September 23

ELA 9 Sept 23/16 Rating Student Endings: #2

“No, my dear. Said the landlady. Only you.”

After their long conversation, Billy started to feel woozy. “I’m very tired ma’am, but thank you for the tea. I’m going to head up to bed now.”

“Goodnight.” Billy said exhaustively.

“Goodnight love.” The landlady said with an uneasy smile. Billy started up the first flight of stairs, stumbling over his feet. As he was walking down the eerie hallway, he noticed the faint glow of light coming from under one of the doors. It was an unsettling colour, resembling a faded green. Billy’s curiosity overtook him, and he started towards the door. The floor creaked with every step he took. He made it to the door, and pushed his hand up against it. It felt chilly and cold. He felt like he had to go in. He slowly opened the door, which produced a strange creaking noise. A wave of cold air brushed against his face. He saw another faint green light in the corner of the room. The outline of a light switch appeared, and Billy flicked it on. A red light blinked on, and he could see pictures on the table. He looked at the first four, and saw two different handsome young men, who looked somewhat familiar. When he looked at the last picture, Billy had realized that the picture was of him.

    “I think you’re in the wrong room.” He heard a familiar voice behind him. He had just turned his head to see the landlady when he blacks out. Soon after, he wakes up in an odd room. He tried to move, but no matter how hard he tried, it felt as if a strange force was compelling him to stop. He shifted his eyes to the right, only to see another pair of eyes looking back at him. He then shifted his eyes to the door just as it creaked open. He saw a familiar figure enter into the darkened room. Her laugh sent shivers down his spine. She approached him, laughing with every step. She stood in front of him, staring into his eyes.

    “Would you like some tea, my dear? No? Alright, I’ll just enjoy it myself then.” Billy was struck with fear as he realized that no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t move. He felt paralyzed, just like the parrot and the dog that he had seen in the lobby. Just then, he heard sirens in the distance. Panic filled the woman’s face as she rushes out of the room and slammed the door. He could hear her frantically rushing around the house. A couple seconds later, a crashing sound could be heard from the lobby, and about a dozen footsteps rushing up the stairs. The police had arrived, and they were searching the rooms. Once they got to the third floor, Billy could hear the lady in the next room talking to herself. He heard the woman’s scream as the officers forced the door open. Billy heard high pitched shrieks and loud shouting from the room. Then, they busted down the door, rushing into the room that Billy was in. The officer walked up to the boys and shook his head, the sweat dripping off his face. He walked out of the room and consulted the other officers as they left the building.

Later that night, another mortician travelled to the bed and breakfast and went up to the third floor. The man stuffed Billy and the others into body bags, and had another mortician helped carry him out. The boys were tossed into a hearse, and they heard the engine start up as the vehicle started driving away. The car came to a halt, and the door swung open. Billy was steadily carried away. He was placed on a table as he was taken out of the bag, but he still couldn’t move. It was an uneasy place, the smell of mold filled the room. He lay frozen stiff, not moving his eyes at all. He was filled with terror, wondering if he would ever move again.

Billy was soon picked up again and placed into a wooden box. He heard the deafening banging of a hammer directly above him.He held himself being picked up, and slowly laid down. He knew from the faint humming noise, that he was placed in another vehicle. He felt a sudden halting motion as he came to a stop. He could only lay there, motionless and cold. Then, awhile later, he heard the driver’s’ door open and slammed shut. It was a long drive, but the car finally came to a gentle stop. He could hear the wood scrape against the floor of the vehicle as he was being dragged out. Billy was once again being carried, and then he felt himself dropping a couple feet down. He then heard the most terrifying sound he had ever heard in his life. The sound of dirt being piled on top of him.

Category: ELA 9 | LEAVE A COMMENT
September 23

ELA 9 Sept 23/16 Rating Student Endings: #1

“No, my dear. Said the landlady. Only you.”

As He says goodnight He start to stumble up the stairs dizzy. He makes his way into the bedroom he thought was his.. Then as He looks up, He saw two men standing there.

 

“Hey there,” said Billy as he slurs as he took a step forwards to two men. There was no response so he started walking towards them, and he heard a woman’s voice coming from behind him

 

“you like my pets?” Said the landlady.

