INTRODUCTION
In this project, Dr.P and Miss Soler's students spent their time brainstorming, writing, experimenting, rejecting, revising, critiquing, compiling, designing, formatting and ultimately signing off on the collection of pieces that will soon form our book, The Book of Us.
Each student’s journey began with a single topic, often not more than a single word. This became 18 potential pieces, then narrowed to six “quick writes”, and finally a single draft. At this point, some students threw out their drafts completely and started fresh while others expanded and refined their initial idea into a finished piece.
What I did was checking all my quick writes, reading them to see if any them were enough to keep writing or if I should start anew, what I did instead was that I just combined them. I wrote about past experiences of my life and how I learned from them, my anxiety and how I came to be who I am today.
REAL LIFE WRITING PURPOSES "FIELD GUIDE"
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WOBpAlODS-fARoNDg2bmRgemmgm47PimuO68ZDAU2ds/edit#heading=h.duafidlcke5s
This guide was for us to use as help to figure out what kind of writing style we were going to use for our stories, whether we were going to answer a question, evaluate a subject, or inform the reader about a certain thing.
This guide helped me to identify the different kinds of writing and which one fitted more the story I wanted to talk about and which one also fitted myself more.
1 TOPIC = 18 TOPICS
In this project, Dr.P and Miss Soler's students spent their time brainstorming, writing, experimenting, rejecting, revising, critiquing, compiling, designing, formatting and ultimately signing off on the collection of pieces that will soon form our book, The Book of Us.
Each student’s journey began with a single topic, often not more than a single word. This became 18 potential pieces, then narrowed to six “quick writes”, and finally a single draft. At this point, some students threw out their drafts completely and started fresh while others expanded and refined their initial idea into a finished piece.
What I did was checking all my quick writes, reading them to see if any them were enough to keep writing or if I should start anew, what I did instead was that I just combined them. I wrote about past experiences of my life and how I learned from them, my anxiety and how I came to be who I am today.
REAL LIFE WRITING PURPOSES "FIELD GUIDE"
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WOBpAlODS-fARoNDg2bmRgemmgm47PimuO68ZDAU2ds/edit#heading=h.duafidlcke5s
This guide was for us to use as help to figure out what kind of writing style we were going to use for our stories, whether we were going to answer a question, evaluate a subject, or inform the reader about a certain thing.
This guide helped me to identify the different kinds of writing and which one fitted more the story I wanted to talk about and which one also fitted myself more.
1 TOPIC = 18 TOPICS
Here is my 1 Topic=18 Topic. This sheet helped me to find different ways to talk about one simple subject in many ways, such as answering a question or evaluating something about it. As you can see in this picture I went with reading, I did this because it is one of my favorites activities to do, so I decided that if I was going to talk about something, it might as well be something that I enjoy doing, so reading. One example on how this helped me was when I chose Express and Reflect, for I was able to think up stuff from my past like the first time I read my own book or my favorite book so I can make something bigger.
FIVE-MINUTE QUICK WRITES
FIVE-MINUTE QUICK WRITES
The five-minute quick writes were to help us get an idea no how we feel about writing with each different way of writing, we did a piece with the different way of writing about a certain topic to test them out and see which on fitted us more and the topic we were going to talk about.
With some I wrote a lot but with others I barely wrote half page, that's how I discovered which way of writing fitted me and my topic more, which was a combination between take a stand and express and reflect, which I did because with this two were the ones I got more work done, so by combining them I was able to come up with a detailed story and with opinions, along with the story of my past and why reading became such an important part of my life along with writing.
DOWN DRAFT
With some I wrote a lot but with others I barely wrote half page, that's how I discovered which way of writing fitted me and my topic more, which was a combination between take a stand and express and reflect, which I did because with this two were the ones I got more work done, so by combining them I was able to come up with a detailed story and with opinions, along with the story of my past and why reading became such an important part of my life along with writing.
DOWN DRAFT
This is my first down draft in the flesh, I first started writing it on my Write Club notebook, where I combined the ideas to create the beginning of a 6 pages long story of my life, which I was not expecting, but feel proud and comfortable with.
Somethings that I noticed about my down draft was that my grammar was awful, like really awful, I ate many words and misspelled others, and also there wasn't much content about the story and the events and my feelings about it, so I re-wrote my draft on my laptop, corrected all the grammar errors. Soon after I re-read it and start adding stuff here and there, and I kept adding stuff until I had 6 pages worth of personal story.
REVERSE-ENGINEERED MENTOR TEXT GRAPHIC ORGANIZER
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1C-89wuwBbHSaiMxJbnG3YxShycGhLE4xYMgueYLEslw/edit#heading=h.y7d75fddpjup
A mentor text is someone else's piece of writing, from where another writer can get inspiration from to add to their piece of writing. It also helps to find new words that can be used on one's own work. A mentor text also helps to understand the writing structure of the writing piece that someone is about to use.
One of the mentor text that I used and helped me the most was one titled "Being Lost in a Fake World" by Nicolas Doronzo, where he tells the story on how he first was introduced to the gaming life and how it helped him cope with his daily day life and make it more interesting. How this helped was that I am kind of like him, but instead of using a gaming console I used my books to escape to another reality and helps me cope with my own life.
Just like him I wrote my own experiences with my own imaginary worlds and how it felt to be within them and how they helped me and entertained me. I wrote about how I could experiences the same adventure all over again, but differently at the same time, simply by changing perspectives, looking at things from a whole new different angle.
