Week 3

Experiments in Narration
Team Tally- Count up your points then divide by # of
members.
1. Give 1 point for each team 6. Give 1 point for each team member who is
member who likes writing. on a sports team.
2. Give 1 point for each team 7. Give 1 point for each student organization
member who lives in the dorm. a team member belongs to.
3. Give 1 point for every class a 8. Give 1 point for each team member with a
person in your team is taking. GPA of 3.0 or higher last semester.
4. Give 1 point for each book a team 9. Give 1 point for each team member who
member is reading. speaks a second language.
5. Give 1 point for each team 10. Give 1 point to each team member who
member who has a job. can say every other team member’s name
without hints.
 Nadine Roxanne Schmitt
Kayla
Stanley
Today’s Alyson Anne Stefink
Conferences Madelyn Ray Stull

Maya Rae Pacholczak

Cole Joseph Hyatt

Review verb info from last week
Use vivid action verbs whenever “blah” With a powerful swing of his golf club, a
verbs can be avoided. Work to be man sends the ball whizzing straight over
specific to create an image through your a boat.
verb.
The yellow sun shimmered.
Consider straight present tense or straight
past tense instead of is/was __-ing. The music emanated out from the radio.
Sometimes this can feel more direct for
Music drowns out the sound of rushing
your reader.
water from the clear blue lake.
Small Clarification: Phrase vs. Sentence
PHRASES SENTENCES

Father gazing over the lake. Father was gazing over the lake as he
was practicing his golf swing.
Practicing his golf swing.
(More direct: Father gazed over the lake
The sun shining on the horizon. as he practiced his golf swing.)

The sun was shining on the horizon.

In your table group...
Start by discussing favorite movies/books.
Make a group list of as many universal thematic concepts as you can
think of.
Universal thematic concepts are abstract ideas that get explored and create
messages through texts (stories/novels/movies) and can fill in this stem:
This text is really about _____.

Examples: revenge, friendship, loss, justice...

Individual Brainstorm

Jot down the universal themes that are most appealing to you or
meaningful to you when you think about moments from your own
life.
Brainstorm ideas for possible stories you could tell from your own
experiences, using the thematic concepts as prompts.
Narrow Down to One Story...

Decide on one story that you’re willing to write about today. Pick
something that involves at least one person besides you.
You need to be willing to share what you write and willing to
experiment with how you tell the story.
Jot down key details about that story to get your mind started:
Who was involved? Setting? Sequence of events?
Write a Summary Draft

Start by just getting the gist of your story down on paper. This will
not so much be the actual telling of the story as it will be planning
for telling the story.
You could start in any of these ways:
I am hoping to tell you a story about _______ because _____.
What basically happened is _____.
One thing I’d like to bring out or emphasize in this story is _____ because…
One of the themes that this story connects to is ____ because ...
Consider Our Mentor Texts...

One goal this semester is to keep learning from expert writers and
to find that we can apprentice ourselves to those writers.
Let’s practice doing that with Liu’s text, “Po-Po,” paragraphs 1 and
2.
What do you notice Liu DOING as a writer as he sets us up to read
about his grandmother?
What do you notice Liu DOING as a writer as he sets us up to read about his grandmother?

For more than two decades, my mother’s mother, Po-Po, lived in a cinder-block one-bedroom
apartment on the edge of New York’s Chinatown. She was twenty floors up, so if you looked straight out
from the main room, which faced north, one block appeared to melt into the next, all the way to the spire of
the Empire State off in the distance. This was a saving grace, the view, since her own block down below was
not much to look at. Her building, one of those interchangeable towers of 1970s public housing, was on the
lower east side of the Lower East Side, at the corner of South and Clinton. It was, as the realtors say, only
minutes from the Brooklyn Bridge and South Street Seaport, although those landmarks, for all she cared,
might as well have been in Nebraska. They weren’t part of the world Po-Po inhabited, which was the world
that I visited every few months during the last years of her life.
My visits followed a certain pattern. I’d get to her apartment around noon, and when I knocked on the
door I could hear her scurrying with excitement. When she opened the door, I’d be struck, always as if for
the first time, by how tiny she was: four feet nine and shrinking. She wore loose, baggy clothes, nylons, and
ill-fitting old glasses that covered her soft, wrinkled face. It was a face I recognized from my own second-
grade class photo. Eh, Po-Po, ni hao maaa? She offered a giggle as I bent to embrace her. With an impish
smile, she proclaimed my American name in her Yoda-like voice: Areek. She got a kick out of that. As she
shuffled to the kitchen, where Li Tai Tai, her caregiver, was preparing lunch, I would head to the bathroom,
trained to wash my hands upon entering Po-Po’s home.
Consider Our Mentor Texts...

Compare Liu’s way of setting the stage with McDonald’s approach.

Review paragraphs 1-6.
What do you notice McDonald DOING as a writer as he sets us up
to read the story about the boy he met?
 What do you notice McDonald DOING as a writer as he sets us up to read the story about the boy he met?

I WAS COMING UP ON THE LITTLE BRIDGE in the Rio Vista neighborhood of Fort Lauderdale,
deepening my stride and my breathing to negotiate the slight incline without altering my pace. And
then, as I neared the crest, I saw the kid.

He was a lumpy little guy with baggy shorts, a faded T-shirt and heavy sweat socks falling down over
old sneakers.

Partially covering his shaggy blond hair was one of those blue baseball caps with gold braid on the bill
and a sailfish patch sewn onto the peak. Covering his eyes and part of his face was a pair of those
stupid-looking '50s-style wrap-around sunglasses.

He was fumbling with a beat-up rod and reel, and he had a little bait bucket by his feet. I puffed on by,
glancing down into the empty bucket as I passed.

"Hey, mister! Would you help me, please?"

The shrill voice penetrated my jogger's concentration, and I was determined to ignore it. But for some
reason, I stopped.
Plan for a Strategy, and Write...

Consider how you could use one or more of the strategies that Liu
or McDonald used as you write.
Take 7 minutes to start telling your story in writing.
Push yourself to use at least one strategy we identified and to write
for the full time.
Share!
Dominant Impression

Within your story, what dominant impression(s) are you hoping to create through your
descriptions of the moments in the experience?

(E.g. it was a terrifying experience; this was a moment of intense awe.)

The Sea of Experience
and the Mountain of
Perspective Insert image here.
(From Barry Lane’s After THE END - First Edition)
Asynchronous Lesson and Homework
Asynchronous Lesson: Incorporating Dialogue to Liven Up a Narrative

Homework: Review Dillard’s, Liu’s, and McDonald’s writings that you read last week for
homework. Complete the document in which you examine how writers balance concrete
details with moments of reflection.

Weekly Writing: 750 to 1000 words - description/narration, top of the same running
document.

Soon, you will start finalizing a draft for this unit. We encourage you to practice writing
stories that allow you to hone your descriptive skills and that invite you to experiment
with narrative skills covered in class and in asynchronous lessons. The topics are up to
you! The narrative you finalize WILL be shared in a small group.
 Today’s Maya

Conferences Cole

Maddie

Kayla

Nadine

Alyson