Day 20

English 101 Summer 2010 Day 20

1. Bonus Points last round. (last night?)
   
2. The writing process.
   
   1. Planning
      
      1. Assess the situation.
         
         1. Subject
            
         2. Sources
            
         3. Purpose and audience
            
         4. Length
            
         5. Reviewers and deadlines
            
      2. Exploring ideas
         
         1. Talking and listening.
            
         2. Annotating texts
            
         3. Listing
            
         4. Clustering
            
         5. Freewriting
            
         6. Asking journalist's questions
            
      3. Formulating a tentative thesis
         
      4. Sketching a plan
         
   2. Drafting
      
      1. Introductions and thesis
         
      2. Body
         
      3. Conclusion
         
   3. Revising
      
      1. Global
         
      2. Revising and editing sentences
         
3. Personal Experience
   
   1. Rites of passage? When did you know you were an adult? (or not a child…)
      
   2. Road trips.
      
   3. Vacations.
      
   4. Moves.
      
   5. Hikes.
      
   6. Camps.
      
   7. How did you arrive in Yakima.
      
   8. Illness/injury.
      
   9. Accidents.
      
   10. Addiction.
       
   11. Depression/psychological.
       
   12. Divorce/relationship.
       
   13. Friendships.
       
   14. Moments of sudden growth
       
4. Observation (Second hand experiences)
   
   1. How did your family arrive in Yakima?
      
   2. Grandparents/parents/siblings/relatives/friends.
      
5. Imagination
   
   1. Invent your own hero.
      
   2. Take Scout, Jem, Boo or Dill on a second journey.
      

Exploring ideas

1. Talking and listening.
   
2. Annotating texts
   
3. Listing
   
4. Clustering
   
5. Freewriting
   
6. Asking journalist's questions
   

Narrative in Creative Non-fiction

1. Characters (read 185-187)
   
   1. You become a character
      
   2. Major ones should be round, have more than one attribute, change over time
      
   3. My father was a great guy v. Mosquitos would not bite him (186 and 167)
      
   4. Five senses
      

Characterization

1. Say
   
2. Think
   
3. Do
   
4. Look like
   
5. What others say
   
6. Their past
   
7. Names
   

1. Senses/Images
   
2. He/She was the kind of person who... (five telling details).
   
3. Consistency, Complexity, (these first two are in tension) Individuality
   

Dialogue (187)

1. Short
   
2. Vivid
   
3. Believable
   

Tips on Dialogue

In two's: I'm sorry but…

1. The first writer pulls out a piece of paper and begins their dialogue with the words "I'm sorry, but…". They complete the sentence and pass the journal to their partner.
   
2. The partner, after reading the sentence,writes a line (or paragraph) of dialogue which heightens the tension.
   
3. Keep passing the journal back and forth, trying to throw curve balls at one another without delving into the absurd.
   
4. Try not to rely on dialogue tags to reveal how the character is speaking.
   
5. In fact, don't use dialogue tags at all. Rely on your word choice and punctuation.
   

Movies with great dialogue: Tarantino, Juno, Linklater, Kevin Smith, Coen Brothers, David Mamet, Casablanca, China Town, Aaron Sorkin

Listen to how people talk to each other

• Most of it is the weather.
  
• He's like a bull in a china shop…
  
• Eating out.
  
• Bars.
  
• Waiting rooms.
  
• Cell phone jerks.
  
• At the checkout.
  

More notes on dialogue:

Dialogue is not real speech, but it should sound like it.

• Cut words and phrases that don't move things along
  

Don't use dialogue to provide exposition—keep it to three sentences or less

Break it up with action—remind us they are physical

Vary signal phrases, but keep it simple. Don't use elaborate signal phrases (she expostulated, he interjected)

Avoid stereotypes in dialect, but…

• Huck Finn
  
• To Kill a Mockingbird
  

Don't over use slang/profanity. "Slang goes sour in a short time." --EH

Read a lot. Note good/bad

Punctuate correctly

• Use quotation marks?
  

Start a new paragraph when changing speakers.

Setting (187)

"If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there."

