Honors 09-04-2013

Welcome back to the best male-written 8th grade language arts blog at Discovery Middle School!  Glad you cared enough to return.

One more day.  Less than 24 hours.  That's how long you have to wait for the new book you'll be receiving from me.  Okay, it's no secret that the title of the book is The Giver.   It's written by Lois Lowry (she's a woman) and is an accessible yet thought-provoking read.  You'll be asked to read it on your own over about a ten day period.  That comes out to about 16 pages a day.  Not too bad.  You'll also have a few writing assignments to be turned in during that time.  We'll also be studying a few short stories to use with it during those ten days.  There will be a lot coming your way over the next few weeks.  Hope you're ready.  It's going to be a wild ride.

I hope to return your Writer's Autobiographies tomorrow, but they might have to wait until Friday.  In the meantime, I'll be using them to focus on another area of concern: agreement errors.  This is when you have errors in subject-verb agreement or with pronouns and their antecedents.  Here's an example from one of your papers:

Good authors write about their life.

Do you see what's wrong here?  "Authors" is plural.  "Their" is plural.  "Life" is singular.  All the authors don't share one life.  They all have their own lives.  The correct way to write this sentence is as follows:

Good authors write about their lives.

We'll talk about this more tomorrow during Tool Time.

Another thing I noticed in your papers is the proliferation of the word "you" or "your".  Don't use the second person in your formal writing.  Consider anything you write for me to be formal.

One last thing about I gleaned from your papers is your preference for starting your leads off with questions.  Don't do that.  In fact, I challenge you to avoid that throughout the rest of the year.  Don't open with a question.  Make a statement instead.  

Fine start to the "Utopia" poem discussions.  I loved hearing what you had to say as I moved from table to table.  Good, rich discussion.  I enjoyed seeing you find meaning and generate understanding as you discussed the poem.  Tomorrow we'll share our thoughts and conclusions before moving on to The Giver.  Don't worry, our utopia article and our utopia poem all relate to the novel and the other things that will be soon coming your way.

Enough for today.  Tell me the two things--other than agreement errors--I took from your papers, and I'll sign your Archer card tomorrow.

See you soon.

The clock is ticking on The Giver...