Editing of Book Report and Film Essay

Students completed ten minutes of vocabulary practice on Membean.

Students then printed out their revised drafts of their book reports and their film essays.  They were to label each at the top with a pencil, "Revised draft."

Mr. Stone gave each student two paper clips to help them organize their papers for the assignments:

Book Report
rough draft (on bottom)
outline (in the middle)
revised draft (on top)

Film Essay
rough draft (on bottom)
peer critique (in the middle)
revised draft (on top)

Homework:  Prepare the final drafts of both your book report and your film essay.  You will be uploading both of these papers from Google Docs to Turnitin.com tomorrow during class time.

Film Essay Critique

Monday 12 December 2016 for Periods 1, 2, 5 & 6 and Tuesday13 December 2016 for Period 7

Students spent ten minutes working on vocabulary skills on Membean.

Students used a critique sheet to evaluate the rough draft of their film essay.

Homework: Complete a revised draft of the film essay making any changes that completing the critique sheet revealed as necessary.

Note:  Period 1, Do NOT complete an outline for the film essay.  We'll do the critique sheet on Wednesday.  Period one has no homework.

More Outlining of Book Report as a Revision Tool

Wednesday 7 December 2016 for Periods 5 & 6 and Thursday 8 December 2016 for Periods 1, 2, & 7

Mr. Stone collected the initial outlines from students at the beginning of class.  There initial outlines will be evaluated on well the students followed the instructions regarding MLA format (header, student name, teacher name, class date, title, font style and size, and margins) and their inclusion of the thesis and topic sentences of their book report.  (See instructions from previous period for more details Look down by the homework.)

After students express no knowledge of outlining, Mr. Stone started with the basics and explained how outlining demonstrates the divisions of a whole.  He showed how an outline should not have a Roman numeral one (I) if it does not have a Roman numeral two (II); it should not have letter A if it does not have a B, etc.

He explained how there is not an official MLA format for Outlining.  He noted the difference between sentence and phrase/word outlines.

Mr. Stone has chosen to follow the outlining format that Dr. Sandiford uses with sophomores to better prepare the students for his course.

Mr. Stone directed students on how to revise the outline they started yesterday to fit the format.

He discussed how many titles express the paper's topic and viewpoint.  He created several sample titles by asking selected students the title of the book they were reviewing and the viewpoint of their review, e.g. a negative viewpoint of Kathryn Holmes How It Feels to Fly might be titled "How it Feels to Crash." Students need to develop their own original title for their book report that includes an element of the book's title and the student reviewer's viewpoint.

 Mr. Stone used a sample paragraph from a fifth period student:

The first thing I’d like to address was the somewhat romantic relationship between Sam (the camper) and Andrew (her counselor). I felt it was inappropriate. At one point in the book, Sam and Andrew were partners for a trust exercise. Andrew revealed quite a few personal details about himself, despite this being against the rules for counselors. I understand that Andrew wanted to form a bond with Sam, but in my opinion, that was taking it a step too far. Andrew was not supposed to reveal details about his personal life and I think that’s inappropriate. At another point in the story, Andrew and Sam sneak out of the living quarters late at night to do a partner ballet dance. I think that is both dangerous and stupid. It’s not right for the two of them to be outside, touching one another in a suggestive dance, at obscure hours in the night. Lastly, when trying to come up with a “power statement” to boost self-esteem, Andrew made a point of telling Sam how beautiful she was and how she had a nice body. This just feels wrong to me. I get that he was trying to be nice to her, but this gave the wrong impression and came off as highly flirtatious.  

Her paragraph outlined might look like the following:

II. inappropriate camper-counselor relationship

  A. trust exercises

1. inappropriate sharing

2. beyond bonding

B. Sneaking out

1. suggestive touching

2. obscure hour

C. body description

1. wrong impression

2. highly flirtatious

Homework:  Revise your initial outline to fit the format described in class. We will develop Roman numeral I and Roman numeral V during the next class.  Focus on creating a phrase outline for the body paragraphs of your book report.


As students work on outlining their body paragraphs, they should be sure they have examples from the novel they read/concrete details in each body paragraph and that the two or more sentences of commentary for each concrete detail contains synonyms or key words that connect the example with the claim of quality made in the paragraph's topic sentence.

