Title: I Don’t Know Why I Remember and Appositives
Week 2/3
Day: 9/15
Standard
I can statement
Checking for Understanding
W.11-12.4: Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.
W.11-12.5: Develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach, focusing on addressing what is most significant for a specific purpose and audience. (Editing for conventions should demonstrate command of Language standards 1–3 up to and including grades 11–12.)
I can develop and organize clear and straightforward writing which is appropriate for a specific task, purpose, and audience.
I can develop and strengthen my writing by planning, revising, editing, and rewriting.
I can address what is most significant for a specific purpose or audience.
Free Write: Think about a memory that always seems to resurface. It can be a happy one or not. It can be semi-real and semi-made-up. Start every one of your paragraphs with “I don’t know why I remember,” then fill in the blank. Push yourself to have at least three paragraphs or three memories that begin with “I don’t know why I remember.”
Revision: Include an appositive in your writing. Highlight it so I know where to find it.
Conferences during silent reading: Which piece will you choose to finalize? How can I help you? What questions do you have about figurative language, colons, fragment sentences, or appositives? Where do you plan to use them in your writing?
Lesson
Mentor Text
As a class, we will read “I Don’t know why I Remember . . .” by Danielle Macias. After reading it, students will share thoughts on the piece.
Free Write
Students will be instructed to do the following in their journal: Think about a memory that always seems to resurface. It can be a happy one or not. It can be semi-real and semi-made-up. Start every one of your paragraphs with “I don’t know why I remember,” then fill in the blank. Push yourself to have at least three paragraphs or three memories that begin with “I don’t know why I remember.”
Tea Party
Students will get a strip of paper that shows different ways in which authors used appositives. They will take their mentor text strips of papers and walk around the room sharing their paper with a peer. Students will take turns sharing how the author used the appositives. Then they will trade slips of papers and continue sharing with peers.
Revision
Include an appositive in your writing. Highlight it so I know where to find it. After revising, students will share their revisions with a peer, and I will ask for one or two volunteers to share with the class by writing their before and after sentences on the board. If the appositive is used incorrectly, we will revise it together.
Silent Reading
Students will read the book they chose from the media center yesterday for 20 minutes.
Mini-Conferences
While students are reading, I will call students over to my desk and go over their goal from the Google Form they filled out. I will also ask about the book they chose and why they chose it.
To help students prepare for their final paper, I will ask the following questions: Which piece will you choose to finalize? How can I help you? What questions do you have about figurative language, colons, fragment sentences, or appositives? Where do you plan to use them in your writing?
I Don’t Know Why I Remember
By Danielle Macias
I don’t know why I remember when I called my father stupid. I said it in English, a language banned in our Spanish speaking home. We sat side-by-side, eating bbq chicken, licking our fingers and wiping them clean on our clothes. My dad tilted his head, biting the remaining meat off the chicken bone. I wanted to give it to the dog, but my dad threw it over the fence that bordered our backyard instead. “You’re stupid,” I said. I regretted it as I spoke, but my eyes wouldn’t back down to his. His eyes met mine and lingered there. When he didn't look away, I wondered, “Will it hurt when he strikes? Will he walk me inside and go for the belt or the chancla? He had flipped over tables for less. Does he know those words in English? Maybe he didn’t understand me.”
I don’t know why I remember how he told me in broken English that he meant to throw it to the dog. That his aim had missed, and that he had planned to give it to the dog all along. His eyes, embarrassed that he had missed the throw, struggled to explain it. I relaxed my shoulders and let my eyes withdraw from his stare. My father justifying the throw to his daughter? It was out of place. It made me uncomfortable. Even then I knew it was somewhat pathetic of his part to be hurt by the words of a 10 year old.
I don’t know why I remember how my father longed for my pardon to release him of the shame for missing that throw. A million apologies in both languages raced through my mind. But I allowed for the silence and the howls of the dog to speak on my behalf. Guilt choked me and suddenly I was sorry for him. But the words were said, and I was still upset that I didn’t get to throw the bone. So I let him sit in his stupidness, and the backyard got blurry as I headed inside.
DEFINITION
An appositive is a noun phrase that identifies or renames a noun in the sentence. Appositives often begin with the words a, an, or the and are punctuated with commas.
Light fell on the snow-covered yard in front of the house from the windows of the room Agafya Mikhailovna, his old nurse, who filled the role of housekeeper for him.
(Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina)
She did know he made coffee every other day because Ms. Madden, his secretary, said she did not go to work in an office to make coffee.
