Work on your Independent Reading Handout. It's due Monday.


Turn in your Brainstorming, Shaping/Outline, & Rough Draft.


Read & do Rhetorical Analysis of "Mother Tongue" by Amy Tan p. 542. 

Vocabulary List 2 Quiz
Ehrenreich Reading Check Quiz

Turn in 3 Rhetorical Analysis Assignments.

Be sure to pick up Vocabulary List 3 & Writing Exercise.

Writing Exercises are due next Wednesday, October 3rd (2 Vocabulary & Sentence Combining).

Work on your outline & rough draft.  These are due tomorrow.

You should be working on shaping your Narrative/Descriptive Essay.  Write down the following for your essay:
Subject:
Narrowed Topic:
Purpose:
Main Idea:
Audience:

You also need an informal, working outline.  Look on page 96 of The Prentice Hall Guide for College Writers for an example.

Your brainstorming, shaping (with outline), and first draft are due Friday.  These 3 items are worth 30 points of your final grade, which is a test grade 2nd six weeks.  If you do not turn them in, you will NOT be allowed to turn them in later.

If you are going to be absent Friday due to an extra-curricular activity, it is your responsibility to turn in this work on or before Friday.  If you're here in the morning on Friday, you can leave it at the front office for someone to place in my box.  You can send it with a friend or classmate whom you trust to deliver it to me.  You can also turn it in early on Thursday.  :)

Today we read Amy Tan's "Fish Cheeks" essay as an example of a Narrative/Descriptive essay.  You can follow this link to read her essay:

http://redroom.com/member/amy-tan/writing/fish-cheeks

Read yesterday's post for reminders of what is due tomorrow.

Smile....It's Picture Day!  

"Putting Down the Gun"  quiz today.

Work on Shaping/Prewriting your essay.  Make decisions about how you want to organize your narrative.  Set up an informal, working outline.  You should work out what each of your paragraphs will include.  

Don't forget that each part of your essay will count towards the final grade on your essay.

Homework: Read & Do Rhetorical Analysis Assignment for "from Serving in Florida" p. 179-188  in The Language of Composition

Reminders:

 Thursday:  Turn in 3 Rhetorical Analysis Assignments (Freedman, Walker, Ehrenreich)
                  Vocabulary Quiz #2
                  Ehrenreich Quiz

Friday:  Independent Reading Deadline
             Brainstorming, Outline, & First Draft Due

Your essay is for a major grade.  Each step of the writing process counts towards your grade as follows:
Brainstorming 10 pts; Outline 10 pts; 1st Draft 10 pts; Peer Response 10 pts; Teacher Conference 10 pts. 2nd Revised Draft 50 pts.

Today you will collect ideas for your Narrative/Descriptive Essay.  You may use one of the following strategies:
 - Brainstorming   -Freewriting   
 -Looping              -Clustering


Begin shaping/prewriting your essay.  Write down the following elements of your essay:
 -Subject   
 -Narrowed Topic
 -Purpose
 -Main Idea
 -Audience

Decide which shaping strategy you want to use.  
Tomorrow we will work on an informal outline.  

Homework:  
Read & Do Rhetorical Analysis Assignment

p. 412-14  "Putting Down the Gun"  The Language of Composition

Writing Exercise: Sentence Combining

Try combining those sentences into three, two, or even just one clear and coherent sentence: in the process of combining, omit repetitive words and phrases (such as "She was") but keep all of the original details.

·         She was our Latin teacher.

·         We were in high school.

·         She was tiny.

·         She was a birdlike woman.

·         She was swarthy.

·         She had dark eyes.

·         Her eyes were sparkling.

·         Her hair was graying.

Notes from The Prentice Hall Guide for College Writers

p. 83-88  Shaping Strategies

p. 104-105  Techniques for Writing About Memories

As you take notes, keep in mind that your purpose is two-fold:  1) learn to use the strategies in your own writing; 2) learn to recognize the strategies in others' writing.

Solidify your ideas for the Narrative/Descriptive essay you plan to write.

Be prepared to identify your Subject, Specific Topic, Purpose, and Audience for this paper.

Monday we will begin sketching out ideas.

Vocabulary Quiz Today

Pick up Vocabulary List 2 and Writing Exercise.

Finish the Rhetorical Analysis Assignment for the Freedman essay.

Continue brainstorming for your personal narrative essay.

Notes on Shaping Strategies pg. 83 in The Prentice Hall Guide for College Writers.

Book Check Out Day

Today you will be issued The Language of Composition textbook.  It is your responsibility to bring your book with you every day to class.  I will periodically conduct random book checks for a daily grade.  Be prepared.

Today's Reading:

p. 473-476  "For Fasting and Football, a Dedicated Game Plan" by Samuel G. Freedman

Complete a "Rhetorical Analysis Assignment" page for this reading.

Quick Notes:

Underline or italicize titles of books, names of newspapers, magazines, movies, TV shows.

Underline when handwritten.

Italicize when typing.

Italics replace underlining; don’t use both.