–Anton Chekhov

1. Time & Place (physical environment)
   

For example: Greasy Lake, Death of a Salesman, To Build a Fire, The Storm, Grapes of Wrath

Exercises:

5 w's

Senses/Imagery

Point of view

1. First Person
   
   1. Single character's point of view.
      
2. Advantages of First Person
   
   1. maintain naivete or innocence
      
   2. Narrated out loud.
      
   3. Irony of narrator/Humor
      
      1. Also, unreliable/biased narrators
         
   4. Immediacy?
      
   5. Disadvantages
      
      1. Less flexible
         
      2. Can be contrived
         
3. Third person
   
   1. Better for "hot" material.
      
   2. Flexible.
      
   3. Omniscient/Limited (All characters v Single character)
      
   4. Objective/Subjective: (No thoughts or feelings v. Thoughts and Feelings)
      
   5. Disadvantages
      

"Head hopping"=confusion unless handled right

Vonnegut

Day 19

English 101 Summer 2010 Day 19

1. Bonus Points hand in.
   
2. Bonus Points last round.
   
3. Hand in tracking themes worksheet.
   
4. Hand in peer review review.
   
5. Hand in Final Drafts.
   
6. O/R?
   
   1. Y= Read intro and conclusion
      
   2. N= Don't read intro and conclusion
      
   3. Y= +3pts
      
   4. N= +/- O
      
7. TKAM conclusion.
   
8. Final Essay assigned.
   
9. The last day of our quarter is the 10^th.
   
10. The writing process.
    
    1. Planning
       
       1. Assess the situation.
          
          1. Subject
             
          2. Sources
             
          3. Purpose and audience
             
          4. Length
             
          5. Reviewers and deadlines
             
       2. Exploring ideas
          
          1. Talking and listening.
             
          2. Annotating texts
             
          3. Listing
             
          4. Clustering
             
          5. Freewriting
             
          6. Asking journalist's questions
             
       3. Formulating a tentative thesis
          
       4. Sketching a plan
          
    2. Drafting
       
       1. Introductions and thesis
          
       2. Body
          
       3. Conclusion
          
    3. Revising
       
       1. Global
          
       2. Revising and editing sentences
          
11. Personal Experience
    
    1. Rites of passage? When did you know you were an adult? (or not a child…)
       
    2. Road trips.
       
    3. Vacations.
       
    4. Moves.
       
    5. Hikes.
       
    6. Camps.
       
    7. How did you arrive in Yakima.
       
    8. Illness/injury.
       
    9. Accidents.
       
    10. Addiction.
        
    11. Depression/psychological.
        
    12. Divorce/relationship.
        
    13. Friendships.
        
    14. Moments of sudden growth
        
12. Observation (Second hand experiences)
    
    1. How did your family arrive in Yakima?
       
    2. Grandparents/parents/siblings/relatives/friends.
       
13. Imagination
    
    1. Invent your own hero.
       

Take Scout, Jem, Boo or Dill on a second journey.

Atticus as HJ

Here's a powerpoint on the topic.

Editing Tips

1. Sentence openings (esp It/There)
2. Capital letters/end punctuation
3. Signal phrases
4. Spelling—Spell check.
   its/it's
   there/they're/their
   to/too/two
   Proper names: Friedman, for ex.
5. Verbs of Being: am, is, are, was, were, have, has, had, be, being, been
6. Use a ruler
7. Read backwards
8. Read aloud

The Hero's Journey Packet Information

Book with two authors:

The Hero's Journey: A Guide to Literature and Life
Reg Harris and Susan Thompson
Harris Communication
Napa, California
Copyright 2005

Tracking Themes

A visual guide to tracking themes in TKAM

Here's a similar site.

And here's one with loads of links, including to Study Guides such as Cliff Notes etc.

Day 18

English 101 Summer 2010 Day 18

1. Complete peer review
   
2. Peer Review, Review
   
3. Body Paragraphs
   
4. Tracking Themes—page numbers
   
   1. Part One
      
      1. Racial
         
      2. Social Class
         
      3. Gender
         
   2. Part Two
      
      1. Racial
         
      2. Class
         
      3. Gender
         
5. Research
   
   1. Sparknotes.com
      
   2. Amazon.com
      

Time to work on Final Drafts, ask questions

Day 17

Lesson Plan Day 17

Peer Review Day

1. Number the paragraphs on your essay.

2. Write 1-2 sentences on peer review sheets (repeat for all members of the group).

3. Somebody say, I'll go first.

4. Whole group reads the essay silently.

5. Individually, complete peer review sheets.

6. Writer leads discussion of review sheet.

7. Repeat.

Meet tomorrow in the lab.

Plagiarism and You

From the NYTimes about cheating and college.

