POU Working Groups **Here are your working groups for the POU.

These are the groups that you will work with in and outside of class. If you have any strong restraints or hesitations about working with anyone in your group please email me immediately. If I do not receive emails by Saturday, March 30, 2013 I will assume that everyone is satisfied with their groups and will be prepared to begin when we return back to class April 1st.** I. Group 1: a. Arnold Taylor b. Gianni Olgesby c. Amaryllis Carrasquillo d. Zahfir Moore II. Group 2: a. Jackie White b. Shondalaya Wilburn c. James Page d. Siani Sumpter e. Denny Li III. Group 3: a. Dashun Abney b. Maleyah Byrd c. Rebecca d. Demica IV. Group 4: a. Michael b. Alexis Murray c. Derrell Outlaw d. Kishana Blake **Below are detailed instructions of how your POU will be organized. I would like for each of you to review this before we return to class post spring break. There will be further details and graphic organizers for you to use in class that will add more clarity, so do not fret (panic) about any uncertainties.**

How to Write a Narrative 1. If you choose to write a narrative, it should be a story in which either you or someone you know well was actually involved. You should avoid stories that simply recount accidents. What I mean is this: a good story needs to have the element of choice in it. If you describe an accident, you need to show that decisions led up to it. This story should be about people, about the decisions they make and the consequences that follow. a. You are writing a survival narrative that is fictional, but based in reality it could happen. 2. A narrative is a moving picture. Like description, narratives need to have a rich texture of details so that the reader is seeing, hearing, smelling, and touching. The reader should experience the story, not simply hear it. 3. Stories add the element of time to description. Often stories start at the beginning and then follow the sequence of events chronologically. However, an effective variation on this patter is to start in the middle of things and then use flashbacks to fill in the background information. This method is especially effective in holding the readers attention. 4. There are two extremes you want to avoid in writing a narrative. First, you can simply tell the story, event by event, without giving it any texture because you leave out descriptive details and dialogue. At the opposite extreme is a narrative that attempts to tell everything, painting detailed descriptions of every scene, quoting everything that is said, even speculating about the thoughts of the characters. A good narrative has texture, but it is suggestive rather than exhaustive. After all, the readers imagination needs some room to fill in details. Giving too many details not only overwhelms the readers imagination, it also slows the pace of the narrative. 5. Pacing is an important concept in narrative writing. Basically, pacing means that the writer sometimes slows the pace by putting more detail in, but sometimes they also hurry over details. A good way to know where to put in details and where to leave them out is to think of a narrative as consisting of episodes (smaller scenes that are strung together to make up a longer story). If you divide your story into a few short episodes, then you want suggestive detail within the episodes, but you want to hurry over the transitions between them. Think of episodes as pearls on a string. Make the pearls full orbed; keep the string stringy. The reader dwells in the episodes, but she needs to be oriented to them, and that is the function of the transitions. 6. As with description, point of view is important. What position is the story being told from? Another way of talking about this is to talk about the storys narrator. The narrator is not the writer, but the consciousness through which the story is told. Sometimes the story is told in third person, which means that every one is referred to as he, or she, or they. Sometimes, however, it is told in first person, which means that the narrator refers to himself as I and is actually involved in the story. Not all narrators are reliable. 7. The more sophisticated narratives become, the more problematic is the narrator. When the narrator tells the story in first person, but details in the

story lead the reader to suspect that the narrator is not reliable, the result is irony. Irony is a narrative condition in which the reader and the writer share a common judgmental attitude toward the narrator, or when the readers knows more than the narrator and characters in the story. 8. For this assignment, it is probably better to tell the story as straight as possible. Irony is hard to pull of successfully. If you want to experiment with narrative form, I would suggest that you start somewhere in the middle of things and then use flashbacks. Also work on putting in suggestive but not overwhelming detail and dialogue. Try dividing your story into short episodes that build on each other. If you can pattern a sequence of events so that the story has some kind of climax (a scene of great tension and even explosion) followed by a dnouement (a scene in which everything is worked out, you will have done more than many of us can. **Prewriting: Let your imagination run wild as you think about your fictional tale. You can use graphic organizers to help you plan your story.** 1. Brainstorm a. Think about people, events, and settings you would like to write about. 2. Create Characters a. Use a person/character chart to help you think about the characters in your narrative. 3. Map out the Story a. Use a story map to plot out just what will happen in your story. 4. Gather Details a. Use a sensory chart to think about details that can be seen, heard, smells, tasted, or felt. **Writing: Remember your first draft doesnt have to be perfect. You will have time to revise later.** 1. Establish the Setting a. Use the information you brainstormed in your story map and sensory chart. 2. Introduce the Main Characters a. Use the information from your person/character chart. 3. Describe the Conflict a. Follow your story map and use descriptive language from your sensory chart. 4. Detail the Events a. Build toward the climax. 5. Describe the Climax a. Make this part exciting. 6. Describe the Resolution a. Tell what happens after the climax. **Revising: Writing doesnt end with the first draft. Next, youll need to revise. When writers revise, they evaluate their work for ideas, organization, voice, word

choice, and sentence fluency. Here are some questions to think about as you review your draft.** 1. Ideas a. Is my setting clear? b. Do my characters seem believable? c. Is my conflict interesting? 2. Organization a. Do I have a clear beginning, middle, and ending? b. Do I use action and dialogue? c. Does the tension build to the climax? 3. Voice a. Does my voice show my interest in the story? b. Does my voice fit my audience (not too formal or too casual)? 4. Word Choice a. Do I use specific nouns and active verbs? b. Have I carefully chosen adjectives and adverbs? 5. Sentence Fluency a. Have I written clear, complete sentences? b. Have I combined short, choppy sentences? c. Have I varied sentence beginnings? 6. Feedback a. Has someone read my work and filled out a response form? b. Have I incorporated the feedback into my work? **Editing: When youre ready to edit, check your writing for punctuation, capitalization, spelling, grammar, and sentence errors. You should also check the format of your paper. Begin editing by asking yourself the questions about your essay.** 1. Punctuation a. Does each sentence have correct end punctuation? b. Do I use commas after introductory word groups and between items in a series? c. Do I use apostrophes to show possession? 2. Capitalization a. Does each sentence start with a capital letter? b. Have I watched for capitalization errors my spell-checker might miss? 3. Spelling a. Have I used my spell-checker? b. Have I watched for spelling errors my spell-checker might miss? c. Have I checked the spelling of all names? 4. Grammar a. Have I used a grammar checker? b. Have I checked for easily confused words (to, too, two)? 5. Sentence Errors a. Have I check for fragments? b. Have I checked for run-on sentences? c. Have I checked for rambling sentences?