Yeah to Andra, who is in 090-017 (1:00-2:30) for being the first to take the blog challenge! Read her blog here and become a follower!
http://andrajones.blogspot.com/
Write on!
Thursday, February 25, 2010
February 25, 2010
Today we workshopped our narrative essays, so if you missed class you are going to have to procure your own workshopping...don't forget to turn in your rough drafts with your final draft on Tuesday. Please staple or paperclip it all together!
Journal #12: Mid-Semester Reflection
We're almost halfway through the semester! Reflect on your process and progress in this class so far: where you were when you began, where you are now, where you'd like to be. What has been working well for you? Not so well? What can you improve? Where should you be proud of yourself? Write for 10 minutes.
Dictionary Word of the Day:
gregarious\grih-GAIR-ee-us\ , adjective;
1.Tending to form a group with others of the same kind.
2.Seeking and enjoying the company of others.
Quotes:
True locusts, which are actually certain kinds of grasshoppers, are usually solitary and rather sluggish, but when they are crowded they enter a gregarious and highly active migratory phase.
-- Gilbert Waldbauer, Millions of Monarchs, Bunches of Beetles
In the newly discovered gene, the change of a single unit of DNA converts the worm from a solitary forager into a gregarious diner.
-- "Can Social Behavior of Man Be Glimpsed in a Lowly Worm?", New York Times, September 7, 1998
My efforts to cultivate an identity as a strong silent type have consistently been undermined by my gregarious nature and my delight in conversation.
-- Marty Jezer, Stuttering: A Life Bound Up in Words
Origin:
Gregarious is from Latin gregarius, "belonging to a herd or flock," from grex, greg: "herd, flock."
Who can use this in a sentence? Post in comments...
Journal #12: Mid-Semester Reflection
We're almost halfway through the semester! Reflect on your process and progress in this class so far: where you were when you began, where you are now, where you'd like to be. What has been working well for you? Not so well? What can you improve? Where should you be proud of yourself? Write for 10 minutes.
Dictionary Word of the Day:
gregarious\grih-GAIR-ee-us\ , adjective;
1.Tending to form a group with others of the same kind.
2.Seeking and enjoying the company of others.
Quotes:
True locusts, which are actually certain kinds of grasshoppers, are usually solitary and rather sluggish, but when they are crowded they enter a gregarious and highly active migratory phase.
-- Gilbert Waldbauer, Millions of Monarchs, Bunches of Beetles
In the newly discovered gene, the change of a single unit of DNA converts the worm from a solitary forager into a gregarious diner.
-- "Can Social Behavior of Man Be Glimpsed in a Lowly Worm?", New York Times, September 7, 1998
My efforts to cultivate an identity as a strong silent type have consistently been undermined by my gregarious nature and my delight in conversation.
-- Marty Jezer, Stuttering: A Life Bound Up in Words
Origin:
Gregarious is from Latin gregarius, "belonging to a herd or flock," from grex, greg: "herd, flock."
Who can use this in a sentence? Post in comments...
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
February 23, 2010
Hi Class,
Remember that on Thursday we are workshopping the rough drafts of your narrative essays. Please bring four copies and come ready to work. Also, I'll be checking journals on Thursday, so if you need to catch up, catch up!
Journal #11: Your signature story
Okay, so for this entry I want you to think of a story you've told many times. This could be something funny or sad or whatever that may have happened to you or someone else...whenever you have an audience you like to tell this particular story because it gets a certain type of reaction. This should be a story you've told at least 5 times before. Think about how you've altered the story as you've told it, maybe made it longer here, funnier here, whatever. Each time you've told it, you've tried to improve it...so now write that story, exactly as you tell it, the way you tell it. Write for 10 minutes.
Remember that on Thursday we are workshopping the rough drafts of your narrative essays. Please bring four copies and come ready to work. Also, I'll be checking journals on Thursday, so if you need to catch up, catch up!
Journal #11: Your signature story
Okay, so for this entry I want you to think of a story you've told many times. This could be something funny or sad or whatever that may have happened to you or someone else...whenever you have an audience you like to tell this particular story because it gets a certain type of reaction. This should be a story you've told at least 5 times before. Think about how you've altered the story as you've told it, maybe made it longer here, funnier here, whatever. Each time you've told it, you've tried to improve it...so now write that story, exactly as you tell it, the way you tell it. Write for 10 minutes.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
February 18, 2010
Don't forget that we made a change to the syllabus, so under Discussion TBA for next time make sure to read "Adverbs" in your Sin and Syntax books, as well as the essay by Sherman Alexie.
Journal #10: Fictional Narrative
Pick one of the pictures below. Imagine that this is a crucial day in the life of this person, that a photographer managed to swoop in and capture the critical event or moment in their lives that was going to change everything. Write about it for 10 minutes.
