Norman's desert-island-reading book montage

Jazz and Twelve O'Clock Tales: New Stories
Talking Dirty to the Gods: Poems
A Game of You
ERODING WITNESS
Sit Down and Shut Up: Punk Rock Commentaries on Buddha, God, Truth, Sex, Death, and Dogen's Treasury of the Right Dharma Eye
The Palace of the Peacock
Beloved
Little Kingdoms
Bedouin Hornbook
Sonny's Blues
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom: A Play
Joe Turner's Come and Gone
Collected Poems, 1948-1984
Dream on Monkey Mountain and Other Plays
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Winter's Tales
Four Major Plays: A Doll's House/Ghosts/Hedda Gabler/The Master Builder
Seven Plays
The Zoo Story
Collected Plays:  Volume 1


Norman's favorite books »
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Tuesday, October 20, 2009

How Do Writers Work? What Does A Historian Do?


Ongoing Homework: Students should remember to read for thirty minutes each evening. Remember there are no restrictions on what you choose to read, but please remember to record the date, the title of what you read, and how many pages you read on your Reading Journal entry form. Please turn in your entry forms on Friday, so that I can review how your reading is going. I will return them to you on Monday. I would encourage you to keep up with your reading over the weekend.

In writing workshop today we started the class reading Elizabeth Spires’ poem, “The Sims.” We focused on the writer’s choices concerning persona, and form. What were the possible reasons the poet chose to write the poem in the voice of a child? Why did the poet choose to have so much white space in her stanzas?

The students were reminded that poets make deliberate choices when writing. They were also reminded that as writers themselves they needed to be aware, and intentional in their own writing. They then went on to work on their own material.

In cultural studies, we continued our study of the first Californians. We discussed the idea of history being a matter of asking the right questions, and those good questions generally produce even more questions.

We noted that the vegetation and animal life of the Bay Area was much more lush and plentiful than it is today. What did that mean for the California Indians? Students began to share some of the questions that they had begun to wonder about.

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