due Friday, January 25, 2013 (1P Bio)

Hello Students!

Hopefully you have begun writing your essay for Friday. KWOs are due Wednesday.

Please remember to TAKE NOTES and write down your assignments during class. These emails and posts on the website should be reminders. 

• No FIX IT or vocabulary due on January 25

• Your history KWOs are due January 25.
• Your portfolio will be due at the end of May.

This week's very simple assignment is to write a 1-paragraph biographical essay. Please make it a literary work of art. I am counting on a gem of an essay, resplendent with every dress up, opener and decoration to date.

Remember the key I reviewed on the board?

ww

ly

SV

QA

www.asia

b/c

T/C

#1

#2

#3

#6

met

sim

No banned words

Use synonym lists as needed

Attach KWO 

Attach CHECKLIST with words written in the spaces

Use proper indicators, title block, headers and footers

Vocabulary highlighted

Ask an adult, older sibling, or a teacher to proof your essay (for grammar, spelling, required indicators, banned words, content and flow)

Be prepared to re-write and rewrite until you have achieved perfection

Writing is not something that is "once and done."  Writing is a process.

This is your chance to shine!  

Pretend you are in a competition like "Chopped" and create a masterpiece with the writing ingredients you have been given.

If you are more of a puzzle person . . . . think of it like this:

Your teacher has given you pieces of an awesome jig-saw puzzle. It is an amazing and seemingly magical puzzle because there is more than one way to fit the pieces together. It is your job to make them fit in such a way that you create a masterpiece that is perfect and unique. 

Remember, writing is a process.  Give yourself enough time to explore the process and enjoy the journey. (That means -- do not wait until the last minute!!)

ps) If you are still reading, I want to share an article I found about Chopped. This author and I both see the metaphoric overtones of this television show.

What I Learned from Chopped

If you haven't seen the Food Network show Chopped, you're really missing out. In a nutshell, there are four chefs who each get a mystery basket of identical ingredients. They then have a certain amount of time to create a dish. If theirs isn't good enough, chop! They're gone. If they make it to the end, they win ten grand.

Who knew I'd learn a lesson while watching? But I did. I think it applies to life, but it most definitely fits writing as well.

There is this one chef who is supposed to be fabu, and he works for a world-renowned restaurant. He was slammed by the judges during one round, and afterward, in the back room all the other chefs were chatting while they waited for the judges to decide who was getting chopped that round.

Fabu chef: "I've had people screaming in my face. That critique was nothing."

Other chef: "How do you deal with that?"

Fabu chef: "What do you mean how do you deal with that? You put your head down and work harder."

I jerked my attention back to the TV and rewound the clip to listen again.

"You put your head down and work harder."

That's what you do with your writing too. Every critique. Every time you get notes from someone. To get better, you put your head down and work harder.

Oh, and the Fabu Chef got chopped. It just goes to show that everyone has bad days and essays that don't make the grade. It does not mean you quit. It means you work harder.

What have you been working hard at? Could you work harder?