Wednesday, May 28

We began class by close reading the chapter"Father" from the book Living Up the Street. This is Daily Assignment #19.

Following the close reading, we had about 30 minutes of time for typing our memoirs. With five minutes remaining, everyone printed a copy of their work thus far for Mr. Andrews and myself to review. If you were not in class today to print out your draft, please email it to me at ncliedl@gmail.com.

Tuesday, May 27

Today was a memoir work day. Daily Assignment #18 accompanied today's work. Rough drafts are due on Friday.  

Friday, May 23

Today we continued analyzing memoir writing, reading an excerpt from This Boy's Life by Tobias Wolff and watched some of the accompanying film. Our work today was Daily Assignment #17.

Thursday, May 22

We began today by analyzing a passage of Richard Wright's Black Boy. The passage uses exceptional description to set the scene. To write a successful memoir, you will also have to use similarly vivid description. 

Following our close reading of Black Boy, we worked on our memoirs for the remainder of the hour. You will be marked on your productivity and in class work for every day we work on memoirs for the remainder of the quarter. You have to be here to get points. Each day you can earn 5 daily work points. If you are on your phone or not working productively, you will receive 1 or 2 points out of 5. 

Tuesday, May 20 and Wednesday May 21

We got started on our written memoirs. To help us get started, we completed Daily Assignment #15, in which we brainstormed some ideas, narrowed them down, and finally, chose one, which we outlined in greater depth. Before you begin writing your memoir, you must complete brainstorming and outlining to show you're ready to write!

Monday, May 19

Three weeks left!!! Today we finished "The Things They Carried" with students reading independently. To wrap up the book, we had a short quiz which is Daily Assignment #14. 

Friday, May 16

We began the chapter "Lives of the Dead," which is the final chapter of the book. The big question we looked at is "How do the different characters/soldiers deal with death?"

Additionally, I provided an overview of the final project, which is a 2-3 page written personal memoir and some kind of visual presentation. Students will present during final exam time during the finals week.

Finally, we had some fun working with Figurative Language, which is Daily Assignment #13.