English I Honors students today continued with the difference between summary and analysis by looking carefully the analysis portion of yesterday’s work.

With a little help, students saw that analysis is almost all inference whereas summary is strictly re-writing the text.

English 8 students began getting ideas for their year of writing today. We began with a prompt that would certainly be intriguing for most individuals but not all:

Many names have special meaning of history. For example, the name Hannah means “favor” or “grace.” The name Vito means “life.”

Write about your own name. Who named you? What does your name mean? Does it have a special ethnic or religious significance? Are you named after someone in your family? If you could change your name, would you?

Some students might later return to the topic to complete it while others might let it lie dormant for most or even all of the year. Afterward, we returned to classroom management ideas and I introduced the concept of behavioral goal setting and goal tracking.

Creative writing students had some time to do just that — write. We also went over a new homework assignment, the journal. Journaling is a worry-free way to write, providing a safe place for students to write about whatever they want whenever they want however they want. I’ll be revising a rubric for students for this. In the meantime, just write! In addition, I shared with students the exciting news that we’ll be doing NaNoWriMo together this year. The tentative word count for student novels is 15,000 but that might change. (It’s the max, though.)

Homework

• English I Honors: complete a topic sentence and two concrete details about the use of violent language and imagery in “The Gift.” This can be a very simple TS.