You have three assignments to complete this week.

Film Prewriting - On Friday you began your freewriting in order to start thinking about the ideas and voiceover narration for your film. You must hand in this piece of writing on Thursday. If you wrote your thoughts out on the blog, publish them. If you wrote out your journal, leave it on my desk. If you typed up your journal in Google Docs, share it with me.


Blog Post #7: Monologue Reaction
We watched film clips in class today t… Continue

Next week we're going to start to wrap everything up. We are going to have an assessment on Speak, a giant super quiz on the 4th quarter, and we're going to be constructing a final project based on the novel and American Teen.

This project is going to be a short film. You are going to be turning a short excerpt from your journals into a 30 second to one minute film. Today, I want you to take 40 minutes and write an extended journal. I am giving you the entire class period. You may… Continue

You have two blog posts due by next Monday. These must be done outside of class time.

Blog Post #5: American Teen
This week we're watching American Teen, a documentary exploring the lives of several high school seniors from the Midwest. Write a blog post of at least 250 words exploring the ideas of the documentary. How do you see the different people defining themselves? Are they being defined by pressures? Goals? Parents? Sports? Wealth? Expectations? Society? How do you see the differe… Continue

Grab your notebook. Quickly jot down the following two terms in your notebook:

flat character - a character who is not developed by the author (one dimensional)
static character - a character who does not change throughout the story

Then, write a quick blog post (I'm giving you eight minutes). (Hold down the command key and click on "Blogs" to open a blog in a new tab.)

Title the post "Andy's Motivation"
Andy is what we would call a flat character. He is also a static charact… Continue

Some people praise Speak as a realistically portrayal of high school life. Other people think it misses altogether in its characterization of high school. What do you think? What aspects of high school or adolescence do you feel Anderson gets right? What part do you think she gets wrong? What part of the story does she include because it is important? What part of high school/adolescence do you think she leaves out or misses (either intentionally or unintentionally)?

(Remember, Anderson is 38 w… Continue

Today we talked about storytelling using the past tense and correctly formatting dialogue. If you'd like to review the rules, click here.

Today, we'll being to compose your slice of life stories. Use Google Docs your slice of life. Remember, this is a short, nonfiction story about an incident that happened to you. Be descriptive. Recreate the experience for the reader. I'll be around to look over your shoulder.

Speak is a longer narrative written in the first person point of view of Melinda Sordino. We're going to emulate this idea by writing a "slice of life" memoir. From Wikipedia:

A slice of life story is a category for a story that portrays a “cut-out” sequence of events in a character’s life. It may or may not contain any real plot, and often has no exposition, action, conflict, or denouement, with an open ending. It usually tries to depict the every-day life of ordinary people.

Your assignment:… Continue

We're watching clips from three separate films in class today. What are some stereotypes or archetypes you are seeing presented in these films? Do any of these characterizations resonate with you? Take notes on a Tchart in your notebook.
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Choose a minor character from the first marking period. Maybe Nicole or Mr. Freeman or David Petrakis or Rachel/Rachelle or Heather. What is this character like? Why might this character act this way? If there is no textual evidence explaining the type of behavior, make a guess. What might have happened to the character in the past to cause him or her to behave this way?

200 Words