Personal Voice / Life Stories

First a word about technology....

Computer/Technology Guidelines
When I taught Computer Literacy for SUNY Plattsburg, I warned my students about the dependability of computer technology. Don't trust it. Everyone knows Murphy's Law: Anything That Can Go Wrong, Will Go Wrong.

Well, with computers, we need to add another Law: "Anything That Can't Go Wrong, Will Find Some Way Of Going Wrong."
Please follow the following technology guidelines for my classes:

• Do NOT email me your work. Being responsible for my work is more than enough.

• If your printer fails you, email your work to a friend to print out for you. You all have friends.

• If necessary, email your work to yourself as an attached file. Open the file at school and print it out before class starts.

• If absolutely necessary, bring the file on a thumb drive, early in the morning, and ask a teacher for help getting it printed. Student profiles may not have access to the USB ports. This is a last resort only.

• Back up your files! This cannot be emphasized strongly enough. The Computer God is all rules and no mercy and He will smite you. Save your files to a removable disc.

• While working, save constantly!

• Make sure the programs you use are compatible with the school's programs. If you don't have MS Office at home, you can very often save files in an Office format: File Menu > Save as > Save as Type > Select appropriate program from the pull down menu.

Grade 12

• Read, annotated and responded to the introduction to Man the Mythmaker by W.T. Jewkes.
• Discussed Reflection journal expectations. Journal entries are to be meaningful and reflective: explore you inner landscape and play with language. Write memories, beliefs, opinions. Try to avoid the everyday trips to the mall and football practice.
• Tech guidelines (period 7, will do pd 1 and 4 on Monday)
• Group 'A' (1st period and half of 4th) is due 9/18.
• Group 'B' (2nd half of 4th and 7th) is due 9/25
• Discussed 'voice' in writing. identified examples of personal voice in my letter.
• Defined 'innocence' as the inexperience of childhood. Loss of innocence will be an ongoing theme in class.
• Essay #1: When were you no longer a child? Choose one moment when you learned the world and life wasn't as you had believed it was. Tell the story. Consider that this is a personal essay so filter it as needed so it can be shared with your classmates and myself.
• Draft due Wednesday, 9/12 (Didn't have enough time to explain the assignment to period 7, so pushed the due date back one day)

Grade 10

• In-class journal: If this stage of your life is a chapter in a longer story, what is the title? Why?
• 60 second edit!
• Share some and discuss. The title should point to the theme. Your writing about it should reveal the tone.
• Reviewed yesterday's vocab.
• Distributed directions for a writing assignment:
• Theme/Tone Assignment (choose

1) Title

 Introduction

 Define the tone and theme of your life right now as a thesis statement. Discuss in general terms.

 Discuss your theme and supporting details. What is the theme of your life right now? Why? Themes may center around a conflict (you against _________.), desire (I want _________, but __________ is in the way.), good fortune, friendship, family, etc. If you have difficulty finding a theme, please see me for guidance. The title you’ve chosen should refer to this theme.

 Discuss the main ‘tone’ in your life right now.. What is the primary feeling in your story? Why? Give examples. Describe particular events that represent the tone, and your feelings about it.

 Conclusions: Did you learn anything from this exercise?

OR

2) Write an actual narrative... the story of this stage of your life.

a) You may center the story around one single event, written in story form.

i) Think plot, setting, conflict

 Use language that will imply the tone. Again, think of a title that will point you in the direction of a theme... but don't state the theme directly until the end of the story. Write this from either the first or third person point of view.

• Introduced two more vocab words:

3. Mood: the emotions that you feel while you are reading.

4. Irony is a literary or rhetorical device, in which there is a clash or discordance between what a speaker / writer /actor says or does, and what he or she means or what is generally understood. There are three types of irony: verbal, dramatic and situational.

• Monday: Start the short story unit.