A Little Friendly Advice

There is a reason that at the end of almost every book you read the author always has a page dedicated to thanking his or her editor or those that provided support in making that writing better (and ultimately successful). Your classmates have been your support throughout this gigantic research paper and who better can give you some last-minute advice for how to improve it? You have, no doubt, read many of your peers' chapters throughout this process, some pretty good, some needing a bit more work. Please take a second to think about how your classmates can improve their writing throughout the revisions and final changes you will make next week before turning in that final paper. Be specific, put some thought into it, and actually write something useful-- "spell better" is not going to cut it!

Character Counts!

Do any characters in your book grow or change over the course of the novel? If so, how?
Does any character come to learn something about himself/herself or view the world differently? If so, what does he/she learn?
Or is the character “static,” unchanging from beginning to end? Explain.

Who Knew?

As you have been spending so much time reading sources to use for your US History research papers, you have, no doubt, learned a lot about your topics whether you really wanted to or not. For today's blog entry, share a couple of the more interesting things you learned in your research with the rest of the class. As always, please make sure you use complete, detailed sentences and proper grammar/usage/mechanics (yes, this includes spelling)!

Waxing Poetic...

Since you have just written some excellent poems of your own, this week's blog is about poetry.

Please answer these questions in complete sentences:
1) Have you ever read any poetry for enjoyment (not as an assignment), or have you ever had to read a poem for an assignment, but actually found you enjoyed it? What was the poem or what was it about?

2) If you had to spend some time reading poetry, what style would you prefer to read, and why? For example, do you like the silly rhyming style, the more serious tear-jerker poems, the free verse (like our small moment poems), the long poems that are more like a story, or another style?

3) What did you think of the poem you came up with for your last assignment? Was it better/worse than you expected? Was it difficult to do?

Small Moments

We have been talking about how even "small moments" can make entertaining ideas to write about for short writing pieces. They can also be important to add balance to a longer work. So, as your read your book, look for some "small moments" that the author incorporates into his/her writing. Answer the following questions:

1. List some of the specific "small moments" the author writes about.

2. Why do you think the author chose these moments to use?

3. What would happen if the author left all of these moments out of their writing?

Got Voice?

We have been exploring the idea of VOICE in writing lately. How exactly does the author in your book go about creating strong voice in his/her writing? Remember, good voice is:
-having your own style, tone, and flavor

-how the writer connects with the reader

-when the piece reaches out and "pulls in" the reader

Explain how your author does this!

Oh, Those Wonderful Words

We have been talking a lot about word choice lately, and how it can make your writing much more effective. As you are reading today, look for specific examples of how the author uses his/her words effectively. Today's blog response has two parts:

1. Tell what is effective about the author's word choice. Specifically! For example... uses strong verbs, uses unexpected but appropriate words, is not over the top, but not too boring either, uses detailed sentences without stacked modifiers, etc.

2. Give an example of a specific sentence in which the author uses a strong verb instead of a weaker one, or where the text is made colorful by word choice.