10/19/22

Hello friends! Como esta?

To begin the day students...read for fifteen minutes.

Next, I asked students to create two compound-complex sentences. The first sentence should follow the (ID)I format, and the other should follow the I(DI) format. I walked around the room and checked each person's sentences for grammatical correctness.

Upon completion, students were to work on their stories. Each of these three days of in class writing (today, tomorrow, and Friday), students must create either one full page of writing or an outline for their story. The outlines must include the introduction of the protagonist in his/her/its normal world, the establishment of the conflict, the rising action, the climax in which the protagonist must make a choice based on her/his/its conflict, the falling action, the resolution which displays the epiphany or change created in the protagonist based on its/his/her choice, and the central idea which drives the entire narrative. What is your story really about? Not the plot, what universal truth are you trying to elucidate for your reader? If you don't know, you better figure it out. Stories without central ideas are flat; stories with central ideas are full and interesting.

I keep insisting that students keep their stories as simple as possible. Of course they need to include the elements of the genre, but beyond that, they should try to keep the stories localized to what they know.