Brittish Accents Aren't Always the Solution

I just thought I would share one of my papers that I wrote for a free write activity, its good:

It was a day like any other. I had walked into class, eager to learn and socialize with my peers. I took my normal seat inbetween my high school friend and my newer college friend and began to jabber on about different things that had occurred throughout my day. I would recieve some witty comments back, either at the expense of some unlucky soul in my current story, or at my own. But it didn't matter. I loved these two friends, smart ass comments and all. In fact, their smart comments and the witty repartee was the exact reason why earlier in that semester I had chosen to join these two people, as well as other fantastic students, in a group teach for our English 4790 class. The final presentation of the group project would not take place for weeks, but until then, I lovingly chose the seat between these two dear people, every class period.
It's hard to tell what began the downward spiral of the bond between my friends and I. It might have started on the one fateful day where I decided to be in the group with them. OR it might have been the day that a simple assignment was given to us, ending our friendship in a mess of one act plays, Brittish accents, grocery lists, and broken hearts.


I think thats all I'll write. My group knows what they did.

Minus Jen and Amanda. They're pretty cool.

That leaves only John and Drew who are uncool. Incase you have bad detective skills.

No more pesky hot air balloons

So I found this advertisement on a website, and I thought it was pretty creative. It always seems like everyone is looking for the tool with the most power, the car with the most horsepower, and the house that costs the most money. This advertisement appeals to that mind-set. I know that if I were looking for a vaccuum and I couldn't decide between which kind I would like, the one that could suck a hot air balloon out of the sky would definitely be my first choice. A lot of people seem to base their decisions as consumers on the creativity and originality of advertisements. If I were one of those people, I would probably have about five of these vaccuums.

Indy Teach

For those of you who didn't get my agenda for my Individual teach, here it is. It also has links to different site that may be helpful to you:


Introduction to the 6 Traits
-Brief explanation of “The 6-traits of Writing” teaching method
- Introduction of Vicki Spandel’s Book, “Creating Writers through 6-Trait Writing”
- Hand out papers, 5 crayons, and the Guide Book

Free Write:
This activity will give you the chance to write for 5-10 minutes about one of the following topics:
1. What is the Best/Worst Advice you have ever received?
2. What is your favorite holiday and why?
3. What is your favorite room in your house and why?
This activity will be used throughout the rest of the lesson and will be applied to each one of the new traits that we learn. Make sure you write about something you don’t mind sharing with your neighbor or the class.

The First Trait: IDEAS
- Explanation of “Ideas”
- The main questions to ask yourself while writing
- CRAYON ACTIVITY: Pass your free-write paper to the neighbor on your right. Go over the questions written on the poster in your guide-book. With your crayon:
-Highlight the main idea of your neighbor’s paper.
-Now highlight information that backs up the main idea
- Put a question mark next to anything that could use more information

The Second Trait: ORGANIZATION
- Explanation of “Organization”
-The main questions to ask while you’re writing
- Organization ACTIVITY demonstration: This is something that you would be able to do in your own classroom depending on the age level. Put a copy of “Jack and the Beanstalk” on the overhead projector and have your students come up and label which order they think the story goes in.

Reading from “Creating Writers”

The Third Trait: VOICE
-Explanation of “Voice”
-Reading from “Creating Writers” to help distinguish the difference between voices
-CRAYON ACTIVITY: Pull out your free-write paper again. Pass it to the neighbor on your left this time. On your neighbor’s paper:
- Highlight parts that really give the paper personality
-Highlight your favorite part of the paper
- At the bottom of the paper, write down a couple words describing what you think the person wanted to accomplish by writing this paper/

The Fourth Trait: SENTENCE FLUENCY
-Explain “Sentence Fluency”
-Look over some of the questions from the “Sentence Fluency” poster

The Fifth Trait: Word Choice
- Go over the list of word choices in the guidebook.
- CRAYON ACTIVITY: Underline all the words that seem common in your free write paper. Have the person on your right pick out some new words for the ones you underlined.

The Sixth Trait: CONVENTIONS/PRESENTATION
- Explain the importance of grammar and overall appearance of your paper.


SCORING


HELPFUL WEBSITES:

http://www.cyberspaces.net/6traits

http://www.ginnyhoover.com/sixtraits.htm

http://www.writingfix.com/Traits.htm

http://languagearts.pppst.com/6traits.html

Wait, I wanna be a boy.

Being raised on a farm amongst a conservative family was not always the easiest thing growing up. Following tradition, my sister and I were given the stereotypical chores. Wash the dishes. Vacuum the floors. Clean the bathrooms. Do the laundry. All of which I absolutely hated and still do today. My one brother also had his chores to do, which were more focused on manual labor and more physically challenging. I didnt notice that part though. All I knew, was that after breakfast on saturday mornings, by brother was allowed to take a quick nap. I had to do the dishes. I can easily say that at that point I thought life would be much easier if I were a boy.