Monday / Tuesday 2/3 April

Rough drafts of the thesis were due today. Finals are going to be due no earlier than 23/24 April.

We began the next unit in which writers will be writing forms of very short fiction.

In class we analyzed "Micro Fiction" examples in order to deduce the rules of the format. Those rules are:

Is a story.

Exactly 55 words long.

Plus a title.

Has an ironic or surprising twist.

Includes dialogue.

It was noted that Micro-Fiction is almost entirely "scene" as opposed to summary.

Writers are to bring a complete rough draft of one or more Micro Fiction pieces to the next class.

19/ 20 March

Writers were given an inductive reasoning task. Given three examples of the poetic form the Ghazal there were to infer the rules for writing one. Every writer must include a Ghazal on the topic of their thesis as a side bar in their thesis final draft.

Writers who have turned in their model sections and complete outlines on time have gotten them back.

Writers who need help were (and are) urged to meet with Mr. Zartler as soon as possible.

Because outlines were just turned back, the due dates for the full rough draft have been extended. Full rough drafts are now due on Monday/ Tuesday 2/3 April. Final Drafts of the thesis are now due on 19/20 April.

12-15 March

Writers had time in class and in the library this week to conduct research and to work on creating the outline for their thesis.

Mr. Zartler has returned the model sections to most of the students who turned theirs' in on time. The rest will be returned by Monday.

Outlines are due on Friday or Monday of next week. The outline should include a thesis statement for each section as well as topic sentences for each paragraph. The notes below were used in lessons about how to correctly create an outline.

Monday / Tuesday 5/6 March

Writers wrote about the day after the day after graduation day.

Writers made lists of topics, genres, and characters they would like to write about in the future.

Mr. Zartler introduced "the pitch". Students developed a pitch for their feature article, then received feedback on structure and content from the editors they pitched to.

For the next class writers should bring as much of a draft of their section as they can, and research materials. Writers will turn in model sections on Thursday and Friday. These model sections should have the "Working Hypothesis" for the entire paper clearly stated on the first page.

Writers will be in the library to do research on Thursday and Friday of this week.

Wednesday / Thursday / Friday 22-24 Februrary

While Juniors finished their OAKS testing, Seniors finished their exploration of writing by other Teen Authors.

When all testing was complete, the Seniors led discussions about good writing they found.

Seniors then turned in their work.

Thursday/Friday 16/17 February

Our Rockstar Librarian Ms. Battle came, and showed writers some great places to do research. First she highlighted these websites accessible through the Multnomah County Library:

Go to http://www.multcolib.org/ and sign in.
Then choose the following menu items:
Research
Databases
Electric Library

Then type in various search terms; see what comes up.
When you have found one, then you have the ability to automatically make citations.

Also
Research
AP Images (A good place to find photos and illustrations, but this database does not automatically create your citations.)

And Noodle Tools:
www.noodletools.com

Then the class was assigned two different assignments. Juniors are are working foremost on completing their OAKS Writing Assessment. After they finish they will have some time to work on the task that the Seniors are focusing on.

Ms. Brandy will be / was guest teacher on Friday. She will also guest teach next Wednesday through Friday.

Tuesday/Wednesday 14/15 February

While occasionally serenaded by Val-o-grams, writers wrote to the prompts:

What is curiosity like? or What is it like to learn something new?

After sharing responses writers began examining feature magazine articles from a variety of magazines in order to identify their characteristics. After the writers made their analysis, Mr. Zartler shared the following lecture notes explaining the characteristics: http://www.slideshare.net/john1306/feature-writing

Next writers were asked to consider questions: some are relatively simple: Who? Where? When? What? Others are slightly more complex: How? And big questions are often associated with: Why?

Writers are to have twenty-five questions about heir thesis topic for next class.

Next week, writers will be taking their OAKS and researching their thesis topics.