Friday, September 2nd

Today's Goal: Draft a bomb-diggidy college essay!!!  Develop your authentic voice and slam dunk this!

Class Biz

1. Opt-Out Policy for College Essay peer critiquing: Note the change: Email to [email protected]  NOT Lori Fisher!
2. Honors application essay due next Friday!  Don't hesitate to reach out to me with questions during work time.
3. More tips: How to write a personal narrative essay (aka: Autobiographical Creative Non-fiction)
4. Turn in your seminar reflection!!!
5. Homework for Wednesday is to bring 3-4 printed copies of your essay (one for each member in your support group PLUS one for me)

Starter 4:  College Essay brainstorm sesh
Pick one of the following brainstorm activities that you think will be most useful to you and do it OR if you are well underway with your essay, skip to the LAST OPTION.

Option 1: 15-20 min. freewrite
Read over the college app essay prompts on the "College Essay Bootcamp Overview" handout located on the Documents page.  Choose one prompt that you're most drawn to.  You can do this exercise again with another prompt if you are torn between two.  Now, just free write for the next 15-20 minutes without stopping. Don't censor yourself.  Just let your thoughts fly out.  You may find that your thoughts start to swirl around one topic; perhaps a significant person in your life, or a defining moment, or place, or characteristic trait of yours, etc...That's great!  When the time is up, read through your ramblings and highlight lines that stand out.  Hopefully you've begun to generate some material, either in terms of the topic or even in terms of the actual phrasing for your essay!

Option 2:  Morning Writing Exercise -- Finding your authentic voice
Follow the instructions for the above exercise on that linked website.  This exercise is meant to help you find your VOICE.  This is a good one for those of you who are always stumped when your Humanities teacher tells you to write with an authentic voice-- you're like, "How does my writing have a voice? Written words don't speak?!".

Option 3:  ​Brainstorm:  Objects
Follow along with the instructions for this brainstorm exercise, which gets you to imagine a box and then place all sorts of things that represent yourself in that box....It could generate some really useful IMAGERY for your college essay.  

Option 4: Values Brainstorm
Not sure what you value?  This short exercise helps you narrow down your top values.  

Options 5-725:  This document has a BUNCH of brainstorming strategies.  Skim it and see if any suit you.

LAST OPTION: If you are well underway with your essay and brainstorming seems unnecessary, write me a note about what you are struggling with in your writing.  Do you need help with developing your VOICE? With how to hook the reader? With a slam dunk "kicker" to end the essay? With imagery? With word choice? 

Agenda
Support Group Check In
Spend 5-10 minutes in your support group, checking in.  Make sure everyone knows what they need to do for the days, and have each person in the group share where they want to be by the end of class today.

College Essay Work Time
Time to work on your college essay!  You could tackle any of the following:

1. Choose a Prompt- Figure out what prompt speaks to you.  Need help with this?  Come talk to Lori!
2. Brainstorm- Use your own method, or any of the methods linked on my Documents page to help you generate ideas.
3. Write- Start writing, get words on the page.  Remember, at this point it's okay to go over the word limit.  We can always cut later.
4. Get Feedback- Show your writing to Ashley, your support group, another teacher, other classmates.  
5. Revise- Make it better!  Cut, revise, focus, refine!  Check for show don't tell, cut extra words, replace boring sentences with more powerful ones, check out the revision strategies on the Documents page of my DP.

Please note that you should NOT be using your time for any of the following:

1. College Applications- This time is for writing your essay, NOT filling out the applications.  That needs to be done outside of my class.
2. Scholarship Applications- See above.
3. Work for Other Classes- This is pretty self-explanatory, right?
4. Time Wasting Techniques- Including, but not limited to....YouTube, social media, finger-boarding, cosmetics, movies, idle chatter.

Support Group Check-In
In the last 5 minutes of class, regroup with your support group.  Go around, see how well each person did at achieving the goal they set for themselves at the start of class today.

HOMEWORK:
Complete draft of college essay.  DUE:  Start of class, Wednesday, 9/7.  Need 3-4 printed copies for critique (one for each member in your support group PLUS one for me)