we started our next writing unit: narrative, the world of storytelling, often in first person. Narrative is about focus (theme), time, dialogue, character, and imagery. Be mindful of what characters and dialogue populate your narratives. To emphasize these narrative writing traits, we read Malcolm X's "Coming to an Awareness of Language" and analyzed these traits as a class.

For homework, read "Only Daughter" and prepare notes/discussion points for tomorrow.

Grammar in Motion

Today, we finished up our who/whom tricks. When in doubt, remember that who connects to a subject and whom connects to an object. Then, after vocabulary, we looked at adjectives -- identifying them correctly when reading the directions -- and the order of adjectives in describing an object. This then moved into why we would use or not use commas with multiple adjectives. If two adjectives are coordinate, or switchable, you need a comma. If two adjectives follow the order and accumulate information, then you have a cumulative situation and do not need a comma. Last up, we tackled adverb usage by acting out the same sentences using varying adverbs to describe motion. Victoriously! To end class, you are creating your adverbial skit -- creating a minimum 10 sentence skit utilizing different adverbs to create the behavior of your actors.

Narratives start next week!

Vocab with Buzzers & Pronouns!

I can tell that some of you had the competitive juices flowing during class today. First up, we added four new words to our vernacular and reviewed using the buzzers. If you enjoy the fast-paced action of Scholar Quiz, we will have them out in the future -- not every day, though!

For the remainder of the class, we worked with pronouns. The most important element to discerning pronouns and understanding the rules is the differentiation between subjective and objective pronouns. Once that is determined, you are better able to utilize the appropriate pronoun and maintain antecedent and pronoun agreement. (This also involves who and whom -- who usually has a verb after it; whom usually has a noun or pronoun.)

I am writing this blog during lunch, so I will assume that we finished the pronoun assignment and began with adjectives? In any case, we will work with more grammar tomorrow!

Composing the Descriptive Essay

Today's class will be the last one focusing on descriptive writing. Evaluating introductions and listening to samples of body paragraphs and conclusions should assist you in creating accurate, mood-inducing reflections of your three selected family members.

By Friday at 3:30 p.m., your assignment is to turn in a hard copy of your descriptive essay. Attach the scoring guide and your three previous descriptive writings (painting, library, object) to the final draft. If you are absent all day, you are to share the essay with me and bring a hard copy on Monday. If you are at school at any point of the day, you are required to turn in the work by this time. (This will be the expectation for all future essays.)

For the remainder of the hour, you copied down vocab unit 3, which will begin tomorrow, and worked on your essay. Today is the last class time to work on the essay; the remainder of the work - the beautification of your writing - will occur for homework.

P.S. Don't forget literary devices in your own writing -- utilizing similes, metaphors, personification, hyperbole, alliteration, and other techniques add to your presentation and voice.

P.P.S. Don't use contractions - spell out everything!

Essay Format & Structure

After our second vocabulary quiz, we looked at MLA format, essay titles, and introductory paragraphs. For example, we looked at how one could use an anecdote, imagery, and analogy to set up an essay, provide foreshadowing details, and lead to a thesis statement. We ended the hour by working on introductions, which you will be peer evaluating tomorrow. We will also look at body paragraphs -- samples to show how every single detail counts -- and concluding paragraphs. The challenge of a conclusions stems from finding a way to end with a memorable final thought or image. If you have already set up an analogy or theme in your introduction, you can use this to tie together the conclusion.

Final draft of essay will be due on Friday by 3:30 p.m.

Rushing into Essay Structure

1. We reviewed vocabulary, which means a quiz is coming on Tuesday.

2. We practiced grammar issues including subject-verb agreement, active & passive verbs, to be verb eradication, and split infinitives. 

3. We peer reviewed your descriptive paragraphs regarding your relatives. As noted, the more you can "explode" a detail - showing one's voice, clothing, behavior - can add to the overall impact of your description.

4. We very hastily reviewed essay structure - introduction, body, and conclusion. Yes, this was a complete rush job, but the clock worked against us today! For Monday, write an introduction to your relative body paragraphs. You are more than welcome -- and I would recommend this for future drafting - to type up these four paragraphs for classroom work. We will work on introductions and conclusions next week, and then you will have a final draft!