Tuesday, February 7, 2012

ENGLISH - 1^st trimester – Day 39

1. Begin working on the backside of this week’s vocabulary handout
1. When you finish, I need 4 volunteers to handout the tests and binders on the center table.
2. Add your 3 tests to your binder (and return your binder to the center table).
2. They say that you can choose to use your life for good or for evil. Yesterday, you wrote about a character from one of our stories that chose evil. Going backward in time, make up something that happened to this character that upset him and caused him to become mean.
3. At our desks, we graded two papers “The Redwoods” (gave it a letter grade and told why) and “Mouse Alert” – we answered the following 3 questions for the second paper:

·         What reactions do you have to the paper?

·         What letter grade do you give it? (explain why)

·         List 2 questions you would like to ask the writer.

4. (if time) Next, we graded each other’s journal from today using the same 3 questions as above

ENGLISH homework:

Study for Friday’s vocabulary test (Lesson 5: jaded, gist, advocate…)

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PLAYWRITING – Day 39

WARMUP: TO BE COLLECTED: Write a paragraph about the kind of people that fascinate you in real life.

Playwright Marsha Norman says that the most interesting characters are those who “take control” of their own lives.” In most plays, that control is hard-won. It is the result of struggle.

Write a dramatic interpretations of a car key request to one’s parents when we know the answer is no.

According to Jeffery Hatcher’s book The Art & Craft of Playwriting,

• Interest in engendered by what a character does.
• The most interesting character in a play is the person with
• the greatest needs
• the biggest problems
• the greatest potential for action
• Your aim is to create characters an audience wants to spend time with: heroes, villains, and every complicated variation of human nature in between – people your audience will want to join on a journey, root for, gasp at, pity and boo.
• Passive characters are never interesting.

With our same partners, wrote and performed/mimed dramatic interpretations of a car key request to one’s parents when we know the answer is no.

PLAYWRITING homework:

Write a new page-long car keys scene – this time, you may not begin with the kid’s request for the keys. This time, the parent speaks first. Dramatically speaking, where will be the most interesting place to begin this scene. Think subtle and slow. Add dialogue this time if necessary.