(Beverly Cleary, Muggie Maggie)
The students acted as if they were completely and totally convinced that Mrs. Kerr--or perky blond woman whom I'd never seen in my life until she got on our bus at he end of the field trip--had been our pre-algebra teacher since Christmas.
(RIck Riordan - Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightening Thief.)
Take Tim Geithner, the hot nerd tapped by Obama to fix the colossal mess left by W, and Henry Paulson, a man who played with live snakes and dead-on-arrival ideas.
(Maureen Dowd, "Tim Geithner! Why Are Rich People So Cheap?")
Harry was small and tough, a boy going through life with his chin stuck out a mile.
(Stephen King, Hearts in Atlantis)
A bald slight man, he reminded me of a baby bird.
(Tracy Chevalier, The Girl with a Pearl Earring)
The furniture, a mixture of Logan crafted walnut and oak, included a walnut bed whose ornate headboard rose halfway up the wall toward the high ceiling.
(Mildred Taylor, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry)
Lou Epstein, the oldest, shortest, and baldest of the three Epstein brothers, barely looked up from the cash register when Alfred entered the store.
(Robert Lipsyte, The Contender)
In the locker room, I packed for the trip to New Orleans, the road-trip that would change my life and destiny as an athlete forever.
(Pat Conroy, My Losing Season)
He quickly informed Han that Lando Clarissian--who'd betrayed them to Darth Vader on Cloud City--had become their ally, and that Land had already secretly infiltrated Jabba's palace.
(Ryder Windham, Star Wars: Return of the Jedi)
Someone is gripping my arm, a boy from the Seam, and I think maybe I started to fall and he caught me.
(Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games)
The girl who five years ago stood huddled with her mother and sister, as he presented her, the oldest child, with a medal of valor.
(Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games)
As I was saying, the mother of this hobbit -- of Bilbo Baggins, that is -- was the famous Belladonna Took, one of the three remarkable daughters of the Old Took, head of the hobbits who lived across The Water, the small river that ran at the foot of The Hill.
(J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit)
"The following morning, Tarzan, lame and sore from the wounds of his battle with Terkoz, set out toward the west and the sea coast"
(Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan)
"Sheeta, the leopard, alone of all the jungle folk, tortured his prey."
(Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan)
And he had contacted Lucius Fox, the man he had handpicked to be Wayne Enterpises's CEO, and he had told him that of the Wayne empire's formidable resources were to be brough tot bear for one purpose: the redemption of Gotham.
(Greg Rucka, Batman No Man's Land)
Quetzalcoatl, the Morning Star, calls
the sun to come forth as did Lazarus.
(David Lee "Rhapsody in Slickrock: A Song for the Roadrunner")
My love for my children makes me glad I am what I am, and keeps me from desiring to be otherwise; and yet, when I sometimes open a little box in which I still keep my fast yellowing manuscripts, the only tangible remnants of a vanished dream, a dead ambition, a sacrificed talent, I cannot repress the thought, that, after all, I have chosen the lesser part, that I have sold my birthright for a mess of pottage.
(James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man)
That terrifying product of the social system he belonged to and believed in, the young girl who knew nothing and expected everything, looked back at him like a stranger through May Welland's familiar features; and once more it was borne in on him that marriage was not the sage anchorage he had been taught to think, but a voyage on unchartered seas.
(Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence)
Our founding fathers faced with perils that we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations.
(President Barack Obama, Inaugural Address given January 20, 2009)
Only a few people were watching at first, and half of them were Heck's Angels, a roving tricycle gang of four- and five-year-olds.
(Jerry Spinelli, Maniac Magee)
His Lordship had been entertaining two guests, a young lady and gentleman, in the summerhouse, and had watched my father's approach across the lawn bearing a much welcome tray of refreshments.
(Kazuo Ishiguro, Remains of the Day)
These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves.
(Gilbert Highet)
Because I have this larger goal, this greater committment to somebody I love more than myself, I can get right back on track.
(Stephen R. Covey, The 8th habit).
I'm still lying on my side, locked in the fetal position. I lift my hand to my eyes to find them sound, untouched by ants that never existed.
(Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games)
Ms. Dunning saw me and started to come over, but then Darryn Peck, who'd got overexcited at his big brother being the center of attention, managed to set fire to one of the tent flaps and Ms. Dunning had to attend to that.
(Morris Gleitzman, Blabbermouth)
He was a sly-looking little man with side whiskers, a solicitor in a very small way of business, but sharp enough to have realized earlier that anyone esle that Animal Farm would need a broker and that the commissions would be worth having.
