We played with Brush Strokes today, creating goofy sentences which may have described ourselves or the adorable children walking through the hallways. See... writing is not as bad as you think.
Absolute: "Faces reddened, voices raised, the frustrated teachers attempted to keep order during class on the chaotic Friday before Halloween." Appositive: "Mr. Coller, an old-school Punisher, stomped down the hall to inform students that the bell had rung." Participle: "Leading the children around the high school hallways, parents puffed their proud chests forward as they walked." Adjectives Out of Order: "The lengthy announcements, tired and overdue, boomed over the recently repaired loudspeaker." Active Verb: "Photographers flashed their cameras in every classroom, hoping to catch the perfect shot for yearbook."
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Today we continued reading Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Minister's Black Veil". If you are absent, take a look on the Short Story drop down box under ELA 11 Regents (to the left on this web page). You can find the entire text there. You may want to open another tab and bring up the dictionary for those more difficult vocab words.
-Miss White Today we began to read "The Minster's Black Veil", a story about a mysterious choice by a misunderstood preacher. Hawthorne writes psychological stories like the one I told you in class today, "The Scarlet Letter". He is known for his strong vocabulary and morbid symbolism. In class, the students used sticky notes to tag complicated vocabulary words and write their definitions. Get ready to do it again tomorrow and until we complete the story.
When we are done with this story, we will be having a SHORT STORY UNIT TEST, where you will be required to know the stories, their titles, the brush strokes and their labels, and the six traits of writing. Do not take this test lightly. It will require STUDYING on your part. Have a great night! -Miss White 2nd period - Read the rest of "Rip Van Winkle"; talked about literary elements - great discussion!
8th period - Made a class chart comparing Walter Mitty to his dreamworld. Discussed how to figure this out on Today we looked at the stories you read while I was away. Second period, we continued reading "Rip Van Winkle", where a man woke up 100 years after he fell asleep.
Eighth period spent the period highlighting portions of Walter Mitty's character in the short story, "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty". They noticed that the author flipped back and forth between reality and Mitty's dreamworld. What a difference between these two places! See you tomorrow. -Miss White Today we learned our second brush stroke, the appositive.
An APPOSITIVE is a renaming of a noun in the sentence, placed next to the noun. Let's say my core sentence has to do with the JV girls soccer team: **The JV girls soccer team won against JD last night! What other names can you give that team other than "the JV girls soccer team"? These are some that I found:
**The JV girls soccer team, my friends, won against JD last night! **A team who knows their way around the soccer field, the JV girls soccer team, won against JD last night! Be sure to put commas between the appositive and the rest of the sentence. TO CHECK YOUR WORK: **Cross out the main noun, the one for which you created the appositive. Does the sentence still work? If it does, you're GOLDEN! YES: My dog, a Boston Terrier, is cute. (You can cross out "my dog" and the sentence would read, "A Boston Terrier is cute." It still works.) NO: My dog, who peed on the carpet last night, is cute. (If you cross out "my dog," the sentence reads, "Who peed on the carpet last night, is cute." This doesn't work.) NOTE: This is a grammatically correct sentence; it's just NOT an appositive. See if you can create a few appositives on your own. Be creative. -Miss White Today we will take a short break from "To Build a Fire" in order to learn some BRUSH STROKES. No, that doesn't mean that we are painting with paint, but we are going to learn to paint pictures with our WORDS. Think about it; most sentences that students write are no better than what a third grader can produce. Knowing that, I want to give you the tools to create more vivid and powerful sentences, to get across the idea that is floating around in your head.
The first BRUSH STROKE we will learn today is the ABSOLUTE. Engine smoking, tailpipe rattling, the car went into the parking lot. Today we'll practice creating these sentences. I hope you have fun! (No, I'm not being sarcastic; I actually do think people can enjoy writing and producing exciting written work.) Have a great day. -Miss White So far in the story we have met the man, representing knowledge, and the dog, who is surviving by instinct. In class we filled out a chart detailing which thoughts/actions would differentiate the man from the dog. We will read again today.
Your homework (due today) was to do the vocabulary sheet -Miss White Today we took a closer look at the story "A&P" and the poems that are in the same packet - "The Sailor" and "WMML, WMMD". The questions we answered in class were: What do these literary pieces have to do with each other? What are the common themes?
We then began to read Jack London's "To Build a Fire", written in a NATURALISTIC style about a man who has chosen to face the elements of the Yukon without acknowledging the wisdom of the men who have gone before him. If you want to look up more about Jack London, click here. Have a great night! -Miss White |
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