Our First Essay

1.  Turn in your crane, if you have it, plus the thinking skills questions you answered from another.

2.  Attendance!

3.  Journal:  Tell me a story about the time you were most embarrassed.

4.  Notes-- TAP, Writing Process, No way mistakes, Narrative to dos.

TAP:

Topic--  What it's about---  Interesting to others.
Audience-- Who it's for-- It's for a general audience.
Purpose-- Why it's being written.  It could be to entertain, explain, etc.

6-Traits (of grading/writing)

Some educators got together and decided that good writing is made up of these 6 things.  There's no way great writing can be boiled down into a list, but this is a passable way to teach and grade writing, and it's a also a pretty good framework for understanding the beginning.

Voice:                                Personality in your writing.
Ideas and Content:            Important/Interesting topics and support of those topics.
Conventions:                    Grammar
Word Choice:                   Choosing the best word. 
Sentence Fluency:           A good mix of short and long sentences.
Organization:                   A good plan for your essay.

Writing Process-  Steps we follow to make a successful paper, in this order:

Invention:      Creating ideas.  We use a journal, tv, radio, friends, etc. ( Ideas and Content)
Organize:       This is planning out our ideas in some type of logical order.  (Organization)
                       Use an outline, word web, or list.
Draft:             This a practice essay.  It's our first try- don't worry about gram errors  (Voice)
Revise:          To re-look.  Look again at sentences, organization, ideas, etc. ( Word choice, Sentence F)
Edit:               Finding and fixing grammatical/syntactical errors. ( Conventions)
Publish:         Publish means perfect.  No editing mistakes. ( We're done!)

No Way Mistakes:

a.  Tense shift.  I love to eat when I was hungry.

b.  PNA-    Someone who is cool has all the tricks; they know how to...

c.  VTA-  I loves to eat.

d.  Comma Splice: (CS) I love to eat, I love to cook.

e.  Run on:  I love to eat I love to cook.

f.  Parallelism:  I love to ride my bike, walk the dog, and watching movies

Narrative To Dos

Do:  Start en media res:  In the middle of the action.
Do:  Tell a story we care about/are interested in.
Do:  Have a beginning, middle, end, and (maybe) a moral.
Do:  Be human.

Don't:  Be egotistic:  we don't care about your 8th grade wrestling championship, you do.
Don't:  Start with all the background.  Start in the middle of the story!
Don't:  Write about your kids. 
Don't:  Try to make yourself sound amazing-- Be yourself.

5.  Model--  Sample essay taken through the first part of the process.  Notes on board...

6.  HW-  Post a picture of your crane on your blog and write blog entry that corresponds with it.

7.  HW-  Read this narrative...   And, This narrative..

8.  HOMEWORK:   Return to class with a typed draft of your own narrative.

9.  Next class, become a grader and a pretty good editor.