Unit One: Exploring the Inner Self - Continued (1.2)

Students Will: Identify and apply a variety of appropriate reading strategies to make sense of a variety of print texts, to understand the human experience, and to develop ideas in written/oral responses.

Task: Using the necessary elements of a short story, setting, plot, conflict, climax, resolution, etc. You are now ready to compose two short stories of at least 5 pages in length. You may choose your own topics or use the suggestions below. Each of the two short stories should include some form of pre-writing e.g. story map, sequence chain, webbing, brainstorming, etc. The paper should include dialogue, description and may use flashbacks, foreshadowing or other literary elements as needed.

Once the writing is complete, have a friend/parent/teacher revise or conference with you about the papers strengths and weaknesses and then produce a revised draft that is free of grammatical, mechanical and punctuation errors that is suited for an appropriate audience and is focused on your purpose of personal expressive writing.

Your writing will be scored according to the holistic scoring guide for Kentucky Writing Assessment.

You may visit the following web site to give you information on writing style, punctuation, capitalization or getting started on writing.

site: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/

Once you get to this site, click on the "Instructional Handouts" section and you may browse by topics to get specific help on producing writing pieces.

Possible writing ideas:

• You have found a mysterious suitcase at the airport. You open the suitcase and go through the items inside. The items seem to have no relevance to each other and as you mentally evaluate each item, you propose who the suitcase must belong to and why.
• Choose a character from the Wild West and write a Western told from that particular character's point of view. Possible characters might be: bank robber, stage coach driver, town doctor/coroner, sheriff, bartender, gangster's horse, deputy, saloon girl, cattle rustler or other character common to Westerns. Viewing old episodes of the television series "Gunsmoke" might offer additional ideas.
• You are an out of work desperado during the Great Depression. You are struggling to find work and support your family. You come up with a very inventive means of supporting your family. It is legal, moral and ethical job, but something not yet heard of for your time.
• You and your family have lived in the same subdivision for 20 years. The house next door has been empty for quite awhile. Neighbors move in, all seems well.  However, you begin to notice your neighbors conduct strange and unusual activities at night. It seems they are almost afraid of the daylight. Finally, after careful and close observation, you make your big discovery, they are ALIENS. Now what?