Critical Collaboration

In your last blog post, you reflected on your experience working with your co-author, with specific attention to the experiences of inhabiting their perspective and receiving and responding to their feedback.  In this post, write a paragraph in which you reflect on the experience of making/working with your partner. What were the different skills you needed in order for the designing and illustrating to go smoothly and productively? What challenges did you face? How did you respond to those challenges?

As always, be sure to point to specific examples in support of your observations. And continue working to incorporate sentence variety into your paragraphs.

Collaborating and Adapting

Now that you have had a chance to collaborate with your Lower School partner, write a paragraph in which you reflect on your experience working with your co-author. What was your experience receiving feedback from your partner? What were the challenges of listening to and inhabiting their perspective? How did you respond and adapt to the feedback they provided?

As always, be sure to point to specific examples in support of your observations. And continue working to incorporate sentence variety into your paragraphs.

The "Stuff" of Persepolis

In our most recent grammar lesson, we expanded our understanding of nouns as "stuff" that can be classified as people, places, things, and ideas to include qualities, quantities, and emotions. For this blog post, identify two nouns in the first two chapters of Persepolis. Then, write an analytical paragraph in which you explore how these two nouns work together to create or explore a theme in the graphic novel.

As always, be sure that you support your ideas with evidence from the text. Also, continue to work on varying your sentence structure.

"Simple Stories"

Choose a passage (at least four sentences long) from your original fairy tale and rewrite the passage so that each sentence is a simple sentence. Then, write an analytical paragraph exploring how this change to sentence structure changes the meaning of the passage.

As always, be sure to prioritize your ideas (not summary) and provide specific textual evidence in support of your ideas. Continue to practice varying your sentence structure.

Telling Tales

In addition to the plot elements we spent time reviewing in class, fairy tales (like other pieces of short fiction, including fables and parables) also have messages or morals. What do you think your partner's tale is trying to teach us? Write an analytical paragraph in which you explore this question. 

As always, be sure that you support your ideas with evidence from the text. Also, continue to practice varying your sentence structure. At this point, this includes simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex structures.

The Syntax of Stories

Choose a passage (at least four sentences long) from either "Rapunzel" or "Snow White" and rewrite the passage so that it contains: 1) a simple sentence 2) a compound sentence 3) a complex sentence and 4) a compound-complex sentence.

Question to Consider: Hansel and Gretel

Recently, we have been exploring the double-function of storytelling to teach and entertain. What do you think "Hansel and Gretel" is trying to teach us? Write an analytical paragraph in which you explore this question. As always, be sure that you support your ideas with evidence from the text. Also, continue to practice varying your sentence structure (i.e. including dependent and independent clauses).

Modified Visual Essay Collaboration Reflection

Write a paragraph in which you reflect on (not simply summarize) your role in your group's collaborative process. How did you facilitate the collaboration? What would you do differently next time to better facilitate the collaboration? Be sure to reference specific examples from your group work.

Character and "Beautiful Talk" in Mr. Penumbra

Write a paragraph on the character in Penumbra you think would be most likely to engage in what my seniors have called "beautiful talk" (the "coloring" version of talking, not a discussion, conversation, or debate). Explain why you think they would be most open to this type of collaborative talking, and point to a specific point in the story to support your claim. As you are writing, be sure to focus on employing a variety of sentence structures (at this stage, sentences with and without subordinate clauses), as we discussed in our first grammar lesson.