 

“Pardon me,” he said.

 

“Billy this isn’t your room, here I’ll take you to your room.” She said

They started walking down the stairs, and they made it to the main floor, and Billy said: “didn’t we go too far this is the main floor is it not?”

“Oh dear, don’t you worry,” she said. Billy felt a pinching in his arm, and he didn’t get a chance to look down because everything turned black.

 

Billy tried to get up and see what was going on, but everything was still black. He tried with all his might to scream, but there was no scream coming from him. He had one last thing to try, but he couldn’t even move.

 

Next thing he knows he woke up in a completely white room with a bright light shining down on him. There was a man with a white lab coat on with blue gloves that walked in the room while putting On his surgeon mask. The landlady was having troubles getting into the room and out of the corner of his left eye, he could see she was brining in something. He realised it was one of the missing men; it was Mr Mulholland that she was brining inside ways. He looked out of the corner of his other eye, and he realised my temple wasn’t moving at all like the two stuffed lets.

 

Billy mumbled under his breath “they aren’t alive they are stuffed just like the dog and parrot.”

 

Then there was a big thud! He quickly looked over, and he saw her drop Mr Mulholland, and next thing he heard was

 

“GARY!! I thought he was dead!!!” Said the land lady.

 

“He was! You messed up again Teresa!!! Said Gary.

 

Billy asked “is that what you guys are going to do to me? Like what you did with all of them” as he tries to point his finger towards the dog the parrot and Mr temple?”

 

The landlady picked my Mulholland back up and carried him over to the rest.

 

“Gary, give him another dose and make sure it’s a least a strong one!” Said the lady as she started to walk towards him and whispered in his ear. “It’s okay you’ll just be with all my other pets.”

 

Then Billy started to close his eyes. He felt like he was just going to sleep because he woke up once again. But this time, he couldn’t move or couldn’t even move his eyes. He was in the room on the third with the other two men facing him. And he realised he was the 5th stuffed pet.

 

Category: ELA 9 | LEAVE A COMMENT
May 10

May 10/16 Inquiry Project Examples for Gr 9 ELA

Hi 9s! We started talking last Friday about the next big project we will tackle – completing an Inquiry Project in ELA. You decided to use the Unit on Survival and Conquering things, so your choice of topic for your inquiry will have to fit inside that theme in some way. It was difficult to start thinking of ideas for your project, though we spent some time trying to drum up ideas.

To get an idea of the different ways you can approach your inquiry question, I want you to look at some of the topics chosen by a group of students online.

Their teacher, Mr. Schoenbart, has gathered their inquiry ideas, blog links, and names together into this document here. Spend some time today looking at the inquiry questions and what sort of work went into each project.

  1. Track your search. Keep a record of the inquiry topic you looked into as well as the student blog address you looked through.
  2. Look through at least five blog sites.
  3. Once you’ve finished that, I want you to also watch a few student examples of the final project – the presentation of the inquiry project to your class. Watch the videos below AFTER you have carefully looked through at least 5 of the student inquiry projects on the link above. 

 

 

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May 6

May 6/16 Taking on an Inquiry Project – long term activity

We’re about to start our next unit and I’d like you to choose the direction we take. We have three Unit Themes to choose from: you need to discuss them as a group and decide which we’ll take on next and when you’ve decided we’re going to tackle it through an Inquiry Based Project. You’re each going to pick your own topic within that theme, research and develop an understanding of your topic, create a product of some type and then present it to the group. But we’ll get to that part later.

Your Units Left to Choose From:  Read through the description and the Big Questions for each and mull it over individually and with your classmates to narrow down which Unit we’ll move forward with.