Quotation marks used for shorter pieces: essays, speeches, newspaper articles, magazine articles, transcripts, short stories, poems, song titles, TV show episodes.

Refer to the writer as author, writer, speaker, poet.

Use his/her full name once; thereafter, refer to him/her by last name only or as author, writer, speaker, poet.  Never refer to author by first name only.

Due Today: 3 Writing Exercises (9/14, 9/15, 9/18)

Writing Exercise: Descriptive Sentences

Prospect Street

One brisk afternoon in late September, I took a walk down Prospect Street.

1.     Music thudded out of the shop and mingled with some of the other noises of the city.
(Identify the kind of music that "thudded out of the shop," name the shop, and give some specific examples of "the other noises of the city.")

2.     Garbage danced along the sidewalk and lay crushed against the curb.
(For the word "garbage," substitute specific examples of litter.)

3.     A woman reading a book was sitting there.
(Briefly describe the woman, identify the book she was reading, and specify where she was sitting.)

4.     Steam blew out of the air vents of a restaurant, carrying with it various smells.
(Name the restaurant, and identify some of the smells coming out of it.)

HOMEWORK:

Begin brainstorming for the Narrative/Descriptive essay you will write this six weeks.

Continue reading your non-fiction selection.

Study for Thursday's vocabulary quiz.  

SAT Vocabulary

Today we will begin our first set of SAT vocabulary.  You'll need to pick up the list (15 words) with definitions and examples.  That handout also has some practice exercises on the back for you to work on independently.  You will have a sentence completions quiz on these words on Thursday.  You will also have a Writing Exercise to do with the list.  You can pick up the instructions for this assignment on the same day the list goes out.  Expect a new list every Thursday, a quiz for that list on the following Thursday, and a writing exercise to do for each list.  Quizzes and writing exercises are daily grades.  Expect a vocabulary test after every third list.

3 Writing Exercises are due Tuesday, September 18th     (9/14, 9/17, 9/18)
   

PSAT/NMSQT

This is the year you should be taking the PSAT.  The test dates are either Wednesday, October 17th or Saturday, October 20th.  You will need to register with your counselor and pay the $13 fee to take the test. Go do this before the end of the week so that you don't miss the deadline.

Here's the College Board's website.  Visit it for info, practice, guides, etc.

http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/psat/about.html

Terms Quiz Today

We will read and take notes from Chapter 3 of The Prentice Hall Guide for College Writers (p. 47)

Notes:

p. 49 Techniques for Writing about Observations

Words to know:

objectivity (objective)

subjectivity (subjective)

Writing Exercise:  Description

5 minutes:  Write an objective description of a pencil.

5 minutes:  Write a subjective description of a pencil.

Here are some links you can follow with some examples of objective, subjective, and figurative descriptions:
http://www2.hawaii.edu/~davink/NARRATIVE/Narr1.4.html

http://brainstorm-services.com/wcu-2005/pdf/profile-exercise2.pdf

Terms you should already know very well:

alliteration
allusion
analogy
diction
euphemism
hyperbole
imagery
irony
metaphor
onomatopoeia
oxymoron
paradox
parallelism
personification
point of view
repetition
simile
symbol
syntax
tone

Expect quizzes.  :)  The first one will be tomorrow.  

Literary and Rhetorical Terms with Definitions:
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B_yPT2odj2CpLXIxVnQtaHpoekU

Close Reading Practice #1      

. . . I once received an unexpected lesson from a spider. It happened far away on a rainy morning in the West. I had come up a long gulch looking for fossils, and there, just at eye level, lurked a huge yellow-and-black orb spider, whose web was moored to the tall spears of buffalo grass at the edge of the arroyo. It was her universe, and her senses did not extend beyond the lines and spokes of the great wheel she inhabited. Her extended claws could feel every vibration throughout that delicate structure. She knew the tug of wind, the fall of a raindrop, the flutter of a trapped moth's wing. Down one spoke of the web ran a stout ribbon of gossamer on which she could hurry out to investigate her prey.

Curious, I took a pencil from my pocket and touched a strand of the web. Immediately there was a response. The web, plucked by its menacing occupant, began to vibrate until it was a blur. Anything that had brushed claw or wing against that amazing snare would be thoroughly entrapped. As the vibrations slowed, I could see the owner fingering her guidelines for signs of struggle. A pencil point was an intrusion into this universe for which no precedent existed. Spider was circumscribed by spider ideas; its universe was spider universe. All outside was irrational, extraneous, at best raw material for spider. As I proceeded on my way along the gully, like a vast impossible shadow, I realized that in the world of spider I did not exist.


Excerpt from anthropologist and naturalist Loren Eiseley's essay, "The Hidden Teacher"


Patricia Kain offers the following help guide for a close reading using this Eiseley excerpt.
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~wricntr/documents/CloseReading.html

TERMS

• close reading
• annotation
• writer
• speaker
• reader
• audience
• tone 
• attitude
• rhetoric
• structure

         Effect...WHAT?       Tools...HOW?     Purpose...WHY?