For Friday's class, you need to have prepared a short talk about your book using the prompts we discussed in today's session. What depth of knowledge will you demonstrate?
Lowest Level - Retell the story
Higher Level - Focus on character
- Focus on issues/themes
- Focus on an important moment in the story
Greater levels of sophistication:
- Judge the character
- Offer alternatives
- Judge the message
- Prognosticate
(can you see how this is being done in the response below?)
Sample
The anthology by John Scieszka, Guys Write for Guys Read, contains a short story titled Lloyd Alexander. The premise of the tale revolves around the events that transpired after Lloyd, the main character, asked his 9th grade sweetheart to the school dance. Throughout the tale Lloyd proves himself to be the typical teenager with limited self-confidence. He is somewhat insecure and lacks the courage to openly communicate his feelings. In the first place, he is shocked that his would be date actually accepts his invitation. Most people would only ask classmates that they honestly believed were likely to respond positively. A key event in the story is when he rallied his mother to cancel the date instead of being upfront and honest about his accident to the girl in person. Worrying what others might think is another traits that Lloyd portrays. If he had gone up to his date and explained the situation either before the dance or after his return to school, most girls would have probably understood. If anything the message the story is somewhat flawed. Life does not have to be, ‘...filled with injustice, humiliation, shame, despair…” Life is the result of the choices people make daily. Lloyd chose to see the world in one way because of his own character deficiencies. The world is a good place, so my advice to Lloyd, dance whenever you can.
Your Word-study should be up to date. You will be sharing your word study work and your reading logs with me on Friday. Will you be up todate?
Tomorrow, you will have your grammar pretest.
Do you know your parts of speech? We will also look at our memoir paper. We will be discussing the characteristics of a memoir paper.
A lot of reflection today on what you are doing well and what you need to focus on going forward. From now on, if asked, you should be always able to state your writing goal and what you are doing in order to achieve it. Build your tool box of techniques and strategies that make your writing sophisticated!