In the sample paragraph above, "inappropriate" is the writer's claim of quality about the subtopic of "camper-counselor relationship."

The repetition of the quality word "inappropriate" in the commentary and the use of similar quality words "beyond," "suggestive," "obscure," "wrong,"and "highly," connect the examples/concrete details in the paragraph to the claim of quality in the viewpoint of the topic sentence.

Possible Areas of Revision

If students find they need more concrete details or more commentary in their reports, they should make the necessary additions by looking back over the book they read for alternatives.

If they find any of the selected examples/concrete details do not fit, they should switch them out for ones that will work better.

If students find their commentary lacks words that connect to their topic sentences claim, they use the definition and thesaurus functions of Dictionary.com and look up alternatives to use.

Outlining as a Revision Tool

Tuesday 6 December 2016 for Periods 2, 5, & 6 and Wednesday 7 December 2016 for Periods 1 & 7

At the beginning of the period, students printed out three items from Google Docs :

1. the book report on a fictional novel (minimum five paragraphs)

2. the film essay (minimum five paragraphs)

3. the banquet reflection journal entry (minimum one-page length)

All of these documents are expected to be in MLA format.

Students then spent ten minutes practicing their vocabulary on Membean.

Mr. Stone reviewed the stages of the writing process on the board and noted that the class had completed the prewriting and drafting stages for the book review and the film review and was currently focusing on the revising stage.  

Revision typically focuses on content and organization. To check if each student has the necessary content in the desired order in their book report, the class used highlighters and a pen/pencil to mark a printout of the rough draft of  their book report.

Students were directed to highlight the following in their book report:

thesis in purple (located in the next to last or last sentence of the introduction)

preview in blue (located in the last sentence of the introduction)

topic sentences in blue (located in the first sentence of each body paragraph)

Students used a pen/pencil to label the following in their book report:

In the thesis, write "topic" over the title of the book the paper is reviewing.

In the thesis, write "claim of policy" over the recommendation they are making/the action they are telling the reader to take.

In the thesis, write "claim of quality" over the words used to indicate the quality of the book that serves as the basis for the recomendation.

For each topic sentence, write "subtopic" over word(s) that state the aspect of the book used to show its quality.

For each topic sentence, write "claim of quality" over the words in the sentence that indicate the degree of merit of that aspect (poor, mediocre, good, excellent, etc.), or in this case the effect on the reader.

Mr. Stone then described how the students could create a formal outline of their book review to help them to determine if they had all the essential components in the correct order.

He encouraged them to write on their rough draft a Roman numeral I next to their thesis, a Roman numeral II next to the topic sentence of body paragraph one, a Roman numeral III next to the topic sentence of body paragraph two, and a Roman numeral IV next to the topic sentence of body paragraph three.  (If students have a fourth supporting subtopic in their paper, they would make that a Roman numeral V, etc.)

Homework:  In a new Google Doc create a formal outline of your book report.  Include only the thesis and topic sentences at this point.  Be sure the document is in MLA format.  For now, title the outline "Book Report Outline."

Vocabulary and Banquet Reflection

Monday 5 December 2016 for Periods 1, 2, 5 & 6 and Tuesday 6 December 2016 for Period 7

Classes on Monday were only forty minutes long due to the late start the day after the S. A. banquet.

Students spent fifteen minutes practicing their vocabulary on Membean.  They had the opportunity to retake the last vocabulary test if they were unhappy with their results.

Mr. Stone asked the students to describe their experience at the banquet over the weekend (or about their weekend in general if they did not attend the banquet) in a one-page or longer journal entry using Google Docs with MLA formatting.  

Homework:  Make sure that both your full book report on a fictional novel and your film essay are both in Google Docs and properly formatted in the MLA style.  

Note:  My document is in Microsoft Word on my home computer will not be an acceptable excuse from this point.

MLA Format on Google Docs

Thursday 1 December 2016 for Periods 5 & 6 and Friday 2 December 2016 for Periods 1, 2, & 7

Students spend ten minutes in vocabulary practice and then take a twenty-question vocabulary test.

The instructor then goes over how to create MLA format on Google Docs

.Students follow the instructions to check the format of their own film essay.


No Homework:  Banquet Weekend