Part I: Research

Objectives: Students will be able to add complexity to their essay about place and culture through research in traditional and non traditional methods.

Do Now:  Identify an area in your essay where you can add depth or complexity through research. Or ask a question on why you need to go deeper with this part of the essay?

Mini Lesson and Guided Practice

Workshopping: What kinds of non-traditional research might work well in grounding an essay on culture and place?  How do we add information and make it a seamless part of the essay?

1. Unpack Madison Smartt Bell, “Sa’m Pèdi,” 331-355 ( In Fact)
2. Share ideas and examples ( your own or from  published essays- Madison Smartt Bell, “Sa’m Pèdi,” 331-355 ( In Fact) to integrate researched information to your essay in an organic way.
3. Present your findings to the class
4. Describe one strategy you have learned from the piece from the piece and implement it in your own essay.

Independent Practice

Work in pairs: Critique each other’s essay only in regard to research. Is the research necessary? Does it take away or enhance the reader’s interests? Is the information an organic part of the essay? If not, how can we make it more organic? What other research needs can you help your partner identify?

Reflect: Based on the rubric of Unit three essay int he category of research, what else do I need to do to add complexity to  my essay?

Homework: Work to add complexity to your essay. Consider adding reflections, analysis and insight into your experience and observation into the larger culture or subculture. Think about why you frame the discussion of the place and culture in a certain way and what helped you make the choice. Bring in a hard copy of whatever you may have written for a workshop tomorrow.

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Part II Focus –Revision & Peer Review

Objectives: Students will be able to critique each other’s essay in google doc by using the questions and essay rubric provided.

Agenda

Do Now: Quick share in pairs where you are with your “place and culture” writing at this moment. What are you still struggling with?

Mini lesson and Guided Practice

We’ll first discuss what each question means in writing and make connections with sample essays we have studies in class.

They students will use the following guided questions to do a self-evaluation of the culture piece. Add comments in google doc. 

• How did you forge discovery of your subject through moments of reflection, analysis, and insight into one’s own experience and into the larger relevant culture or subculture?
• How did you provide a focused, complex, and nuanced treatment of a cultural issue?
• Did you move your essay through both horizontal and vertical movements?
• What helped you with making the decisions about framing your topic?
• What images did you use to help arrange the material strategically?

  Student  Independent Practice

Workshopping: Provide feedback for a partner in your group . Consider using the following craft questions to provide critique:

• Is there a distinctive theme emerging in your essay (themes as borders, relocation, immigration, resettlement, exile, homelessness, diaspora, pilgrimage, refuge, sanctuary, travel, the environment, urban spaces, suburban and rural landscapes, farming, gardening, architecture, and the emotions and relationships that accompany these many links to place and displacement)?
• Did you explore conflict over a given space between individuals and communities?
• Are there any individual and group encounters that give meaning to certain spaces?
• In your essay, have you started addressed any of the following questions?
  • What is culture? How is it linked to place?
  • What’s the role of places in shaping culture?
  • How do the rules and rituals associated with a place shape the behaviors, beliefs, and bonds of the people who inhabit it?
  • How does the history of a place leave its mark on the present?
  • What’s the role of culture in leading to certain acts of place-making: i.e., the construction, architecture, interior design, arrangement, and decoration of the place?
  • How do our identities and social positions determine our experiences of particular places?
  • How much control do we have over our participation in and experience of culture and place?
  • To what extent do we construct culture, and to what extent does it construct us?

If you are still struggling with ideas, use the following Writing Prompt to help you: Consider exploring the “foreignness” of the culture you have been writing about. What makes it foreign to you? How does your rejection to or acceptance of it reveal who you are? Use Stephen Dunn’s “Locker Room Talk,” 149-151as a model to explore “foreign” culture in a familiar place.

Assessment: Please share with the teacher, in google doc, your peer reviewed essay with comments.

Homework:  Use the notes from the workshop to help you expand the essay. Consider using an appropriate form to suit the content. Focus on using scenes and imagery to reveal culture.

Additional reading that will help you understand the topic:

1.  John Calderazzo, “Running Xian,” 168-171 ;
2. Tim O’Brien, “LZ Gator, Vietnam, February 1994,” 60-619 ;
3. Cynthia Ozick, “The Shock of Teapots,” In Short 68-71
4. Pay close attention to the tone of each author when describing or exposing a foreign culture

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 Part III Revision-Lyricism

Objectives: Students will be able to add lyric quality to their essay by using imagery to describe the physical landscape of a place.

Do Now: What’s lyricism again? Pair share an example.

