Getting our creative juices flowing

Good morning, seniors!

After we read, we have two goals today.

Goal #1: Score your Personal Statement

1. Open your final draft of your Personal Statement. (If you do not have the document I asked you to make a copy of last Friday, here is the link. You have to make a copy of it and share it with me.)
2. Scroll all the way down to the bottom and follow the directions under "Your Rubric."
3. You will need to assess your own essay and highlight the area of each section of the rubric that you believe you achieved. 
4. Once you have done that, explain your reasoning for giving yourself those scores using evidence from your essay. There is a box for you to do this on your document
5. If you have not shared this document with me before you leave today, your personal statement will be considered late, and it will affect your grade.

Goal #2: A Writing Activity

This is an in-class activity to get our creative juices flowing. Stay tuned.


Bonus: Take a look at this article later. It's called "7 Lessons Every Writer Must Learn." Much of what we'll be doing in the next few weeks will connect to lessons like these ones. The astute observer will notice that the writing activity we did today was based off of these 7 lessons.

Proofreading and Editing

Happy Friday!
Make sure you have a book out. 

I apologize for not being able to give you the document for your final draft of your personal statement earlier this week. As I said, I was attempting a new tool. As may always happen, it didn't go over as planned.

Because of this, you will need to open the file below and make a copy for yourself that you share with me.

When it asks you how to title it, please fill in the space where it says "full name" with your actual full name.

PERSONAL STATEMENT


Today's Goal:
This is the last day you have in class to work on your Personal Statements, so a few things need to happen:

• Proofread your work. Every time you start a new sentence, there should be a capital letter. Your sentences need to end in periods (or exclamation points, or question marks). 
• Does your verb tense match your nouns? Are you using the same verb tense throughout your essay?
• Look at your sentence length. Did you vary the sentence length? Is there a flow between sentences?

If you were to read your personal statement out loud, how would it sound? Sometimes reading a written piece of work out loud will help identify problems areas that sound weird. 

Last Ten Minutes:

On Monday, we are moving on. Now that the personal statement unit is over, we have a little bit more freedom in how we use our time. Not a lot, but enough that I am able to ask you to respond to the following questions:

We're moving on to fiction writing beginning next week. Knowing this, what do you want to be able to do and learn in our English class as we tackle it, and why? What would make your time in here the most valuable?


Your personal statement is due on Monday, October 10/6. Meaning your final draft should be in the document you created today, and shared with me. If it is not shared with me, it will be considered late.