GRAPHIC ORGANIZERS
Somethings that I noticed about my down draft was that my grammar was awful, like really awful, I ate many words and misspelled others, and also there wasn't much content about the story and the events and my feelings about it, so I re-wrote my draft on my laptop, corrected all the grammar errors. Soon after I re-read it and start adding stuff here and there, and I kept adding stuff until I had 6 pages worth of personal story.
REVERSE-ENGINEERED MENTOR TEXT GRAPHIC ORGANIZER
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1C-89wuwBbHSaiMxJbnG3YxShycGhLE4xYMgueYLEslw/edit#heading=h.y7d75fddpjup
A mentor text is someone else's piece of writing, from where another writer can get inspiration from to add to their piece of writing. It also helps to find new words that can be used on one's own work. A mentor text also helps to understand the writing structure of the writing piece that someone is about to use.
One of the mentor text that I used and helped me the most was one titled "Being Lost in a Fake World" by Nicolas Doronzo, where he tells the story on how he first was introduced to the gaming life and how it helped him cope with his daily day life and make it more interesting. How this helped was that I am kind of like him, but instead of using a gaming console I used my books to escape to another reality and helps me cope with my own life.
Just like him I wrote my own experiences with my own imaginary worlds and how it felt to be within them and how they helped me and entertained me. I wrote about how I could experiences the same adventure all over again, but differently at the same time, simply by changing perspectives, looking at things from a whole new different angle.
GRAPHIC ORGANIZERS
Two of the graphic organizers that helped me the most were the Sensory Image Organizer and the Opening Lines Organizer.
Sensory Image Graphic Organizer: This organizer helped me create a more specific and realistic setting, from smells to feelings, taste to thoughts. By using this technique it makes the reader submerge into the story in a new, deeper way, because they can feel and sense whatever is that you sensed and felt during that moment, and make them connect to the character, the reader can put themselves in the shoes of the main character.
Opening Lines Graphic Organizer: This one helped by coming up with different types of opening lines to see which one fitted more the story and which one caught more attention, the one that would make the reader keep reading without second guessing.
Sensory Image Graphic Organizer: This organizer helped me create a more specific and realistic setting, from smells to feelings, taste to thoughts. By using this technique it makes the reader submerge into the story in a new, deeper way, because they can feel and sense whatever is that you sensed and felt during that moment, and make them connect to the character, the reader can put themselves in the shoes of the main character.
Opening Lines Graphic Organizer: This one helped by coming up with different types of opening lines to see which one fitted more the story and which one caught more attention, the one that would make the reader keep reading without second guessing.
We made a lot of critique during this project, and for a good reason,since this stories are going to be published and shared to the public.
One critique session that I found really interesting to do was the Scissors critique, the one where you basically cut your piece in paragraphs and find new ways the paragraphs can be organized. In a way how the story could have gone differently. This way you can see if you need to add anything else to the story to make it great, or if you need to cut something from it.
One that also was helpful was the Author-led critique, because I was asking for specific things that needed to make my piece better.
FINAL DRAFT
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nhWWHgN4BkSppvV2JJiAo18G93kb4-iMj2v9n__R0sU/edit
What am really proud of my final piece is that it tells something more about myself. I'm a really closed up person and I don't know how to communicate myself to others, so by writing this I feel like I can talk to others through my writing and won't have to keep everything inside. I'm proud of myself for writing this and taking a step forward in my writing.
If I were to write something like this again I would give more background about my story, but at the moment I'm fine and comfortable with what I have shared at the moment, maybe I'll just write another chapter.
REFLECTION
At the beginning I was going to write about something simple, something I liked, like reading or writing, and I was going to simply talk about my experiences with this activities.
Firstly it was going well, but I found out that I could not write about this without talking about my personal life, so I decided that I'll share some of my life in this story.
Soon I had a longer story than I expected. My draft was short and with little information, and by writing more I had something much more especial than just writing about my favorite books.
I would use the techniques I learned with this project for my personal writing projects, for I want to be writer in my future and I'm already working on it and have various projects in process.
I hope that just as some people liked my writing piece they'll like my books.
One critique session that I found really interesting to do was the Scissors critique, the one where you basically cut your piece in paragraphs and find new ways the paragraphs can be organized. In a way how the story could have gone differently. This way you can see if you need to add anything else to the story to make it great, or if you need to cut something from it.
One that also was helpful was the Author-led critique, because I was asking for specific things that needed to make my piece better.
FINAL DRAFT
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nhWWHgN4BkSppvV2JJiAo18G93kb4-iMj2v9n__R0sU/edit
What am really proud of my final piece is that it tells something more about myself. I'm a really closed up person and I don't know how to communicate myself to others, so by writing this I feel like I can talk to others through my writing and won't have to keep everything inside. I'm proud of myself for writing this and taking a step forward in my writing.
If I were to write something like this again I would give more background about my story, but at the moment I'm fine and comfortable with what I have shared at the moment, maybe I'll just write another chapter.
REFLECTION
At the beginning I was going to write about something simple, something I liked, like reading or writing, and I was going to simply talk about my experiences with this activities.
Firstly it was going well, but I found out that I could not write about this without talking about my personal life, so I decided that I'll share some of my life in this story.
Soon I had a longer story than I expected. My draft was short and with little information, and by writing more I had something much more especial than just writing about my favorite books.
I would use the techniques I learned with this project for my personal writing projects, for I want to be writer in my future and I'm already working on it and have various projects in process.
I hope that just as some people liked my writing piece they'll like my books.