#11 - Fluency Ex: A Day in the Life (9.23)

For the next 5 minutes, I’d like you to write as much as you can.

Don’t worry about getting grammar and punctuation perfect at the moment – just push yourself to keep writing the whole time.
The goal of this practice is to generate as much content as possible.
Resist the urge to reread your writing and instead search for new ways to keep going after you’ve hit a block.
Remember to continue to use showing, not telling writing practices.

You may write about anything, if you have something on your mind, but otherwise address this prompt:

Day 4: Share a significant day in your life. Take me there.

After the writing time, we will briefly share, count words, and ask questions.

We discussed the ending of the story today in order to make sure we have a solid and common understanding of what happened.

Transition to Interpretation!

Here is the document with the interpretive question for "Cranes" and some space to record ideas from your thinking and from your small group discussion.

The rest of this week, and probably Monday too, will be dedicated to two discussions - a small-group discussion where students work in pairs or triads and a large-group discussion. Both will focus on the same interpretive question.

An interpretive question is a type of argument that readers make about literary texts.
An argument consists of claims, evidence, and explanation.
What counts as evidence when interpreting a story?

Here is our interpretive question for "Cranes": What causes Songsam to set Tokchae free instead of killing him?

Small-Group Discussion of "Cranes"

The purpose of the small-group work is to give you a chance to "try out," revise, and make notes about interpretations or responses that you will bring to the whole-class discussion.
[review criteria on prep page]
Take 5 minutes independently to skim the text and/or notes and identify moments in the text that can help you respond to the question.

Discussion: review the task, the story, and notes to generate and test out ideas.

Closing: quick charting of initial ideas