Mini Lesson and Guided Practice

Workshopping:

• When you describe the physical landscape of a place, did you consider using a unique imagery to establish your unique perception of the place?
• Does the way you describe the place seem to be cliché? Anyone could have seen it anywhere? Is there a personal stamp you put on the place?
• Is your word choice innovative or again just cliché?
• Do you often write short sentences or complete sentences? How about considering using fragments, short and long sentence to create a rhythm?
• Is it possible to use a form more suitable to your essay content?

Workshopping on character profile

How descriptive and detailed are your scene and character portrayal?

• Did you include strong detail rendered through interesting language and well-crafted scenes?
• How vivid are the characterizations and place descriptions? Can the reader see what you see through the detailed descriptions?

Assessment: Teacher provides feedback to individual essays based on the self evaluation and peer review comments.

Independent Practice

Time to work on revision individually or have one-on-one conference with the teacher.

Homework: Use your notes from the workshop to revise or complete your essay. Focus on adding lyricism to your essay- imagery, figurative language, avoidance of cliché, word choice that is innovative and precise, attention to phrasing, the rhythm of your sentences. Be prepared to share your examples in the workshop. Share a peer reviewed draft with me using google doc.

Proofread your essay. Check the sentence structure, word choice, use of verb tenses, point of view, and use of punctuation.

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Part IV Focus-Revision: Establishing a Pack with your reader

Objectives: Students will be able to fine tune their essay by focusing on tone, context, ethical representation of subjects and precise choice of language to establish a pack with the reader.

Do Now: What does ” establishing a pack with the reader” mean? Pair share.

Mini Lesson and Guided Practice: 

• How do you know you are establishing a pack with your reading?
• How is each element listed below represented in your essay? Find details in your essay that illustrate each concept.

Workshopping: How successfully did you establish a pack with the reader? Consider the

• tone, context, precise choice of language,
• ethical treatment of subject matter, ethical representation of subjects, and
• a mature, in-depth, well-researched approach to the topic.

Workshopping: Proofreading. Did you use…?

• Variety of sentence structure to create rhythm and pacing and punctuation to make the reader “hear it” the way you imagine the essay sounding.
• Precise word choice and verb tenses
• Appropriate point of view to treat the topic ethically and fairly

Assessment: Present the examples in your essay that represent the literary strategies that can be used to establish a pack with your reader.

Independent Practice

Time to work on revision individually or have one-on-one conference with the teacher.

Homework:

Share your writing with a friend or family member and ask if the way you treat the subject matter sounds fair. What does your friend think of the tone of your essay? If the tone is not clear, how can you make it clearer considering your own intention? Print out a copy of your friend’s feedback and your revision and bring them to the class for the workshop.

Continue working on the essay. Focus on crafting scenes, strong characterization and place description. Be prepared to share a specific highlighted scene, a character and place description to share in the workshop. Essay due on Friday. Dec. 2.

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Part V

Objectives: Students will be able to evaluate an excerpt of the place and culture essay by using the Unit 3 rubric in a small group.

Do Now: How has research added complexity to your essay? Pair-share.

Mini Lesson

How to integrate researched information into your essay organically and add complexity to your narrative without making it sound like an informational essay?

1. Unpack ” Using research to expand your perspectives” ( page 71 in Tell it Slant“
2. ” Sam Pedi” : How does the author use researched in for in his piece? ( page 342-343 In Fact)

In a small group, discuss, how does the author integrate research seamlessly? Present to the class.

If you ares till struggling with writing descriptions , pleas read “Writing the physical place” chapter ( page 25 Tell it Slant).

Independent Practice

1. In a small group, share an excerpt of your essay that includes descriptions of a place and character in a scene. Use the rubric to evaluate your peer’s writing and provide feedback.
2. Reflect on Unit 3 (

Assess: What have you gained about integrating research into non fictional writing?

Homework:

1. Read and create a dialectical journal of Tell It Slant, review pp. 97-99 on “Literary or New Journalism”( What signifies literary journalism?);
2. Tobias Wolff, “Last Shot,” 57-59 (In Short) ;

Notes: Before you hand in or email me the final draft of the culture essay, please do the following-

1. Save a pdf copy of your draft with a peer’s comments and email it to me as an attachment ( in the same email)
2. Share with me your final draft and Reflection

 

 

 

Part I

Objectives: Students will be able to reveal a culture of any sort through describing a place where memories took place by means of personal writing as well as group discussion.

Agenda

Do Now: What thoughts have come across your mind in regard to writing about a place? Pick one or two reasons to explain why you want to write about the place.

• I write to recapture, to preserve and return to the past.
• I write about loss and feelings unhinged in provisional places where everyone else seems to have a home and a place…
• I may write about a place and displacement but what I’m really writing about is dispersion, evasion, ambivalence…
• I may write about a little parks in New York that reminds me of Rome… and about so many spots in the world that will ultimately take me back to Alexandria…I turn to Alexandria, the mythical home of paradox.
• I write to find out who I am.
• Writing about Alexandria helps me give a geographical frame to a psychological mess…
• I keep writing about places. It is because some of them are coded ways of writing about myself
• I write about diaspora, dispossession but these big words hold my inner tale together, the way lies help the truth afloat.

