English 11 Blog Central

After you have edited your podcast of your Of Mice and Men discussion, you will need to upload it to your blog and post it in an article. I will have showed you how to upload the file during class, but below I give you a quick description about the written content of that blog article.

Create a new article and type a description of the podcast you are about to post. Make sure you explain the context of the discussion, since your listeners will not necessarily have been there (explain that you were in class, the name of the book, that you had all read it, etc. . . .) and that you have posted just the highlights . . .

Also, in this blog article, I would like you to justify why you have clipped the post the way you have. Why did you pick these bits as the highlights instead of other bits from the discussion? I would like to see around 5 sentences explaining your decisions.

For this blog, I want you to express your immediate reaction and thoughts about Of Mice and Men when we finish. Don’t worry about those official requirements from before - just give us 5-7 sentences of reaction to the book, its characters, etc.

We could call this the Crooks chapter: pages 66-83.

 The assignment is bascially the same as with previous blog articles, but with a couple slight changes. Include at least one passage in your reflection and this time only two questions. Then, because the chapter focusses so much on Crooks, I’d like you to consider character as a literary element during this chapter. That means you’ll think about his motives, character traits, descriptive uniqueness, attitude, character foils, and anything else that lends you insight into the character Steinbeck has created. As with the other blog articles, the target range for length is 10-12 sentences - make sure you hit it!

Three things you should keep in mind to improve your writing for this unit:

1. Follow directions. It’s a little silly to write that here, because those who are not following directions are not reading these assignment descriptions. But make sure you meet the standards we’ve set for the articles. Check family Access to see if you’re getting D’s or A’s and B’s on these articles.
2. Avoid plot summary. Remember your readers have read the book and know the plot. Use your energy to express your unique observations, not the plot we already know.
3. Take the time to write thoughtful comments on your peers’ blogs. Consider this to be an on-line group discussion like the one we modeled for you in class the other day. Someone shared a thought, and then we rotate around the circle adding our thoughts to the original observation.

As a side note, please be in the habit of citing page numbers whenever you quote the text - even on a blog.

For this blog, which covers pages 37-65, you are following the same basic format from before, looking to include at least one passage in your reflection and three questions. Then, make sure you consider setting in your reflection. The target range for length is 10-12 sentences - make sure you hit it!

As a side note, please be in the habit of citing page numbers whenever you quote the text - even on a blog.