Class Minutes, Thursday, December 17th

We went over tips for writing personal essays, including types of hooks. The acronym DRAPES was also introduced as a self-check strategy; each letter stands for a writing technique or rhetorical device. We listened to and read This I Believe essays from the CBC and NPR websites, including one by Muhammad Ali and Amy Tan. Then, we spent the rest of the class time pre-writing by list-making for our own This I Believe essay.

Class Minutes Friday, December 11th

We began class by reading an except of Thoreau's, "What I Lived For." We then reviewed the personal writing samples: a memoir, a narrative, and an essay. We read the original "This I Believe" essay challenge and discussed the relevance of such an endevour in contemporary society. As a pre-writing activity we played a game called, Two-Corners. Two corners of the room were labelled: Agree and Disagree. Mrs. Wall read statements out such as: Life is fair, how you act in a crisis shows who you really are, you can't depend on anyone else; you can only depend on yourself, and doing what's right means obeying the law, amoung others. An interesting and, at times, intense discussion ensued. A reminder that your Hair Advice piece is due on Tuesday.