  1. Indigenous and Norse Narratives: All cultures have their stories. These stories contain those beliefs and values that are considered important by each culture. They reflect a people’s worldview and allow us to gain insight into their cultural knowledge and heritage. Because Indigenous stories and traditions are an integral part of Canadian society, they provide important opportunities for us to deepen out understanding of who we are and to understand our linguistic and cultural roots.
    Big Questions:

    1. Why do people tell stories and tales?
    2. How do these stories help people understand their world?
    3. What lessons do we learn about people through these tales?
    4. How are these stories and tales alike and different?
    5. Why is it important for each generation to hear and to retell these tales?
  2. Surviving and Conquering: Survivors never give up, no matter what difficulties they find themselves facing. The word “survival” literally means “to live” but also implies the triumph of the spirit and the body over formidable obstacles. As individuals, and as groups, people face physical, emotional, and social difficulties that force them to survive and, indeed, conquer. They must draw on their inner resources and overcome the obstacles. In their attempt to survive, they often learn a great deal about themselves and others.
    Big Questions:

    1. What does it take to survive on planet Earth and in our society?
    2. What kinds of survival challenges have others faced?
    3. What decisions do people have to make to survive?
    4. How can we help one another survive?
    5. Why is important to do more than just survive?
  3. Our Shared Linguistic and Cultural Roots: Each language has its unique beauty, power, and history. English is no exception. It is one of the dominant languages in the world and a chief means of communication among people and nations. Understanding and being understood in English at home, in school, and in the work place are important for success. By studying how English works, its history, and its impact on others, we can better understand our linguistic identity and our heritage.
    Big Questions:

    1. When, where and how was English first used and by whom?
    2. How does a linguist analyze and explain the English language?
    3. How do we learn a language such as English?
    4. How is English used by different people in different roles and occupations?
    5. How is languages affected by gender, age, ethnic heritage group, and educational background?

After reviewing each, decide which would be your personal preference and reasoning for that choice. Share that decision with a friend and have them share their choice. Then share preferences with the larger group to hash out your final choice.

Good luck!

Category: ELA 9 | LEAVE A COMMENT
April 26

Ap 26/16 Learning to Leave Quality Comments – Peer Activity

Though it’s happened slowly, you’ve developed quite a bit of content in your student blog. I want to give you time today to reflect back on that work and the work of others in the class. In particular, today you’re going to spend some time learning about what quality comments include and share some feedback with peers in class.

You can follow along with this handout here. It identifies media content that is hyperlinked below.

 

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March 21

ELA 9 March 21/16 Getting ready to publish your novel ending

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?

  1. 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:
    1. 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?
    2. 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?
    3. 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.
    4. 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?
    5. 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?
    6. 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.)
    7. 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.

  1. Create a new blog post titled CC New Ending for The Outsiders novel.
  2. 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.
  3. Include/attach your Video explanation of the “Choices of the Author”. (I can help you attach this, if you’re unsure how to.)
  4. Include/attach your novel ending. You can add it as a PDF document, so it can be universally read.
  5. You can also consider attaching an image to your post that suits this post’s purpose.

Reading/Reviewing Peer Work

  1. 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.
  2. 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:
    1. Identify yourself
    2. Be sure to remain polite and encouraging
    3. You can use humour but avoid sarcasm
    4. If you disagree with something, be constructive (helpful) with your feedback.
    5. Be specific with the feedback you give. Relate a comment to a specific part/phrase of the original post.
    6. 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.

 

Category: ELA 9 | LEAVE A COMMENT
March 15

Mar 15/16 Review Steps for Rewriting end of The Outsiders

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!

  1. Go through your Google doc and add a Comment to identify when each of the following steps occurs:
    1. any other rising action steps
    2. beginning of the climax action
    3. beginning of falling action
    4. beginning of your resolution
  2. 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?
  3. 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.
  4. Formatting features to review/correct:
    1. Any spoken dialogue (other than Ponyboy’s internal narration) needs to use quotation marks.
      1. Make sure there’s a beginning and end quotation mark for each time you’ve used them.
      2. Make sure there’s no space between the quotation mark and beginning of the spoken phrase.
      3. 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.
    2. Capital letters
      1. Check that each beginning of a sentence includes a capital letter.
      2. All names and names of places need capitals as well.
    3. Check that, if you used indentations, you used them consistently for your whole piece of writing.
    4. 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.
  5. Running Edits through Grammarly/Hemmingway
    1. 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”.
    2. 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.
    3. 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.
Category: ELA 9 | LEAVE A COMMENT