Writing Across Cultures

This morning, please read this article about writing workshops . Refer to the handout on writing workshops and giving feedback to your workshop peers. Keep this handout for future reference during this course. Writing time for 30 minutes. Continue your writing/workshops.  Continue to provide feedback and comments to your group in your workshop folder.  Or... Take your  Namesake  baseline fiction draft and do one of the following: Skip a line (white space) to transition to the 3rd person perspective of a second character. This character should have been mentioned or referenced in the first draft. The character should be a different character from the 3rd person over-the-shoulder narrator in the first draft. The character's story could run parallel to the story told in the first draft (i.e., the story can take place at the same time in a different place, scene, or be the other side of the first character's story Advance time by at least a year (or m...

Period 1:  Share your long sentence with the class. Volunteers? Use the next 20 minutes of class today to t ake notes on The Namesake . See Google classroom for help. Submit these notes and keep them to study for your final test. If you finish these notes before 20 minutes, please use your time to read chapters 10-12 (your homework).  After our  Namesake  activity, we will  continue reading "The Overcoat" by Nikolai Gogol.  Period 2: Writing time for 20 minutes. Continue your writing/workshop.  Continue to provide feedback and comments to your group in your workshop folder.  Or... Take your  Namesake  baseline fiction draft and do one of the following: Skip a line (white space) to transition to the 3rd person perspective of a second character. This character should have been mentioned or referenced in the first draft. The character should be a different character from the 3rd person over-the-shoulder narrator in the f...

Period 1: We will be going to the Ensemble Theater this morning to get our pictures taken. Once we return we will  continue reading "The Overcoat" by Nikolai Gogol.  Period 2: Check chapters 2-7 of the Namesake. Take notes on the book. See Google classroom for help. Submit these notes and keep them to study for your final test. Continue to provide feedback and comments to your group in your workshop folder.  Or... Take your  Namesake  baseline fiction draft and do one of the following: Skip a line (white space) to transition to the 3rd person perspective of a second character. This character should have been mentioned or referenced in the first draft. The character should be a different character from the 3rd person over-the-shoulder narrator in the first draft. The character's story could run parallel to the story told in the first draft (i.e., the story can take place at the same time in a different place, scene, or be the other side o...

After taking our quiz on The Namesake, please continue to work on the following: Cultural Poetry Draft Exercise: Write a cultural poem draft. There is no wrong way to write a cultural poem. Everyone's experience and subject matter will be unique. It's okay to get personal. Avoid over-dramatizing your poem. This is not a life or death situation in most cases, but a subtle understanding of your (or your speaker's) own place in the world. You may tell a story, use fictional elements like dialogue, use traditional phrases or family sayings or idioms, etc. What you'll need is a strong setting. How is your room (or a room in your house) a reflection of who you are and what your family values, for example? How is the  setting   significant  to the speaker of your poem? If you can't answer this, make the setting significant. TIPS/RULES/GUIDELINES: Allow your speaker to witness a single significant action, tradition, or cultural moment that is unique to ...

Period 1:  Please submit your Namesake Baseline Fiction Drafts to Google Classroom this morning.  Then work with your workshop group to give feedback and advice on how a draft may be improved in your workshop group. Workshop Groups (for quarter 1): Group A: Faduma, Fadumo, Tyler, Demani, Mariangelis, Genesis, Andrea Group B: Emani, James, Justice, Kaniel, Asher, Raina Remember to create a workshop folder for your group. Share emails so that each of you has access to your workshop folder.  Add me at 1299861 (b radley.craddock@rcsd121.org). Share your "How It Feels to Be Me" essay with your group.  Each member of the group should make comments about each essay. Try to add comments that will help a writer add to their idea. Consider theme, diction, syntax, imagery, etc. After receiving feedback, revise your draft.  Period 2:  Cultural Poetry Draft Exercise: Elizabeth Bishop: "In the Waiting Room" (pg. 726-728) Gwendolyn Brook...

Writing Task: Brainstorm a character. Put that character in a significant or life-changing situation (this does not have to be a life or death issue, but something that might change a person for the better or worse.) Write a draft of this event over the shoulder of your character. See Google classroom assignments for more details/directions/due dates. Use time this morning to write. Then let's continue, again, responding, brainstorming, and having our discussion on  The Namesake : Report of a train accident in India  (2017) What other events happened in 1968 ? Plot? Setting? Character? POV? Conflict? Theme? Sentence structure? How does the second & third chapters continue to develop the two main characters Ashoke and Ashima? What conflicts arise as a result of Gogol's birth? How does Chapter 3 complicate the plot? Examine & discuss the dichotomies--a division or contrast between two things--in this book and how they help develop characters/confl...

Writing Task: Open your "How it feels to be me..." personal essay drafts. Take 20 minutes this morning to continue writing. [If you finish your draft, what details can you add to the narrative? How can you change/revise your sentences to be more active than passive with your voice?] Then, let's go back to The Namesake . Jhumpa Lahiri on Writing . See my comments on the classwork you completed Monday. Let's discuss what we noticed as writers in chapter one. What is a namesake? Who is Jhumpa Lahiri? Who is Nikolai Gogol? Report of a train accident in India  (2017) What other events happened in 1968 ? Plot? Setting? Character? POV? Conflict? Theme? Sentence structure? How does the second chapter continue to develop the two main characters Ashoke and Ashima? What conflicts arise as a result of Gogol's birth? Examine & discuss the dichotomies--a division or contrast between two things--in this book and how they help develop characters/conflict/t...

The fundamental idea of this course is to use our research and responses to a variety of topics to inspire our artistic and academic impulses. Secondly, it is a course that urges the artist to depict him or herself in relation to or as  the other . We will be examining power structures and hegemonic cultural groups in relation to each other, using this topic to reach a more universal and engaged POV about our own selves, our own cultures, and the world audience itself. Last class, we read an essay by Zora Neale Hurston. Take a moment to refresh your memory about that reading. Look closely at how the article opens (the hook, lead-in, thesis), and how it develops (the body, topic sentences, argument), and notice the sentence structure (length, diction, syntax). After studying some of these elements respond to the article in writing. What defines you? What single physical, mental, emotional trait defines you? Why? What is the significance of this trait?  Think about your ow...

Welcome back, class of 2019! I hope you all had a restful and enjoyable summer. After reviewing our course criteria, we will get started with some reading, a required writing activity, and start on a couple of assignments to begin this course. By the end of class today, we'll get our locker assignments. IMPORTANT INFORMATION: Check this blog each class period for agendas, deadlines, educational information, advice, and a whole lot of links to enhance your education. All you have to do is read and click. You are responsible for reading and interacting with the material I post on the blog. It is a useful resource for the course (since we don't have a specific textbook)--so please use it. You can even see it on your cell phones (which you shouldn't have with you during class...) New this year is my use of a Google Classroom. Assignments that can be turned in digitally (no printing!) will be posted in the Google Classroom. Go there now and enter this code: ruw2nf Ma...