1A
1. Freewrite. 5 minutes.
2. Dialogue Punctuation. Students learned how to punctuate dialogue using whiteboards and this powerpoint:
3. Dialogue practice. Students took the dialogue they wrote for homework and worked it into a longer piece of writing by adding description and action in between the lines. They also added dialogue tags.
4. JoAnn Beard’s “Behind the Screen.” We read together a short memoir (or really an “autobiographical short story”) by the wonderful author JoAnn Beard (who I met this summer!). You can read the first page of it here. As we read, we stopped to discuss the writer’s choices, the effect of dialogue on the story, and the significance of the title. This served as a model for students’ own memoirs.
5. Writing time. Students had fifteen minutes to continue revising the dialogue scene they wrote in class to make it longer or more specific.
HW: Finish dialogue scene we started in class for Monday.
2AB
1. Freewrite! 3 minutes. We are getting much better at it!
2. Return work. Students received their rough drafts back today with a check, check-plus, or check-minus. Check means you did the assignment and understood; check-plus means you understood the assignment on a deep level and pushed yourself; check-minus means you may not have completely mastered the material. These short writings were homework grades.
3. Copyediting marks. In preparation for our writer’s workshops tomorrow, we learned the copyediting marks used by editors everywhere. Here they are on the internet! We took notes on these symbols on W2: Copyediting Marks using this powerpoint and the “smart” board (meaning the dry erase board with the projector):
4. Workshop Procedure. We talked through the workshop procedure outlined on W3: Memoir Workshop Guidelines. Students selected their core value and compared their value with their groups. Then, students watched videos of Ms. G’s former students doing step 1 (listening/reading). Finally, we modeled what steps 2-5 would look like as a whole class on Ms. Garvoille’s place piece (left).
HW: None!
Tomorrow we will workshop!
4A
1. Freewrite! 3 minutes. We are getting much better at it!
2. Return work. Students received their rough drafts back today with a check, check-plus, or check-minus. Check means you did the assignment and understood; check-plus means you understood the assignment on a deep level and pushed yourself; check-minus means you may not have completely mastered the material. These short writings were homework grades.
3. Copyediting marks. In preparation for our writer’s workshops tomorrow, we learned the copyediting marks used by editors everywhere. Here they are on the internet! We took notes on these symbols on W2: Copyediting Marks using this powerpoint and the “smart” board (meaning the dry erase board with the projector):
4. Workshop Procedure. We talked through the workshop procedure outlined on W3: Memoir Workshop Guidelines. Students
selected their core value and compared their value with their groups. Then, students watched videos of Ms. G’s former students doing step 1 (listening/reading). Finally, we modeled what steps 2-5 would look like as a whole class on Ms. Garvoille’s place piece (left).
5. Workshop groups. Students moved their desks into their workshop groups, chose one of the pieces (setting, character, or dialogue) to revise, and answered the pre-workshop questions on their Writer’s Workshop Checklist. Then, students read and listened, taking plus/delta notes as they listened and giving constructive commentary.
HW: Revise the piece you workshopped. Your revision should be very different from your rough draft. Do everything on the checklist you made in class. Bring in your revision on Monday with all of the drafts and your checklist. The revision should be typed and printed: 12-point, Times New Roman, 1″ margins, with an MLA-format header on the left. If you need more feedback email Ms. Garvoille and she will provide some: agarvoille@york.ycsd.va.us
ALEXA GARVOILLE 