(George Orwell, Animal Farm)
Clothes therefore, must be truly a badge of greatness; the insignia of the superiority of man over all the other animals, for surely there could be no other reason for wearing the hideous things. (Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan of the Apes)
It was a large square wooden structure, with tongued and grooved walls painted pale green and white, a Corinthian portico, and fluted pilasters between the windows. (Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence)
The same day, Pepsi bottled up two of its largest bottlers for $6 billion, and drug giant GlaxoSmithKline struck a $3 billion deal to acquire Stiefel Laboratories, a specialist in skin-care products. "The activity is very positive," said Steven Kaplan, a corporate-finance expert at the University of Chicago.
(Daniel Gross, "Let's Make A Deal," Newsweek, 4 May 2009)
Analysts view acquisitions as excellent barometers for the level of testosterone and optimism in the markets, a gauge of what economist John Maynard Keynes called "animal spirits."
(Daniel Gross, "Let's Make A Deal," Newsweek, 4 May 2009)
"She floored the accelerator, and my head slammed against the backrest. A prerecorded voice came on over the speaker: Hi, this is Ganymede, cup-bearer to Zeus, and when I'm out buying wine for the Lord of the Skies, I always buckle up!"
(Rick Riordan, The Sea of Monsters----Book 2: Percy Jackson & The Olympians)
"Or did you see his face, Thief Lord?"
Cornelia Funke, The Thief Lord.
"The poisoning had to be his doing. Who else would be so low as to attack Thalia's tree, the only thing left of a hero who'd given her life to save her friends?"
(Rick Riordan, The Sea of Monsters----Book 2: Percy Jackson & The Olympians)
I have come down in my most sensible traveling dress--a brown tweed that will not show the train's smudges and soot.
(Libba Bray, The Sweet Far Thing)
Her chaperone marches in time with her, the picture of respectability.
(Libba Bray, The Sweet Far Thing)
It is only seventeen miles from the Blackfoot Canyon and not much farther from the Swan, a river beautiful as its name as it floats by the Mission Glaciers.
(Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It)
As we got closer to the monsters, the sound of Charybdis got louder and louder--a horrible wet roar like the galaxy's biggest toilet being flushed.
(Rick Riordan, The Sea of Monsters pg. 158)
He had been substituted for the image of Cristobal Colon, the discoverer of the New World.
(Herman Melville, Benito Cereno)
So Louisa's brother, to whom the dog belonged, had built him his little kennel and tied him up.
(Mary Freeman, A New England Nun)
All I can think is how unjust the whole thing is, the Hunger Games.
(Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games, p. 117)
And therefore they are named the Valar, the Powers of the World.
(J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion)
In effect, we are the monsters, the settlers, the conquerors who have tamed and destroyed the wilderness; but we are also the horse up there on the ledge, desperate to be free. (104 Jane Tompkins West of Everything: the Inner Life of Westerns)
The gods defeated their father, sliced him to pieces with his own scythe, and scattered his remains in Tartarus, the darkest part of the Underworld. (Rick Riordan, The Lightning Thief, pg 6)
Immunization, the only way to combat a virus, is equally useless, as even the most minute dosage will lead to a full-blown infection.
(Max Brooks, The Zombie Survival Guide)
"I owe everything to your father!" someone called to me from beneath magnolia, and what followed was a cacophony of voices, pure babble, telling some sort or other about Edward Bloom and his good deeds.
(Daniel Wallace, Big Fish)
“I was unable to take my eyes off her, the Mistress of Bees, the portal into my mother’s life” Sue Monk Kidd The Secret Life of Bees
“During spring and summer—the most strenuous period of foraging—a worker bee, as a rule, does not live more than four or five weeks” Sue Monk Kidd. The Secret Life of Bees
Behind every door, on every shelf, stand mountains of neatly stacked cans and packages, a reserve of food to last the siege of Leningrad.
(Yann Martel, The Life of Pi)
"Then there's a voice, the wrong voice, not my mother's and I'm scared." (290)
(Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games)
"Life Science, a black-and-white film on the migration patterns of sea turtles."
(Gary Schmidt, Trouble)
"Mr. Sherlock Holmes, who was usually very late in the mornings, save upon those not infrequent occasions when he was up all night, was seated at the breakfast table."
(Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Hound of the Baskervilles)
It may be remarked that Squire Haynes, the speaker, was the wealthiest man in town, and of course would be considerably affected by increased taxation.
(Horatio Alger, Frank's Campaign)
There often came a moment during an interrogation when a bond, a strange sort of alliance, came into being between the subject and the interrogator.
(Robert Cormier, The Rag and Bone Shop)
“It was customary for the men in the family to remain on Simon’s homestead, Finch’s Landing, and make their living from cotton.”
