September 10, 2008 Class Minutes

Hey everybody! Here's the Wednesday 9/10/08 class minutes.

The first thing we discussed in class today was this blog and the purpose of the blog. We are supposed to use this blog to discuss and ask questions about any text we are reading. Also, we can use the blog to ask our peers about any of our writing. Mr. Lazarow also explained that we will take turns writing the class minutes each day. Tomorrow is Jimmy's turn (just a reminder!).
The next thing we discussed in class was the new writing assignment. It is to be a personal narrative about the experiences that shaped us as readers/writers. This narrative is supposed not only tell the reader how we became the readers/writers we are today, but also for us to learn how we became those readers/writers. The handout we received in class has information about the different ways to organize the essay. Also, there are questions that we can ask ourselves that would be helpful when getting started. Mr. Lazarow also made it very clear that we should not just use the answers to the questions as our essay, but that we should pick out the questions most important to us. There is no specific audience that we have to write and we can choose who our audience is. However, once we choose our audience, we should use that information when we decide how to write the essay that would give the audience the best understanding of us as readers/writers. The essay should be in standard MLA format with 1" margins, 12 pt. font, double-spaced, and the font should be clean and legible. The essay should be 650 words or right around it, and is due next Wednesday 9/17/08.
Lastly, Mr. Lazarow discussed what we will be doing over the next several days. We learned today that there is no 5 paragraph essay. Over the past 5 years, we have been learning how to write based on the same 5 paragraph, topic sentence model. We should be using the form of essay writing to fit our goals and only using the number of paragraphs that we need to use. Over the next several days, we will learn a new way to get started when writing an essay.
I think that is the basic idea of what we discussed today. See you tomorrow!
Sarah Mercer