September 15

Homework

• Writing Minutes
• Freewriting (My adventure in Wonderland was nothing like Alice's....)
• Create an outline for Vulture Bees or Dance Flies.  

We ran out of time in class today, so if you’re not feeling comfortable with creating key word outlines, never fear.  We will be going over them again next week too!  Give it a try this week.  If you’re getting frustrated, stop and work on your freewriting.  Try again the next day.  Still don’t “get it?”  We’ll work on it together next week!   

This is what we learned today:

       Our first unit focuses solely on creating a writing outline.  You do not need to choose the words or decide on sequence.  Just like an artist copies famous works of art, we will be copying a good paragraph.  And just like the student-artist copies to learn, not to take credit for another’s work, we will use this unit to learn how to take notes, understanding that we’re not creating anything of our own.

        First, we read our paragraph.

       Second, we count the sentences and create that many entries in our outline.

       Third, we read each sentence and choose the key words for that sentence. We should choose 3-5 words (numbers and symbols don’t count toward the count!) We should choose only important words. Words like the, and, it, to, etc. should not be considered key words. These key words are to help remind you about the content of the sentences.  You may use symbols, abbreviations, and numbers, too!  Each person may choose different key words.

Here is our example from this morning.

Booklice

1. insects / eat / mold / mildew / papers
2. crawl / floors / bookshelves / dead / insects
3. < / 3 / mm
4. look / listen
5. female / attracts / male / rubbing / surface
6. hear / faint / creaking / tapping
7. place / alive / booklice