Journal #10: Fictional Narrative
Pick one of the pictures below. Imagine that this is a crucial day in the life of this person, that a photographer managed to swoop in and capture the critical event or moment in their lives that was going to change everything. Write about it for 10 minutes.
Pencil Shavings by Nancy Stohlman
Okay, class, since no one wants to be the first to post, I'll step up! This is a piece I've been working on during our class...it's sort of a creative monster piece...
Pencil Shavings
When I was in second grade I took a standardized test that reported I was a gifted child, and everyone became preoccupied with my giftedness, and I got a big, adult-sized desk in my bedroom. Now, instead of watching television after dinner, I got to sit at my big-girl desk and study.
In the top desk drawer was a slew of pencils and an old pencil sharpener, the kind where the razor slices the wood as you spin the pencil around and around. I sat and sharpened pencils over my open fourth grade notebooks and watched perfect coils emerge like chocolate curls on a fancy cake. They wanted to skip me to fourth grade mid-year, skip third grade altogether, me, a second grader, seven years old. The kids in the fourth grade class were so tall, their limbs so fleshy and large, I cowered under their curious stares…I couldn’t do it…if I didn’t go to third grade how would I learn cursive? Multiplication? I watched delicate pencil shavings curl around themselves. I spent hours shaving cascades of thin wooden curls instead of answering the questions in my new workbook on the evolution of dinosaurs I was ashamed I didn’t understand. When the pencil was brought to a nub, a slight bit of red or blue paint tipping the edges of the wooden curls, I would save them in the top desk drawer.
After many weeks the top pencil drawer was full of thin ribbon curls, tightly wound and loose, symmetrical and skeewonkers, red, blue, yellow, green, black tips like butterfly wings. I imagined future sculptures I might create, arranging them by color, size, shape, trying not to disturb them too much since they were so delicate.
One day my dad found the drawer full of pencil curls. “What’s all this trash doing in here?” he said. “Throw it away.”
“But…I think they’re pretty.”
“They’re not pretty, they’re trash. Only trash loves trash. Are you trash?”
I shook my head. I was dizzy as my dad took out the drawer and handed it to me. I carried it to the bathroom and said goodbye to all my beautiful, perfect coils cascading into the garbage can, disintegrating on impact. The drawer was empty. Dust hung in the air. I returned to my big-girl desk and the workbooks I didn’t understand.
Pencil Shavings
When I was in second grade I took a standardized test that reported I was a gifted child, and everyone became preoccupied with my giftedness, and I got a big, adult-sized desk in my bedroom. Now, instead of watching television after dinner, I got to sit at my big-girl desk and study.
In the top desk drawer was a slew of pencils and an old pencil sharpener, the kind where the razor slices the wood as you spin the pencil around and around. I sat and sharpened pencils over my open fourth grade notebooks and watched perfect coils emerge like chocolate curls on a fancy cake. They wanted to skip me to fourth grade mid-year, skip third grade altogether, me, a second grader, seven years old. The kids in the fourth grade class were so tall, their limbs so fleshy and large, I cowered under their curious stares…I couldn’t do it…if I didn’t go to third grade how would I learn cursive? Multiplication? I watched delicate pencil shavings curl around themselves. I spent hours shaving cascades of thin wooden curls instead of answering the questions in my new workbook on the evolution of dinosaurs I was ashamed I didn’t understand. When the pencil was brought to a nub, a slight bit of red or blue paint tipping the edges of the wooden curls, I would save them in the top desk drawer.
After many weeks the top pencil drawer was full of thin ribbon curls, tightly wound and loose, symmetrical and skeewonkers, red, blue, yellow, green, black tips like butterfly wings. I imagined future sculptures I might create, arranging them by color, size, shape, trying not to disturb them too much since they were so delicate.
One day my dad found the drawer full of pencil curls. “What’s all this trash doing in here?” he said. “Throw it away.”
“But…I think they’re pretty.”
“They’re not pretty, they’re trash. Only trash loves trash. Are you trash?”
I shook my head. I was dizzy as my dad took out the drawer and handed it to me. I carried it to the bathroom and said goodbye to all my beautiful, perfect coils cascading into the garbage can, disintegrating on impact. The drawer was empty. Dust hung in the air. I returned to my big-girl desk and the workbooks I didn’t understand.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
February 16, 2010
Hi class!
The flash fiction handouts are in my box in 313 for any of you who missed class. Please have them read before Thursday. Most of these stories come from the book Fast Forward Vol II, which I co-edit. Here's a link to read more: Fast Forward
Here is one of the other stories, Hills Like White Elephants by Hemingway.
