HAPPY NEW YEAR! Monday, January 4 - Friday, January 8





Friday
We completed constructing the criteria for a quality personal narrative essay (PNE) by reading one more student example that scored a 6. I reminded everyone that they should be on the hunt for a text that in some way goes with the novel they are reading for term 2. This text can be a poem, short story, an infographic, or a non-fiction article. We will be producing a PLAN for a synthesis essay related to the novel and the second text choice during class next Friday, January 15. Today we had a rousing team game to practice essay terms and definitions. At the end of the class there was time to sketch out a plan for Monday's in-class write. The prompts for Monday are: We create our own reality OR It is important to always know where the nearest exit is (literally or metaphorically). At the end of the class I asked everyone to contribute to the Gots & Wants poster by posting something they have learned this semester and something they still need to learn before the exam.

Thursday

We put the construction of a PNE rubric to one side for today, and instead we read another published personal narrative essay: What do you see when you look at my Facebook; an essay about projection. We did a word sort/prediction activity before reading the essay. After reading the essay we did some pre-writing plans for possible PNEs
Don't forget that for your term novel you will have to write and essay plan rather than a full-blown essay. Before next week you must find a poem, non-fiction article, info-graphic, or short story that in some way relates to your novel. The essay plan you will prepare will be for a synthesis essay which brings together your novel and the second text you have located. Please ensure you have a printed copy of the second text and a brief plot summary (from an online source is fine) of your novel to submit with your essay plan. We will do the essay plan at the end of next week.

Wednesday

For much of today's class we looked at samples of Personal Narrative Essays in order to develop a list of criteria for a quality PNE, and also to practice scoring some student samples from the provincial exam.

Tuesday
Today we took a look at the Personal Narrative Essay as a composition option for the final exam.

Personal: point of view is first person, less formal than standard essay
Narrative: uses story or stories/anecdotes in the body, chronological order
Essay: has a thesis, has an intro, body, conclusion

We read and looked at the structure of "The Nearest Exit May be Behind You." We looked at where this essay would fit in the prompt lists we looked at yesterday.

Monday
Welcome back!
After a Today's Meet discussion of Winter Break highlights, we talked about the term novel assignment: an essay outline in order to review essay structure. I have decided to scrap the second Taming of the Shrew assignment that was discussed but not started before the break. Most of today's class was spent looking at the exam. EVERYONE WILL DO JUST FINE ON THE EXAM. If you want to do really well, you will want to do some pre-exam preparation.
There are three writing sections to the exam. They are the bulk of your grade for the exam. Remember to peruse the exam before you start to write to see the length of the readings. Plan all three of your written pieces - more on this in the coming classes. I handed out a chart with 25 prompts that have been used on past exams. These prompts generally fall into one of four headings: change, influences, life lessons, experience. You might expect that this year's exam might hit on one of those four - but there are no guarantees. Next we took a look at the scoring rubric for the composition section of the exam and practiced scoring some sample student compositions. The composition at the end of the exam will be our focus for the next several classes.

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