Rounding the Bend with SYNTHESIS!

Today in class, we did a double- peer revision of our synthesis essays. Yes! We talked about some of the key areas to look for in our essays. As you continue editing at home, be sure to check these KEY WRITING GUIDELINES before printing out your final draft.

The final draft of our synthesis essays will be due this Wednesday, March 9. Be sure to include all your rough draft work stapled behind the final draft. And here is the overview of the mission in case you need an extra copy of you'd like to print out one to frame for your bedroom wall, or you want to double-check that you've followed the outline. 

Also, remember to include our WORD OF THE DAY words within your synthesis essay:

SYNTHESIS

PANACEA

ASTUTE

NEFARIOUS

RUMINATE

PERPETUAL

ARDUOUS

Be sure to check in the blog posts below if you need more information, to watch the video clip explaining synthesis, or to be sure your paragraphs follow some of the examples we explored in class. YOU CAN DO THIS!! I am very proud of the work you have each put into this essay so far, and I'mm really looking forward to the final drafts.

Rock on!

Peace,

Mr. R

Anthology Revisions!

As we are in the library today, we will work on revisions on our anthology writing. I am so excited to see this book coming together, and the harder we work now on revisions, the better our final book will be. Remember that ALL GOOD WRITING IS REWRITING. Remember that Ernest Hemingway (who won the Nobel Prize for Literature!) rewrote the ends of one of his novels 34 times!

Remember that every single writer who ever has a book, or a poem, or a story published has revised that book, or story, or poem many, MANY, MANY times!

So, let's revise! Follow the list of steps below to work through revisions today...

1. Open up your anthology writing in your Google Docs.

2. Read through your piece, and change any errors that jump out at you right away on this first read-through. If you see a need for a comma, that IT'S COMMA TIME! If you see a Comma-Splice Run-On sentence (remember CSRO?) than change that comma to a semi-colon! Or break it into two sentences! Yes! Huzzah! Or, if you hear parts of your piece that sound awkward, rewrite them for clarity.

3. Now, open up our List of Writing Rules and have a quick read-through of our rules once again. (We used these with our synthesis essays.)

4. Go through your anthology writing again with this list of rules open in another window. Check your piece for each of these rules, and make revisions with these Rules in mind.

5. Now, once you've done these two rounds of edits, find a partner who is also finished, and share your Google Doc with them (write their e-mail address in the "Share" space, and they will now be able to open up your Google Doc, and you will be able to open up theirs).

6. Go through your partner's anthology writing with our Writing Rules in mind.

And...YES! You now have three rounds of revisions on your writing. Remarkable. Amazing. Perspicaciously awesome.

Let me know if you've finished all of these steps, and then it's time for a conference with Mr. R.

Excited!