The Home Stretch

While you are finishing your short stories (including editing/revision process) you also need to keep in mind the portfolio assignment. This is your final and therefore worth 20% of your semester grade.

In this 3ring binder, please include:

• Final draft of all the work from this semester (see this site if you’ve misplaced your Word.doc)
• TWO major revisions (see me for clarification)
• Cover Page
• Table of Contents
• A letter to yourself describing the progress you’ve made this semester regarding your writing skills!
• Images that correspond to your work. Spruce it up! 🙂

It has been a joy working with all of you this semester!

Halfway Finished!

Alright, we’ve made it to fourth quarter.  I am asking that you take a step back and evaluate this class.

Consider if it has met your expectations, given you an opportunity to improve your writing skills, and held your interest.  Please POST COMMENTS BELOW to help me improve this course for you!  (I will not take anything personally, I consider constructive criticism to be very important!)

BUT FIRST, take this poll!

NEW UNIT!

WEBSITE: Poetry 180

Now that you have written two memoirs, I’m hoping you have warmed up your writing muscles!  (Yeah, I’m that cheesy.)

We will start off with simple closed form poetry, move on to the more complex and practice applying those poetic devices we discussed in class.  About midpoint during the unit, when you could use a break from all of the poetry, we will go back and make our final revisions for the memoirs to get them “portfolio ready”…   I hope you guys are excited! 

Good job on the blog comments – remember to always offer both praise AND CONSTRUCTIVE criticism.  So far, you have been a great class, so thank you!

Back to School

Ok, new plan.

You need to have emailed me your Personal Memoirs by class Friday. By the time you get to class, or during, you will tell me what you want your pen name to be, and for the rest of the semester your work will be published under that name, rather than under “Student 5” etc.

During class, we will *hopefully* be in the computer lab (I had reserved it for Wed, not Friday) and you can respond to your classmates work there. Remember you are looking at the bigger picture. *Style, pace, content – not simply grammatical issues.*

For this part, choose 2 memoirs and offer constructive criticism. A more detailed explanation of my expectations is in the post below. If you finish early, you may choose to free write in your journal or begin working on your Familly Memoir. See you in class!

*We will also be voting on the layout of the blog – it’s your work, you should have a say in the format it is displayed on!*

Wordle

Welcome to Creative Writing!

We will be typing up our second drafts on this website and using them to comment on the work we do over the entire semester.

I expect content to be classroom appropriate as we are representing our school publicly on this site, and I expect comments to be constructive and helpful.  “That’s great!” or “This story sucks!” are NOT adequate responses. 

You need to explain what was great, but still offer advice for improvement (writing is never perfect!) even if you reallly like what you’ve read.  If you feel like the writing could be improved upon, find something positive for the author to build upon and explain what aspect of the piece you think should be improved on/revised.

I am moderating the comments, so if it does not appear on the page immediately, it is simply because I have not yet approved your comment.  In this way, I will record if you have done enough and adequate responses each time.

I look forward to a fun semester, and I can’t wait to read your writing!  First on our menu is a “life map” and we will work on it IN CLASS.  See you in class on Monday!!!

-Mrs. Follis