September 21

In class today you worked through the process for writing a response essay. We did the following:
-re-read the essay in terms of what happened
- identified themes or important ideas the author addressed
- did some freewriting to open up any and all possibilities for what you might write about
- read through the freewriting and underlined any thoughts ideas that came up more than once or that you found interesting
- did some more freewriting to open up what you might say about the ideas you underlined
- worked on coming up with a focus for an essay

wrote a list that included the following:
- a statement of the focus for the essay
- points the author of the essay made about that focus
- points you might make with respect to that focus
- connections between your ideas and the authors

You then looked back at the focus - and revised that or changed it if you seemed to be going off subject, and went through the process again.

The point of this exercise to find your focus and think about what you were going to write BEFORE you started your essay.

We also looked at google.sites. You will use google. sites to turn in your portfolio. Feel free to explore + use it for your own purposes. We will get back to it when we work on putting together your portfolios.

For Thursday:
Read: By Any Other Name p. 262 in Banks
Write: Finish the pre-writing you did in class and turn it in as an attachment

I will look over your pre-writing, and give you some feedback as a class. In class on Thursday you will go through this process again (more on your own, with less direction from me).

Good work today - and see you on Thursday.