Writing a Review

Five elements of writing a literary review (borrowed and adapted from Cambridge Checkpoint English 2).
1. Some details about the author
2. A short summary of the story without telling it all
3. Description and examples of the style of the piece
4. Comments on the ending without giving it away
5. Comments about your opinion of the piece
Remember the point of a review is to help your readers decide whether they want to watch the movie (or read the book, or look at the painting) or not.

Fun with Words

Some fun word games
www.freerice.com
www.shockwave.com/gamelanding/texttwist.jsp
www.miniclip.com/games/flip-words/en
http://www.bbc.co.uk/children/
www.pbs.org/teachers/
www.readingrockets.org
www.readwritethink.org/
www.uottawa.ca/academic/arts/writcent/hypergrammar/grammar.html

Holiday Homework for English 8

8B1. Find four news articles about four different current topics.
Topics can include: pollution, poverty, women’s issues, genocide, indigenous peoples, governments, education, sustainability, organ donors / harvesting.
Write about two sides of each issue.
Write 100 - 250 words about each article. Bullet points, charts, diagrams or paragraphs are fine.
Rewrite one of the above journals into a well developed 5-paragraph essay (at least 250 words). Boring is NOT allowed; make it interesting for someone your age to read.
CHECK VERB TENSES, AND SUBJECT-VERB AGREEMENT (singular and plural).
You must cite your sources.
You must use at least one English newspaper.
Some possible sites to visit are:
o www.theonion.com
o http://news.bbc.co.uk/
o www.newsweek.com
o www.nytimes.com
o http://www2.scholastic.com

8A1. Look at the sticky situation for each week at http://news.scholastic.com/stickysituation/
§ Post your answer. It needs to be at least five sentences long.
§ Please check your verb tenses and subject-verb agreement (singular or plural) before you post.
§ I will check your responses on the site, so please use your names for me to find you.

ALL2. Ask five people in your country what they know about William Shakespeare.
Report your findings.
Find out if they know:
o any facts about Shakespeare
o any characters
o any plays
o any quotes
o any conspiracy theories
o any other interesting information

ALL3. Watch films in English. Write one review. CHECK YOUR VERB TENSES AND SUBJECT-VERB AGREEMENT.

Holiday Homework Winter 2009-2010 - Grade 7

Reading:
Read at least 500 pages. Any genre is fine.
Log pages read each day.

Movie review (formal writing):
Write a 5-paragraph review, using all the elements of review.
MAKE SURE YOU CHECK YOUR CAPITALIZATION, OMISSIONS, PUNCUTATION AND SPELLING (COPS)

Writing or blogging (five pieces):
Daily life from another point of view
Write a short story or novel
Travel log
Current events (news) response
Journal from reading
Creative writing
Poetry

Shakespeare:
Ask five people what they know about Shakespeare.
Find out any facts, characters, plays, quotes they know.
Report in an easy to read form.

Inspiration and Creativity

Even though my blog is christened "Himalayan Highway", the miles I travel are not actually on a road--they're in my mind. Sometimes I wonder if I'm actually traveling forward, or just around in circles, or worse yet, backwards! About this point in a semester I especially begin to wonder. I write little notes to myself about quiet time and creativity--along with the notes I write to myself reminding me to call the grocer for a delivery, and to get tomorrow's lesson copied, and to talk to X about Y. I guess I'm hoping that if I keep moving my pen, my brain won't actually stop....
All that to say, I was inspired today by a few lovely, yellow, juicy, slide-off-the-bush raspberries that I picked and ate on my way home. The reason they inspired me was because I had to climb the khud to get at them. I abandoned my chiffon dupatta and my homework on the edge of the path so that I could get a closer angle on the ripe berries. It let my mind travel years and miles over khuds I've climbed in the past.
I guard a little time every week to focus, also hoping to keep my brain alive. The pace of life here, and the intensity, make me feel like I don't have any creativity available to me. (I miss the luxury of automatic editing while typing in WORD.) I feel as though I have to think of anything creative I'll need for the next four months after about three weeks of vacation. If I find I need a creative inspiration during the semester, I'm pretty much sunk. Hoping to tap into a reserve of latent creativity, I seek quiet time. But it's hard to find time for anything, especially when it's not in my Outlook calendar.
That's why you don't see the inspirational epistles in my blog that you will find in my brother-in-law's blog "Blinding Insights". I was almost blinded tonight while reading it, by my own tears because I was laughing so hard. Jeff, I add my thanks to those of your other million readers a day...

Anticipation

Expectant, the air is heavy with spring rain storms, trying to materialize. The school atmosphere is heavy with Board Members' presence, and the dreams of all the passionate people who make their lives here (physically and metaphorically). It's exhilarating, that sense of anticipation, along with the sense of history that accompanies looking forward.

Pilgrims

Although we're not strictly pilgrims, I felt close to the Punjabi pilgrims we met who came to worship at the confluence of the Ganga with the sea near Kolkata. They were on their way home, our guide said, having bathed in the sea before surise yesterday. We passed them at lunch time. They were sitting on a big sheet on the road between two parked busses eating their rice and bature. In the windows of the busses, I glimpsed their clothes hanging up to dry; their watter bottles prickled out of the overhead luggage bins like porcupine quills. On top of the busses, their straw mats were rolled up between big recycled bags of belongings. One traveller was adjusting the little camp stove back in between the bundles. Towels were draped over people's heads.
We are not strictly pilgrims, but in some ways we compare with them, homeless for a while, accomplishing something meaningful, at significant cost.
Cheerfully!