Monday, March 24, 2014

A Whole New Term!

Happy New Term!  

Announcements and Reminders:  Please finish your child's book, if you haven't.

Today’s Agenda: 1. List ten or more of your favorite characters from books and stories.  For each, explain why you picked him or her as a favorite.  Is he or she the type of person you'd like to hang out with?  Do you have things in common with the character?  Are there things about the character you admire? Why a favorite? Creating Characters Listen, then take on Challenge #1 (from Spilling Ink by Anne Mazer and Ellen Potter)  Think of two people you admire. Now think of the thing you admire most about each of them.  Combine those two qualities into one person and write about that person in the following situation: She or he is walking down the street and a strange man hands your character a small sealed carton and says, "Don't let anything happen to this!"  Then the man sprints away.  What does your character do next?  Baking Characters from Scratch -- by Ellen Potter Ellen's Example: 5 cups of cocky attitude, sifted 2 cups of loyalty to friends 1 cup loathing of ketchup, wet socks, and a boy from summer camp named Richard 2 tablespoons of insecurity about big feet 1 teaspoon of a bad habit of biting nails until they bleed One pinch of a shoe-shopping fetish (but just a pinch and no more, due to the difficulty of finding shoes for big feet.) Combine and bake at 350 degrees or until character is done.  Challenge #2: Bake your own character from scratch.  Think of six qualities for a character and write a recipe for him or her.   Questions to Ask Your Character:  1.  What is your happiest memory? 2.  What makes you laugh so hard soda shoots out of your nose? 3.  What don't you want anyone to find out about you? 4.  What is the best part of your personality? 5.  What shoes do you usually wear? 6.  Name some things that you are not very good at. 7.  How would your best friend describe how you look? 8.  What irritates you? (i.e. noises, bad habits, personality traits)? 9.  What are you afraid of? 10.  Tell me about your family. 11.  What does your bedroom look like? 12.  What do you think of yourself when you look in the mirror? 13.  What's the most embarrassing thing that has ever happened to you? 14.  Do you have a crush on anyone? 15.  What do you really, REALLY want more than anything else in the world? Students were working on these when the bell rang. Challenge #3 Make a list of all the things you want.  It can be anything from wanting a particular bully to leave you alone, to wanting riding lessons, to wanting your best friend to move back from Japan.  now pick the thing the list you want the most and think of all the ways you could attain that thing, from the realistic to the ridiculous. Write a short scene in which you try out one of those ideas, and see what happens.

If you were absent:  See above.  Ask Ms. Dorsey for a chance to read the chapter we used from Spilling Ink, and the passage we read from Writing Magic.