Upcoming Due Dates

• Autobiography due Friday, 11/19.
• Read and annotate at least half of "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" by J.D. Salinger by Friday 11/19. (You will work on it in class tomorrow)
• CW Test on Tuesday, 11/23. Will cover Autobiography, narrative, description and dialogue.

Autobiography Peer Editing

Answer the following questions. Handwritten or typed is acceptable.

Put yourself in the place of READER--not friend, not peer writer, but reader. That means that you're evaluating a writer as if you bought this book, and wanted to read it for entertainment.

1. Read the autobiography.
2. Examine the setting. What parts of it are visible to you as a reader? What parts need more explanation in the story from the writer?
3. Which character is the most believable? Why?
4. Which character seems to be intangible, or is unclear? Why? What would help the character become real to the reader?
5. What is the major conflict in the story? Is it realistic, considering the setting?
6. Draw the plot line of the story so far. Predict what you think will happen next—add it to the plot line.
7. What is the overall theme of the story? Why? What happens in the story to support your assumption?
8. Go through the story and correct all grammar errors, with the exception of character dialogue that is purposefully erroneous. (Check verb tenses, especially. Remember, this should be mostly in the past tense.)

Creative Writing Due Dates

Great job on your autobiographies so far! Your stories are intriguing and it's clear you've really learned from the professional excerpts we've read.

Your final draft is due Wednesday. Remember, it has to be five pages minimum and 10 maximum. Check the rubric on the Y:// (included in the assignment) to make sure you're fulfilling all of the requirements.

Wednesday, we will start reading FICTION. Our first short story will be from J.D. Salinger.

See Ms. Miller with any questions!

Contests!

Today, we are going to enter our poetry from last quarter into at least three contests. Please review the following contests:

http://www.civicandarts.org/index.php/arts/
http://poetrysocietyofvirginia.webs.com/2011studentcontest.htm
http://www.poetry.com/poetry-contests/
http://www.thepoetsanctuary.net/contest.html
http://allpoetry.com/

Rules:
If you want to enter a poem you did not write for class, you need to get it approved.
You must enter three contests.
Read the rules carefully! You're poem won't even be considered if you don't follow the directions.
Print the submission for me so I can give you credit for this assignment.

When you are finished, start reading about these contests, in which we will enter our autobiography and/or fiction.

http://www.colum.edu/Academics/Fiction_Writing/YA/YA10.php

http://www.theparisreview.org/about/submissions

http://assets.theatlantic.com/static/front/docs/studentWritingContest/2010.pdf

http://www.tcr.gov.nl.ca/tcr/artsculture/artsandletters/rules2011.pdf

http://www.akc.org/pubs/fictioncontest/

Quarter 1 Exam Review

Exam format:
·Multiple Choice
·Short Answer
·Reading Poetry
·Writing/Revising

Poems we've studied:
·Two-headed Calf
·The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
·The Fish·What is a Poet?
·What is Poetry?
·Transformation
·Untitled (Lucille Clifton)
·The Want of You·I Want Poems
·The Crabs
·The Whipping
·Mother To Son
-The Frying Pan

Skills and Devices
·structure
·content
·diction
·tone
·line breaks
·hyperbole
·simile/metaphor
·revision
·voice
·annotations

Poetry Portfolios

Check out all your fellow poets' portfolios online. Then, respond to this post with a top 3 ranking! Be sure to give reasons for your choices.

Quarter 3 Exam Review

Exam format:
·Multiple Choice
·Short Answer
·Reading Poetry
·Writing/Revising

Poems we've studied:
·Two-headed Calf
·The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
·The Fish
·What is a Poet?
·What is Poetry?
·Transformation
·Untitled (Lucille Clifton)
·The Want of You
·I Want Poems
·The Grabs
·A Sunset...
·The Good Man
·The Crazy Woman
·My Dreams...Hell
·The Whipping
·Mother To Son

Skills and Devices
·structure
·content
·diction
·tone
·line breaks
·hyperbole
·simile/metaphor
·revision
·voice
·annotations

Creative Writing Portfolios—Project #1

This project is designed to showcase our poetry using the internet.

You will
· Create an original web page that illustrates who you are as a writer
· Include 3 links, each of which will lead to poems you’ve written in Creative Writing
· Create pages that has a background and colors that exemplify the poem’s tone
· Build a site that is user friendly

Scoring Guide:
Credibility
· The author is given.
· The author's organization or institution is given.
· The author can be contacted.
· There aren’t any spelling or grammar mistakes.
Content
· The date that the webpage was last updated is given.
· The information is complete and school appropriate
· The poem follows the rubric given in creative writing class
Design & Technology
· The pictures are relevant and clear.
· The pages are easy to move around.
· The colors are appealing.
· All of the the links work.

Materials and Tools:

To create your website, you can use any of the following programs
· MS Word (easiest)
· MS Publisher (medium)
· Macromedia Dreamweaver (hardest)
· Do you know of another software product that we can use? (No online programs)

All of these programs can be used to create a webpage. Part of the assignment is to learn how to use the software to create a webpage. I am also available to help you!

Images:
· Images that are copyrighted may not be used (check website for information).
· You are encouraged to create all of your own images by uploading photos.
· Clip art is free, and acceptable.

Submission:
Your webpage and all of the files that go with it must be saved to my Y:// by Monday, 3/2 at 4:30.

HW

Homework:
Could we make Spoken Word videos or audio clips? Would that be a feasible project?
If not, what culminating project do you propose? Poetry is ART; so how can we display it at PSM?

For homework, design our final project. Include:

• A Description of the final product
• The time it would take to complete it
• The materials and tools we'd need to complete it
• The roles the teacher and student would play in the project
• The audience we'd be targeting with our product
• How this project should be graded (rubric)

Journals due Tuesday, September 2nd

Here are the Journals we've had so far!

8/18
Words have weight, sound and appearance; it is only by considering these that you can write a sentence that is good to look at and good to listen to.
- W. Somerset Maugham

8/19
Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.
-Ambrose Redmoon

8/20
The secret point of money and power in America is neither the things that money can buy nor power for power's sake but absolute personal freedom, mobility, and privacy.
-Joan Didion

8/21
In Chinese, the word for crisis is wei ji, composed of the character wei, which means danger, and ji, which means opportunity.
-Jan Wong

8/22
You've got to be brave and you've got to be bold. Brave enough to take your chance on your own discriminations-what's right and what's wrong, what's good and what's bad
-Robert Frost

8/25
Don't measure yourself by what you have accomplished, but by what you should have accomplished with your ability.
-John Wooden

8/26
What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.
-Aristotle

8/27
I attribute the little I know to my not having been ashamed to ask for information and to my rule of conversing with all descriptions of men on those topics that form their own peculiar professions and pursuits.
-John Locke

8/28
Identity is not found, the way Pharaoh's daughter found Moses in the bulrushes. Identity is built. It is built every day and every minute throughout the day.
-Margaret Halsey