Transitions
To Create Effective Transitions in Essay Writing The Power of a Natural and Logical Flow The crazy thing about transitions is that we are already masters of transitions. All of us have been practicing and perfecting a natural and logical flow for as long as we...
Hope To Write a Literary Analysis Paragraph
To help you prepare to write our "Thoreau Essay," please read through the iBook I uploaded to iTunes U. You can also visit my web page on how to write a literary analysis paragraph.We will "start"our first paragraph tomorrow in class, though you are free to get...
Finishing Walden…sort of…
We are not finishing Walden, but we are finishing a good chunk of some of Thoreau's influential passages and philosophical statements. Before class on Thursday, upload the full abbrieviated Walden 1-4 and read the "rest" of the book slowly and deliberately. Highlight...
Getting Things Done…
You guys are a great class. I mean that sincerely. What you do need to work on is getting your work turned in when and how I want it turned in.By this point you should have turned in the Literary Reflections for the class periods so far this week. We can work on the...
Paragraphs…
From what I have read so far, I have really loved the reflections. Hopefully, you have posted these to your blog, so every can see and read the diverse—but focused—way each of you has approached the assignment. There is one thing that many of you need to...
Some Thoughts about Your Haiku…
I have had a go0d read so far reading your haiku. I have a couple of thoughts...I never quite know how to teach how to use specific imagery. When I say "specific" maybe I mean "real." because every reader--wants to "see" what you are seeing in a real way.avoid...
Literary Analysis Paragraph Mistakes
The devil is always in the smaller details, and it is these details that jump off the page when a reader is reading, a teacher is grading, or your boss is wondering why the heck he or she hired you in the first place. I should not have to give you a checklist as all...
The Heroic Cycle
The hero cycle is not a rubric created for storytellers; it is the primal urge of all people—across ALL cultures—to experience within their own lives the transformation of being a hero. Every ancient culture that has had its history recorded has some epic poem or...
Freshman: A Trip To the River
It seems like somethings is always obscuring view. My eyes try to wrap around the gnarled trunks of swamp maple lining this river. My poor students are somewhere between lost, aggravated and confused. What is the river to them? Perhaps it is just a string of water:...
Fitz-Style Journal Entry
https://youtu.be/yUrdAFKiNmI Upload the Fitz Style Journal Entry Rubric How To Create a Fitz Style Journal Entry Set the Scene & State the Theme; Say what you mean, and finsih it clean When writing a blog post, is important to remember that a reader is also a...
Welcome to Fitz English
My mission as a teacher is to help you create and appreciate well-crafted words in a variety of genres, to develop solid time-tested skills as a writer and to share your work in a dynamic writing community. It is an irony of my class that it is both easy to...
Starting Up…
This was certainly not an ideal way for us to start the year, but we will make the best of it. From here on in, this site will be a place you need to visit and comment on in a regular way. I will be posting your upcoming assignments and grades on Finalsite, but the...
The Art of Collaboration
Danny, Jimmy, & Me & The Art of Collaboration I Mrs. Roeber never seemed to let Jimmy go outside, which, to my thinking as an 11 year old, was why he was so smart. Most days after school, I’d rush two houses down the street and get Danny Gannon to come...
Don’t Do It
I was eighteen and designing a production line for making stepladders at Fitchburgh State College—the only college I could afford, and probably the only place that would have me. I remember thinking, ‘Man, this ain’t no life for me.’ I barely had a working...
A Welcome
I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men's lives; some such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant land... ~Henry David Thoreau, Walden ...
Remember the Time
Write what you know. ~Mark Twain I don’t always practice what I preach, especially when it comes to the simple, unaffected, and ordinary “journal entry.” Much of my reticence towards the casual journal entry is the public nature of posting our journal...