Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Chair Writing Activity

Writing Homework

You have a writing assignment that is due on Thursday.  Your assignment is to write a character description based upon a picture of a chair.  

Your first paragraph should contain the name of the person who would sit in that chair and what they look like.
Your second paragraph should contain at least five sentences describing their personality.
The third paragraph should be a description of what they carry in their pockets or pocketbook.
The fourth and final paragraph should be description of the most unexpected thing that person has ever done.

Because this assignment is clearly split  up into paragraphs, you must have paragraphs on your paper!!!  Your work should be typed, if possible, or be neat.  You should edit it for spelling mistakes and other punctuation errors.




Florence Boodle

The name of the woman who sits in this chair is Ms. Florence (aka Floss) Boodle.  She’s a thin, insecure woman who  wears slightly too much blue eye shadow and rouge.  She prefers designer clothes and always smells of French perfume.
Floss is the kind of woman who expects you to open doors for her.  She rarely shakes hands, but will kiss you on both cheeks, even if she doesn’t know you.  She loves talking about shopping and the great bargains she gets.  Shopping is her greatest sport and she’s very competitive about it.  She’s generous to herself, but very stingy with others, considering her wealth.  She has never held a job.
In the Louis Vuitton pocketbook Floss always carries there are twenty gold and platinum credit cards, her psychiatrist's phone number, perfume, migrane medicine.  She also currently has some Euros from her last trip to Paris.  She has a special brag book with more than 30 pictures of all of her children.

The most unexpected thing Floss has ever done was to spend a year of her life as a volunteer helper to Mother Theresa when she was 19 years old.

Monday, August 25, 2014

When Writing Workshop Isn’t Working, Mark Overmeyer
Wendy Cannon

Points to Remember

Students—Writing and sharing IS expected.

Choice is key--Teacher can provide a topic/prompt that is general enough that will allow choice but also give some focus. For example the smells writing we did at SMWP orientation.

Anchor Writing--provide common experiences that all students can relate to, refer back to, gives everyone a positive experience with writing.
 
Poetry--capitalize on word choice, simile, strong verbs and this can lead to more vivid prose

Assessment--purpose needs to be clear to both students and teachers-for a grade or to have a body of work to see whether there has been growth.

Conventions--have kids look for their own conventions errors, using a different color, this way you can see what they can fix. Priority to have kids be able to edit as they work—want them to be as independent as possible. Kids need to be comfortable writing and be able to get enough on the page before focusing on conventions and sentence structure.

Overmeyer says that story should focus on actions, Lamott says the big focus is having good characters first, then see what they do. In Neglected R book, Monica Wood also stated that the action of the character (in response to 'trouble') is what makes the story interesting.

Teaching the Neglected "R" Response

http://www.haikudeck.com/p/xqf1BJFGpj

Hi Everyone, I played around with Haiku Deck.

Hope all is well with everyone and that you had a restful summer!