In our Unit on Equality, we accept that people need to offer assistance to others in the world. When and how can we do that? Who Speaks Out For Those in Need in the World?
Critical Thinking Activity: Can you “trust” this website?
You’re about 30 – 40 minutes to assess the contents of a website to determine whether you can “trust” the website. Then you have some reflecting to do about how easily a message can be constructed online, but how important it is to use critical thinking techniques and personal judgement in evaluating information online.
This leads to our next task, viewing the German movie Die Welle. Before watching the film, I’d like you to watch the YouTube trailer. It has subtitles and will give you a clear overview of what this movie will be about. While watching the preview, consider the following questions:
What is the danger in becoming apathetic about global events? Could people be manipulated into following another dictator like many Germans were during the Holocaust?
You’ll be directed to return to this blog post after viewing the film to develop a personal response to it. How might your ideas have changed or been confirmed after watching it?
Alright, so you have finished all your creative writing to develop your own end to the novel in as unique a way as you desired. You followed several steps in the drafting/editing process to filter out several types of mistakes in an effort to clear up your work before publication. Now you’re just near the point of publishing, but there are a few more steps to complete.
What decisions did you face and what went into your decision-making that led to the final result?
Through a method of your choosing, record yourself explaining your Choices as the Author. Some potential questions you may ask yourself (and explain to your potential audience) includes:
From the start of the assignment, what about the end of the novel did you most want to happen differently? What were the biggest changes you wanted to make and why?
You planned out steps of your novel ending to hit the plot line accurately, like events for the new “climax”, new “falling action” moments, and a newly developed “resolution”. Explain whether this was helpful to have made an outline or guide for the rest of your writing or if you felt it held you back? Can you explain a specific moment it was challenging to stay on course?
We have had several discussions about the significance of developing a story’s “climax”. What were some of your thoughts or what was your technique in polishing your story’s climax? Are you satisfied with the point of tension you developed or is there still something about it you’re not quite happy with? Discuss your mental self-talk surrounding the climax writing.
Without giving away your ending, explain to your listener what you think is unique about your novel ending. Is it still somewhat similar to the novel’s ending or did you want to change it completely. Is there more of an ending you could have written if you continued on with the story? What ideas for a new ending did you have in mind that you decided against – and why did you decide not to use that idea?
Consider and explain what you liked about this activity, writing your own ending of a novel, and also what you maybe didn’t like about it. In comparison to letting you write your own story from start to finish, what was unique about being asked to “take over” from an established author and story to change the ending?
If you have read some of your peer’s writing, what do you notice about their style and quality of writing compared to your own? How do you feel you hold up against comparisons? Is there something in your writing that you feel you did particularly well with or other parts you feel a bit weaker in? Are there any qualities of your writing you can identify as needing improvement, in a positive way? (This shouldn’t include negative self-talk, but setting some potential goals to improve on in future work.)
If you had to write an introduction to your version of the ending, what would you say to a reader who’s about to start reading your end of The Outsiders?
Posting your work.
Create a new blog post titled CC New Ending for The Outsiders novel.
Write a brief introduction to your new ending. You can explain to a potential reader what your assignment was and what was involved in developing your new ending.
Include/attach your Video explanation of the “Choices of the Author”. (I can help you attach this, if you’re unsure how to.)
Include/attach your novel ending. You can add it as a PDF document, so it can be universally read.
You can also consider attaching an image to your post that suits this post’s purpose.
Reading/Reviewing Peer Work
Now you’re going to read! Read some of the novel endings of friends in the class. You can pick someone who’s work you reviewed and read their final, finished product. You should also pick someone’s work you haven’t talked with much through the process, so their ending may be completely new to you.
Adding comments: We want to support one another as young writers, even though we will all have different skill levels. To add appropriate and valuable comments, consider the following steps for each comment:
Identify yourself
Be sure to remain polite and encouraging
You can use humour but avoid sarcasm
If you disagree with something, be constructive (helpful) with your feedback.
Be specific with the feedback you give. Relate a comment to a specific part/phrase of the original post.
Consider your spelling before you press “send”. You can run your comment through Grammarly or type it into a Word and scan before pasting it in as your Comment.
So you’ve been writing up a storm! The end of the novel we read wasn’t satisfying enough to you, so you are rewriting the ending! Good for you!
As you’re winding up, here are a few review steps for you to follow to put a real polish to your work!
Go through your Google doc and add a Comment to identify when each of the following steps occurs:
any other rising action steps
beginning of the climax action
beginning of falling action
beginning of your resolution
Review the length of your writing. You picked up after “the rumble” and before the “climax, but you shouldn’t have too much more written leading up to your climax; the climax should come fairly soon in your writing. You also want to consider how long or short your climax development is, the falling action and resolution.
Ask yourself if things are well-paced or evenly spread out in your writing? Or do some things take a long time to happen while others are short and choppy?
Peer Edits – Finding the Errors by Ear
You can look over your writing 10 times and still not find errors that are right there, because you’re so involved with your own work; you’ll miss seeing them. That’s where a peer editor comes in. Pick a partner or friend who will read your story out loud and record it for you. Then, while you listen to them reading it, listen for the pauses or moments of confusion in their voice when what’s written slows them down from smoothly reading and understanding. Those will be the places where you’ll have to review your work again for corrections.
