All Boys, All Blogged: November 16, 2012

Focus: Understanding the beginning of A Long Way Gone and establishing ourselves as memoirists, too

Kite Runner books and essays are due today.  Please turn them in right away.

1. Warm-up: Book Talks

2. Q&A on the "Journal with a Purpose" handout and applying it to the first pages of Chapter 3 for practice; also, figuring out a fair number of annotations per chapter.

3. Discussing Beah's first page and composing the first page of your memoir.  That's right!
Click HERE for the rules of memoir club.

• What can we infer about the narrator from this little piece of dialogue?
• What can we infer about his high school friends?
• Why might the author start his memoir this way?

Your task as a memoirist:

1. Start  a new folder in Google Drive and call it "Memoir."
2. Open a new document and call it "Opening."
3. Here is your first sentence: "My high school friends have begun to..." Finish that sentence in a way rings that reflects a conflict, or at least a sense of tension, between you and your friends.  If you can't think of a conflict with your friends, feel free to substitute "My parents" for "My high school friends."
4. Complete your opening page by offering a one-page dialogue between you and your friends.  Try to capture their voices and your voice as accurately as you can.  Of course, there are gaps in your memory; try to fill them as best you can, but don't worry if you have to use a little of your imagination (there's a big difference between "filling in the gaps" and straight-up lying).

HW: 1. Prepare for Monday's fishbowl by reading and annotating Chapters 3, 4, 5, and 6; remember to mark the book each time you see an instance of your particular focus as a DJ, astronomer, sociologist, etc.  When you mark it, annotate it by offering an interpretation or posing a question about it.
2. Please finish today's memoir assignment by next Tuesday, November 27.