Final Essay/Grammar Exercises

Agenda:
1. Final Essay
2. Bell-ringer
3. Grammar Exercises

Final Essay:

1. Review the directions from Thursday. Follow those directions until you are finished typing your essay. 

2. When you have completed your essay, go to my.hrw.com.

3. Your username is your student ID number. 

4. Your password is the lowercase of your first initial, the uppercase of your last initial @402. 

     Example: Molly Smith's password would be mS@402. 

5. Login to your account on this website. 

6. Once you are logged on, find the square towards the bottom of the screen that says "narrative." 

7. Click on this square to open the assignment. This only works on Google Chrome. If the assignment does not pop-up, let Mr. Spivy know. The automatic pop-up blocker has probably prevented this from happening. 

8. Once you have opened the assignment, copy and paste your essay into the text box.

9. If you need assistance, ask Mr. Spivy.

Bell-ringer:
Directions: Write the sentences and then define the underlined words using context clues and prior knowledge.

1. The dauntless dingo laughed in the face of fear.

2. Her debut performance was so incredible that no one believed it was her first show.

3. Wearing hats will be difficult for Marie now that she is decapitated.

4. The student deceived the teacher with an essay found online.

5. Dr. Stein’s accidental explosion decimated half of his lab.

Grammar Exercises:

Directions: Complete the following grammar exercises. DO NOT rush through these; practice is not beneficial if it is done haphazardly. 

Comma spices and fused sentences--click here

Fragments--click here

Commas--click here

Subject-Verb Agreement--click here

Final Essay

Agenda:
1. Bell-ringer
2. Final Essay

Bell-ringer:

Jerritt wants to buy a car, but it cost $4650; he doesn’t have a job, and the only job he can find will pay him $5.00 an hour. Because he is in school, he can only work 20 hours a week. How many weeks will he need to work before he can buy the car? Show work. No calculator.

Final Essay:

1. Review the directions from yesterday. Follow those directions until you are finished typing your essay. 

2. When you have completed your essay, go to my.hrw.com.

3. Your username is your student ID number. 

4. Your password is the lowercase of your first initial, the uppercase of your last initial @402. 

     Example: Molly Smith's password would be mS@402. 

5. Login to your account on this website. 

6. Once you are logged on, find the square towards the bottom of the screen that says "narrative." 

7. Click on this square to open the assignment. This only works on Google Chrome. If the assignment does not pop-up, let Mr. Spivy know. The automatic pop-up blocker has probably prevented this from happening. 

8. Once you have opened the assignment, copy and paste your essay into the text box.

9. If you need assistance, ask Mr. Spivy. 

Bell-ringer and Agenda

Agenda:
1. Bell-ringer
2. Type final draft of narrative essay

Bell-ringer:
Write the quote and answer the questions that follow.

“I think a lot of times we don't pay enough attention to people with a positive attitude because we assume they are naive or stupid or unschooled.” Amy Adams

1. Why would someone with a positive attitude be perceived as stupid?

2. Why do people with negative attitudes receive more attention?

Final Draft--This is only to be done if you have finished your rough draft. 

1. Open Word or use Word on your Office 365 account. 

2. Select a font that is professional looking and set it to 12-point. 

3. In the top left corner, put your name in the first line, the period below that, and the date below that. 

4. Below your heading, type the title of your essay and center it on the page. 

5. Begin typing your essay. Make sure to indent each paragraph. Do not insert an extra space after each paragraph. 

Mr. Spivy will be around to show you how to double-space your essay. 

Peer Edit Steps

1.      Read your partner’s essay aloud to your partner. Read it exactly as it is written. If there are no pause marks (commas, semicolons) or end marks, then read the essay accordingly.

2.      You may write on your partner’s paper with pencil.

3.      Is there an effective hook? Does it grab your attention? Write if it is good or not. If the hook is not effective, then give a suggestion.

4.      Do the paragraphs flow from one to the next? Are there effective transitions? If not, mark where you become confused by the progression ideas.

5.      Are the characters and setting described with vivid details?

6.      Did they show the story instead of tell the story? Did s/he use strong verbs and vivid descriptions?

7.      Check the mechanics of the essay (capitalization, punctuation, and spelling). Correct homophone issues (there, their, and they’re; your and you’re; its and it’s; to, two, and too).

Dialogue Rules

Ten Rules for Writing Dialogue:
1. Put quotes in quotation marks.
2. Capitalize the first letter of the direct quote.
3. In a split quote, the second part of the quote does not need to be capitalized.
4. In a split quote, a comma follows the first part and another comma follows the speak tag.
5. When a quote begins the sentence, a comma, exclamation point, or question mark comes before the speaker tag. NEVER A PERIOD!
6. If the speaker tag comes at the beginning, a comma follows it.
7. A period and a comma always go in the quotation.
8. Each new quote begins a new paragraph. It should be on a new line and indented.
9. Do not overuse quotations.
10. Give each quote purpose--dialogue should not be boring and pointless. 

