English 12

F r i d a y - O c t o b e r 3 1 s t ! We spent quite a bit of time reviewing the exam terms beginning with the letters A-C. Using the recipe cards, we spent some time throwing around terms and definitions. We talked a bit about bias and current news. We saved the reading on bias for Monday and played Pictionary. Thursday Today we did our second in-class write: a compare and contrast essay about the Hemingway short story. Wednesday We worked more on firming up the essay thesis statements today. We looked at "The Essay Machine" template available in the links section of this blog. It will guide you through the structure of a basic essay if you still find you don't know what to write. We also wandered around the room looking at the quotes from "The Short Happy Life...". On recipe cards, I asked you to write down words (abstract nouns like courage) that you associate with the quote or the character. I expanded the essay topic to a compare/contrast between...

Thursday Here is what you should work on  in class: 1. silent reading 10 minutes 2. the quiz on editing + hand - in 3. the purple sheet on essay body paragraphs - hand in today or Monday 4. complete & hand-in your sticky notes from The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber INSTRUCTIONS: - peel them off the story & stick them on the legal sized paper I have left for you - use more than one legal sheet if needed, but stick notes to one side of the only  paper - not front and    back - you can overlap, but do not stack the notes it must be possible to read them without having to peel them off -  each note can have up to 3 comments/questions AND a page number -  please don't put comments/questions from different pages on the same note -  you should have  a mixture of:         on-the-line (questions/comments about story events, characters, settings...)         between the line (analysis/inte...

Friday Happy Friday! We got of to a ROARING (!) start today: we did some more short story terms review via the website Quizlet (see under links). The questions were very well handled by both teams; there was, however, concern expressed again about the impartiality of the judge! We tried at bit of Hemingway trivial next, but sadly had more wrong than right answers due to the level of difficulty of the questions. The remainder of the class was given to reading Hemingway's story and some peer editing of essays. On Monday there will be a short quiz on the short story so make sure you finish reading it and doing the sticky notes by then. Have a great weekend! Thursday Following silent reading, the essays on A Short Story were collected. I was very impressed that just about everyone handed in the drafts today! In pairs you then checked over a classmate's writing for the required elements of a quality essay. Afterwards, we revisited the information we found out about Mr. He...

Monday At the beginning of class, I handed out a definition sheet for short story terms. We will practice these exam terms every Friday until the end of the semester. This Friday, prepare for another "Battle of the Sexes". Girls team: time to redeem yourselves. We got off to kind of a slow start to the week as part of today's class was taken up with a meeting about the Grad Fashion Show. We looked at some strong examples of theme statements for Bowering's short story. Some of you have really understood how to write a theme statement that deals with the author's message about life, society, or human behaviour. Remember that there is no need to include story details in a theme statement. From theme statements, we moved to essay thesis statements. We will review the criteria for a strong thesis again tomorrow as we move towards writing our first essay of the semester. Tuesday Today we reviewed the elements of the Basic Essay Structure  Diagram . Seems like this ...