Thursday, November 16, 2017

1. SSR (15 mins)

2. Narratives:  What is"Showing?"  What is "Telling?"
When writing stories, you want the reader to not only read the words on the paper but experience the story with all five senses.  To do this, you can’t just tell the reader what is happening, you have to show it using the right words, descriptions, and sentences to help the reader see what is happening in the story.

Here is an example of  Show, don’t tell! :

Example A: Telling

Thomas walked into class on the first day of school. He looked around and didn’t know anyone so he felt kind of sad.  The teacher walked over to him and said hello then told Thomas to sit down next to Elise.  She wore an outfit that looked cool and pretty.  Thomas felt kind of nervous around her because she was pretty.  He didn’t say anything the entire period until Mr. Stearns told everyone to take a pencil out to copy some notes down.  Thomas didn’t have anything. He felt embarrassed. Elise gave a pencil to him.  He was happy and thankful. He kind of liked her.

Example B: Showing

Thomas walked into math class on the first day of school.  As soon as he walked in, the eyes of every student drifted onto Thomas and he could feel their peering eyes burning holes into his soul.  As he glanced over the students from left to right, there was not a single recognizable face.  They were like strangers in a waiting room of a hospital: foreign, sickly, bored, anxious.  He let out a slow sigh, rolled his eyes back, hung his head slightly, and drooped his shoulders.  

“Thomas Suthers?” asked the elderly and frail math teacher, Mr. Stearns.  He squinted as he spoke and his voice was strained as if he were sick with some fatal unknown illness.  

“Yes, sir.  That’s me,” he replied meekly.  Thomas didn’t look into Mr. Sterns eyes as he spoke, just at his own shoes, trying to avoid the thousand eyes burning into him.

“Well, we are short on space, so you’ll just have to sit next to Ms. Purcell, over there,” pointing his calloused and wrinkled index finger to a corner of the room.

Thomas turned and sat down at the vacant seat next to Elise Purcell.  The desks were aligned in straight rows.  Thomas sat directly to the right of Elise about a foot and a half apart.  She was scribbling notes furiously.  Thomas sat upright, kept his head straight and slowly, out of the corner of his brown eyes, tried to piece together who Elise was.  She was left handed so she faced away from him and her dark blond hair draped her head like waves of wheat in a field.  There was a three subject notebook on her desk and it was full of cursive notes.  He wondered what the cursive meant as opposed to print.  He filed that fact away in his brain for later use. Somewhere under all the hair was a two-sizes-too-large white knit sweater that slung over her right shoulder.  Thomas stared out of the corner of his eye and saw…

“If I have to ask again, we will practice after school.  Everyone, take out a pencil and paper and jot these notes down,” exclaimed Mr. Stearns.

Thomas snapped up in his seat and looked inside his canvas backpack for something, anything, to write with.  A couple of other boys dug into their pockets for pencils.  Then the room fell silent. He guessed everyone had found their pencils. The zipping and the unzipping of his backpack, the crunching of paper, the flex and squeak of his old metal chair, and the deafening silence of the entire class was almost unbearable.  Again, Thomas could feel the eyes of the strangers pressing like a hot iron onto his body. A pale hand reached out.

“Here.  I have a bunch of extras.” A smile. Hazel eyes.  Freckles.  The eyes dissipating back onto the chalkboard.  A cooling sensation. The silence, just a bored silence.  There was Elise, saving a drowning soul with number two pencil.

“Thanks.  I owe you one.”  He paused for a second then added, “Oh, I’m Tom by the way.”

3.  Apply "Show, Don't Tell" in your writing.

Here are some Techniques to show instead of tell:

• Use the five senses.  Describe the action of story by showing what it looks like, what it might feel like, smell like, taste like, or sound like.
• Don’t just tell the reader how a character feels.  Instead, what is the character doing or saying that might suggest he is feeling a certain way.
• Find the right words to describe.  Use original words, descriptive words, words that readers will remember.
• Make comparisons through similes, metaphors, and personification.  Sometimes the best way to show is to write what something seems not is.
• Camera test: Would a reader be able to create an image if they were only to read the words in your story?
• Use dialogue in the right spots.  Dialogue always shows what the character is doing and thinking.

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Review Games

HW:
1.Do Lesson 2 Review Sheet for Extra Credit on Test
2. Lesson 2 Vocab Test tomorrow
3.  Grammar test tomorrow: sentences and
sentence fragments,
nouns, pronoun & antecedent
4. SSR
5. Narrative rough draft should be submitted by tonight