October 10, 2013 - Thursday

Class Work

For today, you needed to post your definition draft on Canvas. A Works Cited page was required along with in-text citations.

Are their any questions about MLA Works Cited pages or the use of in-text citations?

I will look at these. We will discuss and revise next week.

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Today, we are going to write from observation. This will be an Observation Report - you are the reporter.

You will be locating a place on campus. You will sit there for 15 minutes and record snippets of conversations along with any sensory details. Do not talk yourself. Simply write. (sight, sound, touch, taste, smell) Do not spend time thinking. Just observe and record. Be back in the room at _____________________ pm.

Now, assess what you recorded. What can you say about the place? This is a report.

You have up to 15 minutes to write.

Now share at your table. Listeners, discuss the following:

• Can you identify the location based on the details?
• Are sensory images used?
• Is there a message?

Here is a sample essay. "Young Lions, Young Ladies"

Your job is to take your short description and make it flow. Go back to the place, if necessary, to get more details. Find a message. What's your point? Create one. Bring the draft to class on Tuesday - paper copy - or on a jump-drive. There is a spot on Canvas.

Here is a brief sample from Henry David Thoreau who wrote books about his observations:

We had a remarkable sunset one day last November. I was walking in a meadow, the source of a small brook, when the sun at last, just before setting, after a cold, gray day, reached a clear stratum in the horizon, and the softest, brightest morning sunlight fell on the dry grass and on the stems of the trees in the opposite horizon and on the leaves of the shrub oaks on the hillside, while our shadows stretched long over the meadow east- ward, as if we were the only motes in its beams. It was such a light as we could not have imagined a moment before, and the air also was so warm and serene that nothing was wanting to make a paradise of that meadow. When we reflected that this was not a solitary phenomenon, never to happen again, but that it would happen forever and ever, an infinite number of evenings, and cheer and reassure the latest child that walked there, it was more glorious still.
The sun sets on some retired meadow, where no house is visible, with all the glory and splendor that it lavishes on cities, and perchance as it has never set before--where there is but a solitary marsh hawk to have his wings gilded by it, or only a musquash looks out from his cabin, and there is some little black-veined brook in the midst of the marsh, just beginning to meander, winding slowly round a decaying stump. We walked in so pure and bright a light, gilding the withered grass and leaves, so softly and serenely bright, I thought I had never bathed in such a golden flood, without a ripple or a murmur to it. The west side of every wood and rising ground gleamed like the boundary of Elysium, and the sun on our backs seemed like a gentle herdsman driving us home at evening.