Here's the conclusion:

If we look closely at plagiarism as practiced by youngsters, we can see that they have a different relationship to the printed word than did the generations before them. When many young people think of writing, they don’t think of fashioning original sentences into a sustained thought. They think of making something like a collage of found passages and ideas from the Internet.

They become like rap musicians who construct what they describe as new works by “sampling” (which is to say, cutting and pasting) beats and refrains from the works of others.

This habit of mind is already pervasive in the culture and will be difficult to roll back. But parents, teachers and policy makers need to understand that this is not just a matter of personal style or generational expression. It’s a question of whether we can preserve the methods through which education at its best teaches people to think critically and originally.

Day 16

English 101 Summer 2010 Day 16

Homework—Rough Drafts due tomorrow. Please bring four copies for peer editing.

CLEAN COPIES?

1030, complete reader's theatre. (18, 19 and 20?)

Hand in study guides.

"Quiz" over final chapters.

Hero's Journey for Atticus, Jem and Scout.

Tracking Themes: Racial, Social Class and Gender prejudice.

Ashley Tood, Mayella Ewell on Line One

Day 15

English 101 Summer 2010 Day 15

Homework—Read TKAM to end for Tuesday.

Study guide due Tuesday.

Tracking Themes due Wednesday.

Rough Draft Due Wednesday

1. Handing back papers 1030 class. ("Clean Copy")
   
2. In groups
   
   1. Panels—Title, Quote (with page number) and Single Image
      

   a. 12
   

   1. 13
      
   2. 14
      
   3. 15
      
   4. 16
      
   1. Reader's Theatre Scenes—At least three parts: Two speakers and a narrator. Also, prepare a follow up question.
      
      1. 16
         
      2. 17
         
      3. 18
         
      4. 19
         
      5. 20
         

Atticus Attacked

Here's the controversial article about the defense of Tom by Atticus.

And here's the crux of his complaint:

One of Atticus Finch’s strongest critics has been the legal scholar Steven Lubet, and Lubet’s arguments are a good example of how badly the brand of Southern populism Finch represents has aged over the past fifty years. Lubet’s focus is the main event of “To Kill a Mockingbird”—Finch’s defense of Tom Robinson. In “Reconstructing Atticus Finch,” in the Michigan Law Review, Lubet points out that Finch does not have a strong case. The putative rape victim, Mayella Ewell, has bruises on her face, and the supporting testimony of her father, Robert E. Lee Ewell. Robinson concedes that he was inside the Ewell house, and that some kind of sexual activity took place. The only potentially exculpatory evidence Finch can come up with is that Mayella’s bruises are on the right side of her face while Robinson’s left arm, owing to a childhood injury, is useless. Finch presents this fact with great fanfare. But, as Lubet argues, it’s not exactly clear why a strong right-handed man can’t hit a much smaller woman on the right side of her face. Couldn’t she have turned her head? Couldn’t he have hit her with a backhanded motion? Given the situation, Finch designs his defense, Lubet says, “to exploit a virtual catalog of misconceptions and fallacies about rape, each one calculated to heighten mistrust of the female complainant.”

Here is the crucial moment of Robinson’s testimony. Under Finch’s patient prodding, he has described how he was walking by the Ewell property when Mayella asked him to come inside, to help her dismantle a piece of furniture. The house, usually crowded with Mayella’s numerous sisters and brothers, was empty. “I say where the chillun?” Robinson testifies, “an’ she says—she was laughin’, sort of—she says they all gone to town to get ice creams. She says, ‘Took me a slap year to save seb’m nickels, but I done it. They all gone to town.’ ” She then asked him to stand on a chair and get a box down from the chifforobe. She “hugged him” around the waist. Robinson goes on:

“She reached up an’ kissed me ’side of th’ face. She says she never kissed a grown man before an’ she might as well kiss a nigger. She says what her papa do to her don’t count. She says, ‘Kiss me back nigger.’ I say Miss Mayella lemme outa here an’ tried to run but she got her back to the door an’ I’da had to push her. I didn’t wanta harm her, Mr. Finch, an’ I say lemme pass, but just when I say it Mr. Ewell yonder hollered through th’ window.”
“What did he say?”
. . . Tom Robinson shut his eyes tight. “He says you goddam whore, I’ll kill ya.”

