Tuesday, September 23 - Friday, September 26

Welcome! The jury is still out on whether I will blog daily or weekly. Last week was a bit crazy for me adjusting to a new school in a big hurry. So thank you. It was a very positive start and you have made me feel most welcome. I am looking forward to the rest of the semester.

On Tuesday, we jumped right in to discussing What Makes a Good Story? During class, hopefully you spoke to a few different people around the room and heard some good stories from their lives. Towards the end of the class, I asked you to create some lists of things in your life that you can use later this term for writing subjects.

Wednesday, we listened to more stories from classmates. This time we focused on repeating back parts of the story and again discussed elements that are important to a quality story such as: an introduction, a conflict, a climax and a conclusion. Furthermore, we talked about other story details such as suspense, humour, making the story relatable, elaborating, showing rather than telling... We did our first timed write today.

On Thursday, I asked you to tell a story to a partner that began: Man was I ever freaked out. There certainly seemed to be some lively stories around the room. I enjoyed the energy! Today the focus was on how to begin a story. We listened to some introductions from around the room (thanks!) Then we discussed, based on examples, what makes a good story opening. I asked everyone to create a new opening for the story they had written on Wednesday.

Friday, I gave everyone in the class a file folder. This folder is where you will keep works in progress and completed pieces as a record of your learning in the class. We worked more on story writing elements today, but the focus was on description. We created a pretty exhaustive list, I think!, of things to remember that will bring great description into your narrative writing: -ed descriptions (ex. fried potatoes), using specific word choices (cheetah, not just cat), using comparisons such as similes and metaphors, using the 5 senses, -ly adverbs, imagery. Towards the end of the class we worked on taking topics sort of like those that can appear on the provincial exam, and using our listmania story ideas to deal with the topics.
Great work this week. I am super impressed by the high level of engagement and thinking and co-operation that I saw.