Mini Lesson:

Create a story map based on “Why I ride” .

1. Use a headline-styled phrase to describe scenes that develop horizontally
2. Before each scene, name the place with its geographical features
3. Use semantic web mapping  to show the family history
4. Use down arrow sign to suggest vertical development

Independent Practice

According to Barry Lopez,

• There are two landscapes-one outside one self, the other within. The external landscape is the one we see- not only the line and color of the land and its shading at different times of the day, but also its plants and animals and season, its weather, its geology, the record of its climate and evolution… these are the elements of the land.
• The second landscape is an interior one, a kind of projection within a person of a part of the exterior landscape… the speculations, intuitions are formal ideas we refer to as “ mind” are a set of relationships in the interior landscape with purpose and order, many impenetrably subtle.
• The shapes and climate of these relationships in a person’s thinking re deeply influences by where on the earth one goes, what one touches, the patterns one observes in nature- the intricate history of one’s life in the land, even a life in the city where wind, the chirp of birds, the line of falling leaf, are known. The interior landscape responds to the character and subtlety of an exterior landscape, the shape of the individual mind is affected by land as it is by genres.

Students will-

•  1) Continue writing about “home”;
• 2) Consider in Barry Lopez’s “Landscape and Narrative” (PDF) (How does Lopez define exterior and interior landscapes?)
• 3) Read Gretel Ehrlich’s “From The Solace of Open Spaces” (Consider: How does the exterior landscape of Wyoming shape the interior landscape of its people? Pay attention to the contrasting details of how the wide open landscape is juxtaposed with the narrow-mindness of the people who inhabit the place.)

Reflect: How does the landscape of your place shape its people  and culture?

Homework: Writing Prompt: Is there any particular trait of an external landscape that has somehow shaped your “internal landscape”- your views, character, and identity? Describe the particulars about the external landscape that have had profound impact on making you on you are today. The external landscape can be from your childhood where you grew up or the urban landscape you live in right now. What is one part of you that you feel is imprinted by your environment such as your neighborhood? Avoid writing the most obvious or cliché (tough personality shaped by rough neighborhood, etc.) . Delve into the physical specifics of the place and why they have shaped your identity. Think of Michael Dorris’ “Three Yards”, Richman’s “Why I Ride” and Gretel Ehrlich’s “From the Solace of Open Spaces”. To go even further, write about a particular culture that is embedded in certain physical traits of the environment you live in. How is the place unique in its own way although it is part of broad urban landscape? Why is it special to you? Continue to draw connections between what Barry Lopez’ describes as “the shapes and climate of these relationships in a person’s thinking” and “where on the earth one goes, what one touches, the patterns one observes in nature- the intricate history of one’s life in the land, even a life in the city where wind, the chirp of birds, the line of falling leaf, are known”.

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Part II

Objectives: Students will be able to reveal a culture of any sort through describing a place where memories took place by means of personal writing as well as group discussion.

Agenda

Do Now: Pick one of the following statements by Lopez and respond-

According to Barry Lopez,

• There are two landscapes-one outside one self, the other within. The external landscape is the one we see- not only he line and color of the land and its shading at different times of the day, but also its plants and animals and season, its weather, its geology, the record of its climate and evolution… these are the elements of the land.
• The second landscape is an interior one, a kind of projection within a person of a part of the exterior landscape… the speculations, intuitions are formal ideas we refer to as “ mind” are a set of relationships in the interior landscape with purpose and order, many impenetrably subtle.
• The shapes and climate of these relationships in a person’s thinking re deeply influences by where on the earth one goes, what one touches, the patterns one observes in nature- the intricate history of one’s life in the land, even a life in the city where wind, the chirp of birds, the line of falling leaf, are known. The interior landscape responds to the character and subtlety of an exterior landscape, the shape of the individual mind is affected by land as it is by genres.

Pair-share.

Mini Lesson:

Read and discuss

1. “The Clan of One-Breasted Women” by Terry Tempest Williams:

a. How does each author use the place as a canvas set in a cultural or historical context in which s/he paints its people?

b. What cultural issues does each author explore? How are the issue directly linked to the place? Why do they bear distinctive marks of the places described?

2. Gretel Ehrlich’s “From The Solace of Open Spaces”

a. How does the exterior landscape of Wyoming shape the interior landscape of its people? Pay attention to the contrasting details of how the wide open landscape is juxtaposed with the narrow-mindness of the people who inhabit the place.