Hook Examples

Examples of possible hooks:

Writing Introductions for Narrative Essays

In-the-middle/Action hook:

          We were working at the laundry when a delivery boy came from the drugstore around the corner.  He had a pale blue box of pills, but nobody was sick.  Reading the label, we saw that it belonged to another Chinese family, Crazy Mary's family.  "Not ours," said my father. “That ghost! That dead ghost!” my mother boiled. “How dare he come to the wrong house?"  She could not concentrate on her marking and pressing.  “A mistake! Huh!"

-- from Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts

Dialogue hook:

          “Have you dived in the pass yet?” the manager of the hotel asked the first evening, when we told him that we liked the diving.

          “No,” we said, “not yet.”

          “Ah,” he said, “You must dive the pass. The swiftness of the current, and also there are many fish.”

          “Sharks?” someone asked.

          “Yes,” he said, smiling as if he knew something we didn’t, “usually some sharks.”

-- opening of Michael Crichton’s essay “Sharks” in Travels.

Startling/Disturbing/Surprising Fact or Statement Hook:

          It is not easy to cut through a human head with a hacksaw.

          The blade kept snagging the skin, and slipping off the smooth base of the forehead. If I made a mistake, I slid to one side or the other, and I would not saw precisely down the center of the nose, the mouth, the chin, the throat. It required tremendous concentration. I had to pay close attention, and at the same time I could not really acknowledge what I was doing, because it was so horrible.      

-- opening of Michael Crichton’s essay “Cadaver” in Travels

Character or Setting Description Hook:

          Father was a stern straight man. Straight legs and shoulders; straight side-trim to his beard, the ends of which were straight-cut across his chest. From under heavy eyebrows his look was direct, though once in a rare while a little twinkle forced its way through. Then something was likely to happen. Our family had to whiz around Father like a top round its peg.

-- opening of Emily Carr’s essay “Time” in The Growing Pains: The Autobiography of Emily Carr

Rhetorical Question Hook:

          What did I see that night I peered through the slots of the blinds covering the glass on my grandmother’s door? Was it the eyes of some poor dog or cat stranded in the sudden downpour of the thunderstorm, or was it my own psychic twin here to frighten me into being a more obedient child? To this day, I do not know.

Apt Quotation Hook:

          When I remember what Oscar Wilde wrote in “The Critic as an Artist,” that “there is no sin except stupidity,” I have to admit that my brother is the most sinful person in the world.

          From our earliest days, he was the dupe of the most amazing schemes, but perhaps the most serious and therefore most sinful of all was that incident where he . . .

End-of-the-Story Hook:

          The shackles the police officers had placed around my wrists chilled me farther than the bone—it froze me to the soul. The lifeless body lied next to my feet. Blood still stuck to my feet as I walked out of my home and the freedom I had once taken for granted.

Narrative Essay

Narrative Writing

You will be creating a narrative essay. The purpose of a narrative essay is to tell a story.  Typically, a teacher will ask you to write a personal narrative essay or give you a specific prompt for your essay; I am not going to assign a topic. You will get to determine what your essay will be about and develop your own story. This story can be a personal narrative or this essay can be completely fictional. It is up to you. Regardless of the focus of your essay, it must be completely original—do not reproduce the same ideas from another published work. Must be at least five paragraphs!

Grade Breakdown:

·        4-Square—15 points

·        Rough Draft—15 points

·        Final Draft —50 points

·        Total —80 points

Criteria:

Organization-your essay starts with an interesting hook; one idea or scene follows another in a logical sequence with clear transitions. There is an obvious plot structure.

Characters/Setting- Many vivid, descriptive words are used to tell when and where the story took place. Characters are fully developed.

Format- All formatting requirements (double-space, font size, dialogue, technical aspects) are met.

Creativity-The story contains many creative details and/or descriptions that contribute to the reader's enjoyment. The author uses sensory details, strong descriptive words, and figurative language.

Grammar/mechanics- The story contains no grammatical and mechanical errors

STAR Reading

Directions:
1. Take the STAR Reading Test.
2. Do the bell-ringer (add to your other bell-ringers)
3. Interactive Grammar Exercises


STAR Reading
1. Go the STAR Reading website => click here
2. Your username is the student ID# (9600)
3. Your password is the first letter of your first name and the first letter of your last name (ex: J.T. Spivy would use js as his password)
4. Take the Reading Test for Mr. Spivy
5. Take your time; do your best.

Bell-ringer (the first of the 2nd nine weeks)
We are at the end of the first 9 weeks of your 8th grade year. I want you to go to your LiveGrades account and look over your grades. Then, answer the questions below with complete sentences.

1. Are you pleased with the grades you earned this nine weeks?
2. Which class was the toughest? Which was the easiest?
3. If you could do one thing different (and it does not have to be academics related), what would you do?

Grammar Exercises
Complete the grammar exercises below. These exercises were selected specifically for you based on the essay portion of the test. Do not rush through these; you learn nothing by clicking and moving on!
Fragments--click here 
Apostrophes--click here
Pronoun Agreement--click here
There, they're, their--click here
To, Two, Too--click here
Subject-Verb Agreement--click here

When are finished...
1. You can work on your essay (which is due tomorrow).
2. Go to freerice.com