More About Narratives! A GUEST SPEAKER! Plus: Review Writing!

NARRATIVE HOT WRITES

We have completed our short story unit but continue to work with narratives in other ways, for example, by doing 'hot writes' (5 minute writing bursts) which focus on describing in specific detail a character or setting for the other students to guess.

Students have had a lot of fun with this activity.

They have also created 'characters from scratch' as a hot write, in other words, just describing a character for us to picture in our 'minds eye'. Some fun figurative language has naturally arisen in these writing exercises (like 'he smells like a pickle' or 'he has a beard like ZZ Top".)

NARRATIVES AS MEDIA

Rather than writing full short stories, which is a bit time consuming, students are creating short animations using the Frames 4 program. They are to write/show a narrative: it must have character, setting and--and this is the tricky part--a plot, complete with a problem and a solution. Students in this class are endlessly creative at manipulating images and coming up with unique ideas and images...but the next challenge for them is to put those images into a context that tells a story. And, of course, as a media project, they are expected to adjust pacing so it is appropriate and also to add appropriate text and music to support the narrative tale.

Also, as a media project, students are taking the idea of 'character description' and applying it to themselves, creating Who Am I? powerpoint, prezi.com or Frames 4 video. They are to describe 4 to 5 points about themselves, and include pictures...then, eventually, we will watch these and try to guess who in the class they describe!

GUEST SPEAKER! KEVIN MCGILL TO VISIT OUR CLASSROOM!

Kevin McGill,  writer of the teen fantasy novel Nikolas & Company, is going to be our guest speaker via Skype! I hope to have this occur this Friday! Recently, Kevin launched his book into space...yes, you read that correctly! He LAUNCHED HIS BOOK INTO SPACE! And we watched this video of it. As with previous guest speakers, like Luke Navarro and Chris Simon, students will be creating interview questions and 'acting like reporters' as they interview Kevin this Friday.

Kevin is also co-creator of the Guys Can Read website and podcast (along with Luke Navarro), where he reviews books, and thus can also speak to our ongoing review writing, which is the last and final point of this blog entry...

REVIEW WRITING: LAST MAJOR ASSIGNMENT!

With our short story study session completed, we will be spending quite a bit of class time on our final large writing assignment, the third in our non-fiction persuasive essays. Near the beginning of the year, students wrote a review about video games...then, in the winter, students wrote a review about one of the Romeo & Juliet movies...now, they have a choice, writing a review on either a video game, movie or book of their choice.

These are multi paragraph essays that comprise a summary section, an opinion section and a personal connection (I call these 'triple decker hamburgers' because there are three 'meat patties' aka paragraphs in the middle of two buns (an 'introduction' bun on top and a 'conclusion' bun on the bottom). As usual, students are working on including specific examples, transition words, a variety of sentences, a 'hook' to capture the readers attention (ie: by using a question as an opener).

If you are interested in seeing some of these great reviews, I have a STUDENT ON LINE PORTFOLIO that includes most of the game and movie reviews completed thus far.

As always, any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me!