Mayella plotted for a year, saving her pennies so she could clear the house of her siblings. Then she lay in wait for Robinson, in the fervent hope that he would come by that morning. “She knew full well the enormity of her offense,” Finch tells the jury, in his summation, “but because her desires were stronger than the code she was breaking, she persisted in breaking it.” For a woman to be portrayed as a sexual aggressor in the Jim Crow South was a devastating charge. Lubet writes:

The “she wanted it” defense in this case was particularly harsh. Here is what it said about Mayella: She was so starved for sex that she spent an entire year scheming for a way to make it happen. She was desperate for a man, any man. She repeatedly grabbed at Tom and wouldn’t let him go, barring the door when he respectfully tried to disentangle himself. And in case Mayella had any dignity left after all that, it had to be insinuated that she had sex with her father.

It is useful, once again, to consider Finch’s conduct in the light of the historical South of his time. The scholar Lisa Lindquist Dorr has examined two hundred and eighty-eight cases of black-on-white rape that occurred in Virginia between 1900 and 1960. Seventeen of the accused were killed through “extra legal violence”—that is to say, lynched. Fifty were executed. Forty-eight were given the maximum sentence. Fifty-two were sentenced to prison terms of five years or less, on charges ranging from rape and murder to robbery, assault and battery, or “annoying a white woman.” Thirty-five either were acquitted or had their charges dismissed. A not inconsiderable number had their sentences commuted by the governor.

Justice was administered unequally in the South: Dorr points out that of the dozens of rapists in Virginia who were sentenced to death between 1908 and 1963 (Virginia being one of the few states where both rape and attempted rape were capital crimes) none were white. Nonetheless, those statistics suggest that race was not always the overriding consideration in rape trials. “White men did not always automatically leap to the defense of white women,” Dorr writes. “Some white men reluctantly sided with black men against white women whose class or sexual history they found suspect. Sometimes whites trusted the word of black men whose families they had known for generations over the sworn testimony of white women whose backgrounds were unknown or (even worse) known and despised. White women retained their status as innocent victim only as long as they followed the dictates of middle-class morality.”

One of Dorr’s examples is John Mays, Jr., a black juvenile sentenced in 1923 to an eighteen-year prison term for the attempted rape of a white girl. His employer, A. A. Sizer, petitioned the Virginia governor for clemency, arguing that Mays, who was religious and educated, “comes of our best negro stock.” His victim, meanwhile, “comes from our lowest breed of poor whites. . . . Her mother is utterly immoral and without principle; and this child has been accustomed from her very babyhood to behold scenes of the grossest immorality. None of our welfare work affects her, she is brazenly immoral.”

The reference to the mother was important. “Though Sizer did not directly impugn the victim herself, direct evidence was unnecessary during the heyday of eugenic family studies,” Dorr writes. “The victim, coming from the same inferior ‘stock,’ would likely share her mother’s moral character.” The argument worked: Mays was released from prison in 1930.

This is essentially the defense that Atticus Finch fashions for his client. Robinson is the churchgoer, the “good Negro.” Mayella, by contrast, comes from the town’s lowest breed of poor whites. “Every town the size of Maycomb had families like the Ewells,” Scout tells us. “No truant officers could keep their numerous offspring in school; no public health officer could free them from congenital defects, various worms, and the diseases indigenous to filthy surroundings.” They live in a shack behind the town dump, with windows that “were merely open spaces in the walls, which in the summertime were covered with greasy strips of cheesecloth to keep out the varmints that feasted on Maycomb’s refuse.” Bob Ewell is described as a “little bantam cock of a man” with a face as red as his neck, so unaccustomed to polite society that cleaning up for the trial leaves him with a “scalded look; as if an overnight soaking had deprived him of protective layers of dirt.” His daughter, the complainant, is a “thick-bodied girl accustomed to strenuous labor.” The Ewells are trash. When the defense insinuates that Mayella is the victim of incest at the hands of her father, it is not to make her a sympathetic figure. It is, in the eugenicist spirit of the times, to impugn her credibility—to do what A. A. Sizer did in the John Mays case: The victim, coming from the same inferior stock, would likely share her father’s moral character. “I won’t try to scare you for a while,” Finch says, when he begins his cross-examination of Mayella. Then he adds, with polite menace, “Not yet.”

We are back in the embrace of Folsomism. Finch wants his white, male jurors to do the right thing. But as a good Jim Crow liberal he dare not challenge the foundations of their privilege. Instead, Finch does what lawyers for black men did in those days. He encourages them to swap one of their prejudices for another.

To Kill a Mockingbird--Themes

Day 14

English 101 Summer 2010 Day 14

Homework—Read TKAM Chapters 18-28 for Monday.

