ICE: Coming-of-Age

• Prompts

• (1) Coming-of-age: Compare a coming-of-age experience of your own with that of any single protagonist in our recent reading.  You must include at least one other key term from our story unit as you compare the experiences (irony, plot, atmosphere).  
• Irony: make sure you treat this in detail in at least one paragraph of your essay (consider a structure that moves from innocence to experience to wisdom)
• Plot: make sure you treat the key points of a plot line (exposition, inciting incident, rising action, climax, falling action, conclusion) 

•  (2) Compare-Contrast: Compare and contrast two of the recent coming-of-age stories you've read, focusing on at least one of the literary elements from our story unit: plot and its elements, irony, atmosphere and tone, or symbolism.

Block Day, Week 32: ICE, Grammar

* Pray

* ICE: Dickens

* When you finish, please work on your grammar.

Now that you have learned when to use the comma, you should also when you should not use the comma.  This week, consider comma abuse through overuse.
- Read 33a-h
- Take notes on all rules in blue
- Do ex. 33-1 letters and numbers

HW: Grammar Ex. 33-1

Block day, Week 25: ICE, tea party

* Pray

* Check J24

* Any questions?

* ICE: Dickens - ch. 15

* Tea Party (for classes that are having one this week)

HW: Read

Tuesday, 1/3: Opening Salvo of Semester II (Week 21)

* Pray

* Tell us how your Christmas legend gift went (if you chose to do one).

* Overview of Semester II (Course plan label).

* Essays returned.

The ICE Grading Scale
6 = 100 (A, 100, fantastic writing!)
5 = 95 (A, excellent writing, 90-99 range)
4 = 85 (B, good writing, 80-89 range)
3 = 75 (C, satisfactory writing, 70-79 range)
2 = 65 (D, poor writing, 60-69 range)
1 = 55 (F, failed writing)

* A + or - means that your essay was near the top or bottom of your ICE number scale.

Underline titles of plays, books, and anything big, my friends.

What was a good choice for comparison? Thorin and Demetrius.

What could become a most painful misapplication? Puck and Bilbo.

What was a choice that often led astray? Oberon.

Oh, Oberon.

So, say you chose Oberon. Did you treat the chaos in nature and in the world at large (weather, crops, animals, mud...perhaps you applied this distemper to our lovers' quarrel). If not, how did you prove that Oberon's covetousness was destructive?

If you said that Oberon's covetousness made Puck put the juice on Lysander, you've made a cause and effect error.

What if you said that Bottom might have remained an ass forever if Oberon failed to take pity? Ok, that could work.

The lovers could have killed each other in the forest? That goes back more directly to Demetrius. It would work if you first established that the fairy world and the moral world were reflections.

If you didn't choose a single character from each, why?

You should be sure you can spell the title, author, and characters of the works you've read for class...certainly those we essay (that's a pun).

J20 (sorry, changed the number to make it even for a new semester)

Write down your best sentence from your essay. Find the ten most choice and nicely employed vocabulary words and copy them in. Count up your punctuators that aren't periods, commas, question marks, or exclamations. Now, how will you improve for the next ICE? Make a plan.

Get Great Expectations.
For a free, digital edition, go to iBooks, search for "Great Expectations," download the first, free, olive-green version.  If you are not using iBooks, you may read or download this free edition.


HW: Read ch. 1

Block Day, Week 16: CWP, Tolkien, and Midsummer

* Pray

* Collect CWP

* Make sure you CWP has been submitted to turnitin.com on Focus.  If you wrote a legend (with cool handwriting, etc.), you are exempt.

* Tolkien

- Next week, you will be writing your Tolkien essay.  This will be a smaller assignment (15 points) that you will turn in on next week's block day and then bring with you to the final exam.  When you take the final exam, you will be comparing a common theme in Midsummer and The Hobbit (or another outside reading if you are not reading The Hobbit because you had already read it).  Next week's essay will help prepare you for the final exam.

Outside Reading Background:

"Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry" (ESV Col. 3:5).  The Apostle Paul reminds us that covetousness (or greed) is idolatry (false worship).  Covetousness is excessively desiring someone or something, especially a someone or something that does not belong to us.  Covetousness is a sin that blinds us and hurts us and others.

Prompt: Identify a greedy character from your outside reading; explain how this character's covetousness supports the theme that covetousness is a blinding, destructive sin. 

Use specific support (at least two quotations) from your text to defend your thesis. 

This response should be two pages, typed, double-spaced (in the MLA format) and submitted to turnitin.com on Focus by Dec. 8.  

* Read Act II

* J17: Choose 10 Questions from Act II to Answer

HW: J17

Essay Examples from Our August Mythology Assessment

Ok, the assessment has been graded and returned.

Most of it looked promising. The two key issues were:
1. Grammar, obviously
2. Forgetting to apply your mythology stories to something going on today

Notice the prompt:
Prompt: The Greco-Roman story of the creation, destruction, and revival of mankind has many lessons for us today. Using the stories of these gods and people, write an essay that teaches something significant about the gods, human nature, and the world we live in.

Notice "today" and "world we live in." That means you need to relate to the present.

Let's see some examples. Click to enlarge the essay selections.
1. Here's some otherwise good writing that didn't apply it the present day.






2. This was actually a pretty good essay in many places; however, the first sentence falls all over itself. Make sure you open with accuracy and strength.





3. Here's an example of an essay that had a good application to the present day as a conclusion. Good job, Russell!




4. Here's one where the application was woven into the fabric of the paragraph, which is usually the best way to do it.




5. Don't say it again by being redundant by saying the same thing again by being redundant and and then another time being redundant. Otherwise, there were some good thoughts in here.






6. Best of show goes to Evan Rickel. It's not as easy to read, but he incorporates all aspects of the assignment along with good quotations and theologoical insights. He thinks well and writes well.

ICE: Mythology Assessment

Prompt:  The Greco-Roman story of the creation, destruction, and revival of mankind has many lessons for us today.  Using the stories of these gods and people, write an essay that teaches something significant about the gods, human nature, and the world we live in.  

Consider Jupiter (Zeus), Prometheus, Pandora's Box, the ages of mankind (Golden Age, Silver Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age), Neptune (Poseidon), the flood, Parnassus, Deucalion and Pyrrha, and new life from stones.

A thesis might be something like:

1) The Greco-Roman mythology surrounding the creation of mankind teaches us how generosity, curiosity, and mercy all contribute to the struggle and survival of our race. 

2)  The Greco-Roman mythology surrounding the ages of the world teaches us that not all development is positive; sometimes the more advanced we are the worse our lives become.  

3)  Pandora, Deucalion, and Pyrrha, teach us that humility can help straighten damage caused by fool-hardiness and ignorance. 

Here are some example organizational formats for the essay:

1) The creation, destruction, and revival of mankind  

2) The gods, human nature, and the world we live in

The details:

         -  You have all period.  It is due at the end of the period.

         -  It should have at least two paragraphs but does not need to have five.

         -  Please write in pen.

         -  Single space.

         -  Please only write on the front of each sheet of paper.

         -  Turn in your work to the box on the table in the middle of the room when you are done.