Character and Conflict in Literature

We have been working on analyzing some of the elements of fiction for the past few classes. Two classes ago, we read the short story "Time Transfixed," and we applied the following elements of fiction to the story: protagonist, antagonist, external conflict, internal conflict and theme. We are going to begin analyzing these components in our novels, before Winter Break, and then after Winter Break, students will be given their final project to complete, related to their novel.

News Article Titles and Photo Captions

Today, we spent some time talking about how to write news article titles, and how to write captions for photos. I gave the class three story scenarios, and their job was to create a news article headline for each. We spoke about how headlines are catchy, short, and sometimes even sentence fragments (not a complete sentence). We discussed that many titles often use alliteration, or rhyme, or puns to grab the reader's attention. My favourite headline from the examples today: "A Dog-Gone Reunion!" Soooo punny! We then wrote captions for two sample photos, one of the Kinder Morgan stand off, and one of Henrik Sedin celebrating a goal. We talked about the importance of being clear in the description of what is happening in the photo, and to remain objective in our description. We also indicated that it is important to identify key people in the photo, if possible. Finally, we finished reading "Communication" and came up with a couple more inferences about Ryan's character. Students were given a blank character web and asked to begin making inferences about a character from their novel. We will practice inference making using our books, and then I will test you on this skill in the coming weeks. Please let me know if you need help making inferences about a character in your book.

Analyzing Character in Literature

Today, students were given the first 20 minutes of class to either silently read their novel, or complete their news article rough draft. Rough drafts need to be submitted to me before Friday. Please come see me on Thursday anytime between 1 pm and 3 pm if you would like to finish up your news article draft with my help. We then worked through the first part of the story "Communication," with a goal of analyzing the protagonist, Ryan. We discussed that in order to make inferences about his character, we needed to pay attention to what he says, what he does and what he thinks. Those text clues, combined with what we know of people's behaviour, will help us make informed INFERENCES about Ryan's character. We began to fill out the character web (handout is on this blog, if you missed class), with some of the traits we thought fit Ryan's character, including the text evidence which led us to those conclusions. We will complete the character web in class on Monday.

News Article Rough Draft

We began class today with voting for the Cariboo Reads books for this year. Thank you so much for your input! Hopefully a couple of our class favourites get chosen.... Today's class was dedicated to completing our rough draft of the newspaper article. Remember that you are allowed to write your article on any topic you wish. You could choose a real-life event, or you could create something entirely fictional. Use the handout I gave you today to write your draft, sketch a photo and create a caption. We will type up the final copy of our article on the 26th. Keep the following criteria in mind as you write your draft: - write a lead paragraph that includes the 5 Ws - remain objective throughout (no opinions) - include facts (at least three) - include quotations (at least two) If you need help structuring your news article, go to a newspaper for help! Check out the front page stories, and use those as a model for this assignment. Good luck!

First Impressions

Today, students were asked to complete a worksheet titled, "First Impressions," in order to give me some sense of how they are interacting with the novel they have chosen to read. Students are being asked to ask questions, make inferences about character, make mental pictures, and connect personally and to other texts, in order to push their thinking in different ways. If you did not submit your First Impressions page to me today, please do so on Friday. There is a link to the handout here on the blog, if you've lost yours, or you were away. Next class, we will be forging ahead with our news articles. Students are going to write fictional news stories, about an event of their own creation. We have studied the features of news articles, and now we are going to put all the parts together to create our own, amazing stories.

Novels have been chosen!

On Friday, I returned the persuasive paragraphs that students wrote last week, and we added them to our work portfolios. We will continue to develop our paragraph writing skills, as the year progresses. Students then listened to "book talks" given by me, about the eight possible novels to choose from for our novel study unit. Students chose their top three picks, and I distributed novels to the students. We spent the final fifteen minutes of class reading silently. It was wonderful. Please remember to bring your book with you to every class, as I will ask you to interact with it in some way, every day.

Persuasive Paragraph and Newspaper Article

Today students wrote their persuasive paragraph, on a topic of their choice. I allowed students to use their filled out "Seeing Both Sides" planning page, and their model paragraph on the "Trick or Treat" article, as a guide while they were writing. I returned students' quiz on the article "Glow in the Dark" and we recorded these marks in each student's work portfolio. Finally, each student was asked to choose a feature news article from one of the copies of the Vancouver Sun newspaper I had in the classroom. Once students found an article of interest to them, they cut out the article and glued it to a piece of paper. Next week, we will consider how these news articles uses all of the features of news stories we have been studying, in preparation for writing our own news stories.

Writing News Stories

Last week, we read a news article titled, "We Aren't Going to Make It" about two young people whose snowmobile crashed into an icy lake. Frostbitten and hypothermic, they struggled out of the water and managed to find an abandoned cabin. The girl, Angie, was able to call for help, and eventually they were rescued, but unfortunately, the boy, Scott, died from his injuries. We used the article as a text to practice finding the most important points. This week, we are going to use the same article as inspiration for writing our own news stories. We are going to look at the features of news articles, practice with pieces from the Vancouver Sun, and eventually, we will write our own news stories. If you are away this week, you can find the handouts from class at the side of this blog.

Welcome to English 9 Literacy Dynamics!

Welcome to English 9, Literacy Dynamics! I am really looking forward to working with you this year. We have spent the first couple of weeks getting to know each other and setting goals for ourselves. We watched the movie "The Karate Kid" in order to think deeply about how people cope with struggle and difficulty, and we attempted to make connections between our own lives and the situations the character, Daniel, finds himself in. We began our first reading piece today. We started with a pre-reading strategy, called a "Sort and Predict." Then we scanned the article and refined our predictions. We managed to begin the article, with the goal of summarizing the main ideas as we read. We will continue reading this article on Friday.