-To Kill a Mockingbird 4
Ushering in such a transformation offers President Mubarak — a great nationalist ever since his generation of young officers helped their country escape the last vestiges of British colonialism — the chance to end the violence and lawlessness, to begin improving the dire economic and social conditions in his country and to change his place in history.
John Kerry "Allying Ourselves With the Next Egypt"
"He passes the scarecrow for Hana's garden, the crucifix with its hanging sardine cans, and moves uphill towards the villa."
(Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient)
I want to meet Carol Davidson. She's the graphic designer who, after graduating from Portland State in 1972, came up with the Swoosh for Phil Knight,Zeus of Swoosh for $35.
(Rick Reilly, The Swooshification of the World)
At Christmastime, the only time Katie could afford to have a fire in the parlor, all of the little windows glowed and Francie felt a great joy sitting there, feeling the warmth and watching the windows change from rosy red to amber as the night wore on.
(A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith)
“Half a mile from home, at the farther edge of the woods, where the land was highest, a great pine-tree stood, the last of its generation.”
(A White Heron by Sarah Orne Jewett)
"Beatrice's mother was not an impatient woman, but she had eventually divorced Leon to pursue her own career as a cockatoo trainer at Parrot Jungle, a tourist attraction in Miami." (Carl Hiaasen, Hoot)
Someday the bowels will grow monstrous and swollen with these old tired dreams, swell and break, and strong fists batter the fat bellies, and skeletons of starved children batter them, and perhaps you will be slugged by a thug hired by the fat bellies, Andy Kvaternick. Or death will take you to bed at last, or you will strangle with that old crony of miners, the asthma.
(Tillie Olson, Yonnondio)
Little by little the shell slid up the embankment until at last a parapet cut straight across its line of march, the shoulder of the road, a concrete wall four inches high.
(John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath)
Rigby went on to teach Sam a few essentials about the broadsword (messy but effective), the bow and arrow (poison on the tip helps if you're not a great marksman), and the knife (direct and to the point).
(Will Allen-Swords for Hire pg 75)
But as I walk toward the door of the study, a door I have never even seen closed until this moment, I can feel my mind begin to race.
(Suzanne Collins, Catching Fire, 17)
Ao-Kuang, dragon king of the eastern sea, was the first to receive the great sage as a visitor.
(Gene Luen Yang, American Born Chinese)
In the next cell, the boy—Jackson—made a noise, a kind of catcall, that caused the moment to seem silly and cheap.
(Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees)
The moon dangled halfway up the horizon, a bloated alabaster wafer.
(Sara Shepard, The Lying Game)
Deseret Management Corporation (DMC), a for-profit arm of The Church of Jesus Chris of Latter-day Saints, today announced the retirement of Mark Willes as its CEO. (Deseret News, "Deseret Management Corporation Announces the Retirement of CEO Mark Willes, Appoints Keith B. McMullin," 5 April 2012)
Some years later in Cusco, a city high in the Andes of Peru, Elder A. Theodore Tuttle and I held a sacrament meeting in a long, narrow room that opened onto the street. (Boyd K. Packer, "And a Little Child Shall Lead Them," Apr 2012.)
Connor, a hotheaded teen whose parents are fed up with his delinquent behavior, is one of the condemned.
(Vizzini, Ned. "Young and in the Way"The New York Times. The New York Times Company, 16 Mar. 2008. Web. 4 Apr. 10.)
My great-grandmother. I would've liked to have known her, a wild horse of a woman, so wild she wouldn't marry.
(Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street)
Mr. McElroy, the shop teacher, is an amateur photographer, so we have some makeshift game films, like the big time. (Chris Crutcher,Running Loose, pg. 47)
Grief, a type of sadness that most often occurs when you have lost someone you love, is a sneaky thing, because it can disappear for a long time, and then pop back up when you least expect it. (Lemony Snicket, Horseradish)
“And although Hanae is a competitive girl, one who hates to admit disadvantage, she likes Mari’s clear-sightedness. It makes the fact of Mari’s friendship, of her finding Hanae likable, more valuable and astounding.”
(Lydia Minatoya, The Strangeness of Beauty, pg 158)
He, mon cher petit papa, took me out boating and biking, taught me to swim and dive and water-ski, read to me Don Quixote and Les Miserables, and I adored and respected him and felt glad for him whenever I heard the servants discuss his various lady friends, beautiful and kind beings who made much of me and cooed and shed precious tears over my cheerful motherlessness.
(Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita)
He looked very small and vulnerable sitting there alone in the big old-fashioned kitchen, a blond little boy in faded blue Dr. Dentons, his feet swinging a good six inches above the floor.
(Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time)
Old Mr. Bentley, the minister whom Anne had found lacking in imagination, had been pastor of Avonlea for eighteen years.
(L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables)
His low-level, nonstop keening was beginning to set her teeth on edge, but she did her best to ignore it, knowing that he couldn't help it.
John Flanagan, Ranger's Apprentice Book Three: The Icebound Land)
My great-grandmother. I would've liked to have known her, a wild horse of a woman, so wild she wouldn't marry. Until my great-grandfather threw a sack over her head and carried her off.
(Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street)
"Welfare!" she still says/ like it's a dirty diaper from some drug addict's baby, a filthy thing she don't want in her house."
(Virginia Euwer Wolfe, Make Lemonade)
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"He had known the legendary blind piper, Garret Barry, and had passed on a part of his repertoire to his better-known son, Willie Clancy."
(Kate Thompson, The New Policeman)
"On Wednesday morning, I woke up with a stuffy nose to an entirely new Alabama, a crisp and cold one."
John Green, Looking for Alaska
"He found the house, a weather beaten cardboard bungalow at eighty a month, but at the last minute the firm ordered him to Washington and I went out to the country alone."
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
"Often the beautiful Cat would even compose verses and little songs in a style so passionate that one might have thought her in love...; but her secretary, an old cat, wrote so illegibly that, even though these works have been preserved, it is impossible to read them."
Elizabeth Wanning Harries, Twice Upon a Time
Sirius Black, possibly the most infamous prisoner ever to be held in Azkaban fortress, is still eluding capture, the Ministy of Magic confirmed today. - JK Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
While Muggles have been told that Black is carrying a gun (a kind of metal wand Muggles use to kill each other) , the magical community lives in fear of a massacre like that of twelve years ago, when Black murdered thirteen people with a single curse. - JK Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Professor Severus Snape, master of this school, commands you to yield the information you conceal! - JK Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
The hangman, a grey-haired convict in the white uniform of the prison, was waiting beside his machine.
(George Orwell, A Hanging, 1931)
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The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call “out there.”
(Truman Capote, In Cold Blood, 1966)
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"Of course, the legendary "lopers"--the ones who had been able to do a hundred miles in a day--had perished ages ago, but their memory was kept alive." (Anne McCaffrey, Runner of Pern in Legends)
Her own arm is glittering with snow, a thin new skin of shining gray crystals. (158 Fuse Julianna Baggott)
A scrawny geek, with black horn rims and a slight lisp, was easy prey for the play ground predators. (Derf, My Friend Dahmer)
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“Then Mrs. McClure, the president of the Boosters, the lady who lassoed us all, hoofs it through the door.” Flipped by Wendlin Van Draanen p. 173
"She could see so clearly now that he was only a childish fancy, no more important really than her spoiled desire for the aquamarine earbobs she had coaxed out of Gerald."
(Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind)
"In the midst of them, the blackest and largest jewel in that dark setting, reclined James Hook, or as he wrote himself, Jas. Hook, of whom it is said he was the only man that the Sea-Cook feared."
(J.M Barrie Peter and Wendy)
The place I do all this is a company called Kazam, the biggest House of Enchantment in the world.
(Jasper Fforde, The Song of the Quarkbeast)
My Dad he comes in little tiny pieces into my mind
like those remnants, those samples you see
in the home ec room
Make Lemonade pg. 46
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“It all started back in the late 1940s when Papa, Mama, my older brother, Roberto, and I left El Rancho Blanco, a small village nestled on barren, dry hills several miles north of Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, and headed to California, hoping to leave our life of poverty behind.”
Breaking Through – Francisco Jimenez
“As Vera and I stood in line for our meager food—thin soup and a piece of hard, dry bread—a girl approached us.”
Will You Be My Sister – Eva Lux Braun
"Thomas Lynde — a meek little man whom Avonlea people called "Rachel Lynde's husband" — was sowing h is late turnip seed on the hill field beyond the barn;"
(Anne of Green Gables, Lucy Maud Montgomery)
"Participants were asked to define financial security," said Diana Elliott, research manager of the Pew Charitable Trusts' financial security and mobility project, on a conference call to discuss the study. The definition was "consistent and modest. It meant families have enough to pay the bills, have a little left over for savings and have few worries about making ends meet."
(The American Dream is Dying, CBS News)
"This was a good joke, this defiance which made his heart beat in terror, for he was sure his master would soon be after him."
(Winter's Tale, Mark Helprin)