Study guide due Tuesday.

Tracking Themes due Wednesday.

1. CBS Sunday Morning
   
2. Hero's Journey, so far, for Scout and Atticus.
   
3. Tracking Themes in TKAM—Part One
   
   1. Who are the spokespersons for these ideas?
      
   2. What are the values they reinforce?
      
      1. "Negative" ones?
         
      2. "Positive" ones?
         
4. Time for: Study guide, read, tracking themes, prewrite, draft.
   
   1. Give yourself a goal.
      
   2. Here's the assignment: Demonstrate how one of the characters in TKAM follows the archetype of the eight (ten?) steps of the hero's journey. Five hundred words by the end of the period.
      
      1. I'll even make it worth your while—five hundred words= 5 Bonus points towards "prewriting" score or one absence.
         
      2. A thousand? Ok, 10 BP and 2 abs.
         

Try using headings (The call, the abyss, the gift etc) and then writing a paragraph for each heading.

CBS Story

For Fun

Study Guide, Section 2

Chapters 12-14

 

1. How does Jem change?

2. Identify Lula, Zeebo and Reverend Sykes.

3. What does Scout learn about Calpurnia?

4. Who was waiting for the children when they came home from the church service? Why

had she come?

5. "Aunt Alexandra fitted into the world of Maycomb like a hand in a glove, but never into the

world of Jem and me." Explain.

6. Atticus and Alexandra disagree about how to deal with the children. How does Atticus

handle the situation?

7. Describe Jem and Scout's relationship through these chapters as Jem matures.

8. Why did Dill run away from home back to Maycomb?

 

Chapters 15-17

 

1. What did Mr. Heck Tate's mob want?

2. What was the purpose of Walter Cunningham's mob?

3. Why did Mr. Cunningham's mob leave?

4. Identify Mr. Dolphus Raymond.

5. Identify Tom Robinson, Mr. Gilmer, Bob Ewell, Mayella Ewell, and Judge Taylor.

6. What was the importance of Mayella's bruises being primarily on the right-hand side of

her face?

 

Chapters 18-21

 

1. What was Mayella's account of the incident with Tom Robinson?

2. What was Tom's side of the story?

3. What was Tom's handicap? Why was it important to his case?

4. What do Dill and Scout learn from Mr. Raymond?

5. What were Atticus' closing remarks to the jury?

6. What was the jury's verdict?

 

Chapters 22-25

 

1. Why did Jem cry?

2. What was "'round the back steps" when Calpurnia came in on Monday morning?

3. What was the significance of Maudie's two little cakes and one large one?

4. Describe Bob Ewell's meeting with Atticus at the post office.

5. What is Atticus' reaction to Ewell's threats?

6. Alexandra doesn't want Scout playing with Walter Cunningham. Why not?

7. Jem said. "I think I'm beginning to understand why Boo Radley's stayed shut up in the

house all this time . . . it's because he wants to stay inside." Why does he say that?

14 Copyright 2007 Teacher's Pet Publications, Inc.

Mockingbird Short Answer Study Questions Page 3

8. Mrs. Merriweather of the missionary circle complains about her cooks and field hands.

What does that tell us about her?

9. What happened to Tom Robinson?

10. What more do we learn about Alexandra after Atticus and Calpurnia leave?

11. What did Mr. Underwood's editorial say?

 

Chapters 26-31

 

1. What was Scout's fantasy regarding Arthur (Boo) Radley?

2. What did Scout hear Miss Gates say at the courthouse? In class, Miss Gates said,

"That's the difference between America and Germany. We are a democracy and

Germany is a dictatorship. . . . We don't believe in persecuting anybody. Persecution

comes from people who are prejudiced." What does this tell us about Miss Gates?

3. What happened to Judge Taylor?

4. What happened to Helen Robinson?

5. What was Scout's part in the pageant?

6. Why did Scout and Jem not leave the school until almost everyone else had gone?

7. What happened to Jem and Scout on the way home from the pageant?

8. Who saved Jem and Scout? Who killed Bob Ewell?

9. Why did Heck Tate insist that Bob Ewell fell on his own knife?

10. Scout arranged things so that "if Miss Stephanie Crawford was watching from her

upstairs window, she would see Arthur Radley escorting [her] down the sidewalk, as

any gentleman would do." Why did she do that?

11. As Scout leaves the Radley porch, she looks out at the neighborhood and recounts the

events of the last few years from the Radleys' perspective. Why is that important?

Video Study Guide