Independent Practice:

Create a semantic web to explore the possible ways to writing about your place:

• its landscape,
• its inhabitants
• the relationship between the landscape and its inhabitants
• family/neighborhood history
• tension: visible or invisible, homey yet “homeless”

Writing Prompt: Reframe the place you have been writing about or seek a new place in your memory. Is there a particular cultural or historical context about the place? Do some research and dig it out. How does the cultural or historical context shape who you are or the people who live within? Is there a particular language people use, a health issue people share, ritual or belief they follow, certain attitude, the way they demarcate the place, a shared identity? Do you fit in the culture of the place? Is there a tension among different people who live in the same place? What cause the tension? Where is it going? How do the culture, tension, and changes affect you? Do you want to stay or leave? Do you have conflicted feelings? Why?

Reflect: What really caused the tension in my place? Internal or external? Cultural or economical?

Homework: Continue writing and developing ideas about a place.

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Part III

Objectives: Students will be able to draft their place and culture essay by following the workshopping ideas or an individual conference with the teacher.

Agenda

Do Now: Describe a place where you experienced a cultural clash or conflict. What kind of place was it? What caused the conflict?

Mini Lesson:

Activity 1

In William Harrison’s piece ‘ Present Tense Africa”,  –

• What particular places in Africa does Harrison describe?
• What cultural issues does he direct the reader’s attention to either subtly or directly?
• How does he infuse the descriptions of the culture of each place in his essay?
• Does he show his attitude toward the different cultures he experiences? How do you know?
• What do you believe compel the author to write about Africa?
• What does the title suggest his attitude toward the place and its people?

Activity 2

How would you describe your place and reveal the culture within at the same time?

Independent Practice

Workshopping: Share your feedback with the writers in your group(Refer to the heuristics about “Strategies for Productive Workshopping” and “Craft Questions”). You may also consider the following at this point-

• Is there a distinctive theme emerging in your essay (themes as borders, relocation, immigration, resettlement, exile, homelessness, diaspora, pilgrimage, refuge, sanctuary, travel, the environment, urban spaces, suburban and rural landscapes, farming, gardening, architecture, and the emotions and relationships that accompany these many links to place and displacement)?
• Did you explore conflict over a given space between individuals and communities?
• Are there any individual and group encounters that give meaning to certain spaces?
• In your essay, have you started addressed any of the following questions?
  • What is culture? How is it linked to place?
  • What’s the role of places in shaping culture?
  • How do the rules and rituals associated with a place shape the behaviors, beliefs, and bonds of the people who inhabit it?
  • How does the history of a place leave its mark on the present?
  • What’s the role of culture in leading to certain acts of place-making: i.e., the construction, architecture, interior design, arrangement, and decoration of the place?
  • How do our identities and social positions determine our experiences of particular places?
  • How much control do we have over our participation in and experience of culture and place?
  • To what extent do we construct culture, and to what extent does it construct us?

Homework: Writing Prompt: Unit 3 #7

 Even if we don’t travel abroad, we still experience “foreign” culture in our own neighborhood. What makes the culture foreign to you? How does it affect you? Does it conflict with your own culture? How? How has the “foreign” culture played out in shaping the identity of the place (neighborhood) and you as an individual?

Objectives: Students will be able to explore the meaning of a place of home, in other words, how the place shapes his/her identity. through writing and discussions.

Do Now: Make a list of what home means to you.

Mini Lesson: 

1. How does  the memory of home shape the narrator’s life as revealed in  “Three Yards” by Michael Dorris, In Short 203-205?
2. How does the write explore her heritage through a personal narrative as portrayed in “Sanctuary ” by Jane Moress Schuster In Short 244-246 ?

Independent Practice:

• Groups 1/2: What does home mean when “ home is away”?

How “Thank You in Arabic” by Naomi Shihab Nye(pdf) ( Consider:  Through her journey from the US to Egypt to Jerusalem back to the States, how does the author reassess her understanding of home and identify? How does the culture of each place to which she traveled shape her identity or her views of home?)

• Groups 3/4:  Discuss Jana Richman’s “Why I Ride” In Fact 395-418 (How is her identify shaped by the place, Utah, where she has deep family history? Why is Utah the ultimate home to her?)

Reflect: What new meanings does home bring after your reading of pieces?

Homework: Compose a piece about home.

Unit 3 #4

Many of us find our sense of “desh” blends real and distant-maybe unseen- places. Is your family one of the many in this country that embodies a divided sense of home? What does home mean to you, your siblings, your parents? Some may say “home” is where there’s a room for me to unpack my things’. Think about whether there is a single place- a physical location- your family defines as “ home,” or what you do as you move around to bring the sense of home with you. Consider writing an essay in which you unpack the complex layers of meaning in the word home, with specific references to all the possibilities (Tell It Slant 36).