Also, if you haven't already, please read "Verbs" from Sin and Syntax. We'll talk about this more Thursday.
Journal #9: Coming of Age
Think back to a moment or event in childhood that "grew" you up. Maybe you even think of your childhood ending at that point, or maybe you just see it as when you became more adult. Write for 10 minutes.
Assignment: Narrative Prompt Due Thursday. You are going to eavesdrop on a conversation and write it verbatim, using proper dialogue punctuation. Check your syllabus for more info. Please turn in typed and in proper formatting. One page.
The flash fiction handouts are in my box in 313 for any of you who missed class. Please have them read before Thursday. Most of these stories come from the book Fast Forward Vol II, which I co-edit. Here's a link to read more: Fast Forward
Here is one of the other stories, Hills Like White Elephants by Hemingway.
Also, if you haven't already, please read "Verbs" from Sin and Syntax. We'll talk about this more Thursday.
Journal #9: Coming of Age
Think back to a moment or event in childhood that "grew" you up. Maybe you even think of your childhood ending at that point, or maybe you just see it as when you became more adult. Write for 10 minutes.
Assignment: Narrative Prompt Due Thursday. You are going to eavesdrop on a conversation and write it verbatim, using proper dialogue punctuation. Check your syllabus for more info. Please turn in typed and in proper formatting. One page.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
February 11, 2010
Hi Class,
Great discussions today! I'm also enjoying your essays a lot, and I'll have them back for you Tuesday.
I handed out the short handout on Fredrick Douglas. I'll leave extras in my box in 313. Also I found SIX photocopies of the "Verbs" chapter in Sin and Syntax, which is due next time. They are also in my box--first come first serve.
Here's a Link to A Homemade Education by Malcolm X: Click here
Journal Prompt #8: A Life-Changing Event
Think of an event, or even just a moment in your life that changed everything for you. After this happened, you were never the same. It could be that things changed for the better, for the worse, or maybe just changed, but you could never go back. Write for 10 minutes.
Dictionary Word of the Day
(Who can use it in a sentence? Post in the comments)
coquetry\KOH-ki-tree; koh-KE-tree\ , noun;
1.Dalliance, flirtation.
Quotes:
'You were probably very bored by it,' he said, catching at once, in mid-air, this ball of coquetry that she had thrown to him.
-- Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
Her pose, quite natural for a woman of the East, might perhaps in a Frenchwoman, have suggested a slightly affected coquetry.
-- Alexandre Dumas père, The Count of Monte Cristo
Madame coquetted with him in the most captivating and naive manner, with eyes, gestures, and a profusion of compliments, till the Colonel's old head felt thirty years younger on his padded shoulders. Edna marveled, not comprehending. She herself was almost devoid of coquetry.
-- Kate Chopin, The Awakening
Origin:
Coquetry, French coquetterie, is from coquette, the feminine form of French coquet, "flirtatious man," diminutive of coq, "rooster, cock." The adjective form is coquettish. The verb coquet (also coquette) means "to flirt or trifle with."
Great discussions today! I'm also enjoying your essays a lot, and I'll have them back for you Tuesday.
I handed out the short handout on Fredrick Douglas. I'll leave extras in my box in 313. Also I found SIX photocopies of the "Verbs" chapter in Sin and Syntax, which is due next time. They are also in my box--first come first serve.
Here's a Link to A Homemade Education by Malcolm X: Click here
Journal Prompt #8: A Life-Changing Event
Think of an event, or even just a moment in your life that changed everything for you. After this happened, you were never the same. It could be that things changed for the better, for the worse, or maybe just changed, but you could never go back. Write for 10 minutes.
Dictionary Word of the Day
(Who can use it in a sentence? Post in the comments)
coquetry\KOH-ki-tree; koh-KE-tree\ , noun;
1.Dalliance, flirtation.
Quotes:
'You were probably very bored by it,' he said, catching at once, in mid-air, this ball of coquetry that she had thrown to him.
-- Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
Her pose, quite natural for a woman of the East, might perhaps in a Frenchwoman, have suggested a slightly affected coquetry.
-- Alexandre Dumas père, The Count of Monte Cristo
Madame coquetted with him in the most captivating and naive manner, with eyes, gestures, and a profusion of compliments, till the Colonel's old head felt thirty years younger on his padded shoulders. Edna marveled, not comprehending. She herself was almost devoid of coquetry.
-- Kate Chopin, The Awakening
Origin:
Coquetry, French coquetterie, is from coquette, the feminine form of French coquet, "flirtatious man," diminutive of coq, "rooster, cock." The adjective form is coquettish. The verb coquet (also coquette) means "to flirt or trifle with."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)