We read the short story, "Identities" this week and we have been working toward determining what the author is trying to share about Identity through this story. We responded to a few questions about the text to help us focus our thinking and find the theme.
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This week was focused on preparing a thoughtful piece of writing for the School Wide Write, especially because many members of the class also hope to use the writing as a sample for their portfolios. The topic that we are writing about is: Turning Points.
This week has been focused on synthesizing our critical and creative thinking. We have worked to create a "copycat" poem, using "I Grew Up" as our sample. We have written our own poems describing the place (or places) where we have grown up, and the impact that those places have had on our own sense of identity.
As a way to share and extend our creative thinking, we are now using iMovie to develop a video to accompany our poetry. We are hoping to be able to share these with you during Student-led Conferences next Wednesday. The week began with a look back at our early writing (Scars) and some exploration of "mentor texts". These helped us to understand what makes a good piece of personal writing, which we will work on next week.
We also worked together on the poem "I Grew Up" by Lenore Keeshing-Tobias and responded to some questions to help us look more closely at the text and lead us to a better understanding of the author's theme. This week we have been working on examining character in text, and how characters are used to help develop the main idea (or theme) of a story. We read the short story, Borders by Thomas King, and reflected on some key ideas from the story with some comprehension questions and an analysis of one of the main characters. Over the break, relax and enjoy a good read.
Letter Essay due: March 29 This week we have been working on building our collection of memoirs which will make up a significant section of our end-of-year project. As this is our first attempt, I encourage you to try and get as much as you can down for your first narrative, and we will take some time to add, edit and revise as we develop more ideas and learn to become better writers.
Learning is a process. This week we worked on an analysis of the film "Whale Rider" and attempted to gain a deeper understanding of the film and the themes that it expresses, primarily those of the important role that cultural identity can play in shaping who we are, and also how significant people in our lives can have a profound affect on who we are and who we become.
Resources for this assignment: This week we will work on how film deals with ideas of identity, in particular through the influences of culture and significant people in our lives. The film we are watching is "Whale Rider", directed by Niki Caro and based on the novel by Witi Ihimaera. Here are the resources we used for our learning this week:
This week we read the Alice Munro short story, "Boys and Girls" and considered the way that gender and family influence a person's identity. These are the documents connected to this text:
Hello Learners!
This week we will be undertaking an examination of good writing. As we explored last week, writers write on a wide range of topics, and this week, I will post some examples of good writing here for you to engage with as we make our way on our journey as writers. From these, we built our criteria for good narrative writing and used that criteria to begin revising our writing from last week. I hope that somewhere here you find some pieces that you enjoy and learn from, as well as find some ways to improve your own writing. Have fun! Narrative Mentor Texts |
HandoutsEnglish 10 Course Outline Archives
May 2019
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