Formatting features to review/correct:
Any spoken dialogue (other than Ponyboy’s internal narration) needs to use quotation marks.
Make sure there’s a beginning and end quotation mark for each time you’ve used them.
Make sure there’s no space between the quotation mark and beginning of the spoken phrase.
Make sure if the dialogue addresses someone, it uses a comma to separate their name from the part communicated. (see red comma)
Make sure you use a comma in the spoken dialogue if the whole sentence doesn’t end there. (see blue comma)
Ex: “Darry, you’ll never make it,” I cried out as he headed down the road.
Capital letters
Check that each beginning of a sentence includes a capital letter.
All names and names of places need capitals as well.
Check that, if you used indentations, you used them consistently for your whole piece of writing.
Possessive S corrections. If there is ownership of something, an object or emotions, it requires an ‘s.
Ponyboy’s brother, Dally’s rage, Johnny’s injuries, Darry’s mood.
Running Edits through Grammarly/Hemmingway
Copy your writing text into a new Grammarly document and let it scan for errors. Download the PDF from Grammarly and upload it to your AR Assess and Reflect Page in your Blog as another example of corrections identified in your writing. You can label it “March/2016 Grammarly Edit Suggestions of my Writing”.
Use Grammarly to decide on the suggested edits – accept them or not. When finished, copy your edited work and paste it into your Google doc BELOW your first, original draft. Be sure to identify this as edited work.
There’s another program you can run your work through for edits. It’s only downloaded on the back/corner pc for now. It helps identify passive voice and difficult/very difficult sentences that need to be corrected or broken up.
In your notes, you’re asked to look through the following Taxedo representations of the song “Eleanor Rigby” to decide which version of the representation you feel best relays the tone of the song.
In your notes, write down which lettered representation you choose and be sure to explain the “why” of your choice.
The human experience is more alike than not alike. That means we can read literature about character experiences that are wildly different from our own and still relate to them, even if they’re from centuries ago.
The focus of this section is on the qualities of being human, both positive and negative. There are numerous words you can look to in picking out a specific quality of being, like the list below.
You can also listen to an audio recording of the story narrated. This one (video below) uses good inflection for emotion and pronunciation; if you speed it up slightly, it’s more natural to listen to and won’t take the full 58 minutes listed on the video screen. Here’s the video with the right speed setting:
Alternate Audio Recording of “What Men Live By” Read by Me (Waldner)
Pt 1 (29 minutes)
Pt 2 (17 minutes)
Photo Analysis Website:Photo Contest World Archive (several years to choose from) Disclaimer Note: When selecting your pictures, understand these are published photos on a public website. There are several that are shocking and some may be inappropriate for school. Do your best to filter and select appropriate images.
Understanding Types of Irony in Writing: Situational, Verbal, and Dramatic.
The following video clip from The Shawshank Redemption includes an example of Verbal Irony. See if you can recognize it from the clip and image that follows.
Audio Recording Version #1 read aloud in class w student comments
“The Pardoner’s Tale” – pt 1
“The Pardoner’s Tale” – pt 2 read aloud in class
Version #2 Read alone by me (Waldner) without interruption (24 minutes)
Compose/Create Option: “Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked” Song comparison
This still from the lyrics/video makes clear the focus of this section’s literature – “we’re all the same” ultimately.
Background on Chaucer (optional)
Our next text to study is written by Geoffrey Chaucer who lived from 1343 – 1400 in the Middle Ages. Consider once again the potential of a text written in a time with a completely different culture and way of living to be still studied and applied to our way of life and values over 600 years later.
This text, “The Pardoner’s Tale” is only one portion of a much larger text called The Cantebury Tales.
It includes a number of sub-section texts. The premise of the story is that a number of travellers are together and each takes a turn telling a story that relates to their life or values. This is the story of a Pardoner, a man of the church who goes around and sells “pardons from God” to believers. This was before a time when most people, peasants included, would have been educated and able to read, so their belief in the Church came only from what the religious men told of them. No one was relieved of their sins by talking to God directly through prayer – instead they would pay a price to a Pardoner and have their sins cleansed.
This is a translated version – from Old English to Modern English.
You might enjoy watching this animated version of “The Pardoner’s Tale”, but my emphatic request is that you wait until after you’ve read/studied the text to view this.
We’re spending a few days just exploring public speaking. Yesterday, you got into pairs, did quick interviews of each other, and one by one had to come up to the front to face down your peers and “introduce” your partner to the group. This is all just for practice. It’s intended for you to get a bit more comfortable with being up at the front of the classroom, looking from that perspective towards your peers. It’s my hope that your own Speeches Tuesday will go a bit more smoothly for you, then, if you’ve gotten to feel what it’s like to stand and face the group.
A few examples of public speaking that you can learn from are posted below. The Monica Lewinski one is an example of someone who has clear experience in delivering a speech. Watch her body language, where she holds her arms, the movement of her hands, how her head is held high, natural expressions on her face, eye contact spread around and as well all the elements of using her voice, like pauses, inflection, and volume.
In the second video, Ellen Page comes out in front of an assembly of people. Her body language gestures seem much different. Students joined the Socrative Backchannelling room to add their observations while watching the Page video. We noticed, when reviewing their feedback, how many of them picked up on the actress’s distracting hand gestures.
You can also review the Rubrics you’ll be evaluated by for your Speech and Presentation Tuesday.
echniques and personal judgement in evaluating information online.
