Ideas Nothing Ever Happens on 90th Street by Roni Schotter is a great text for discussing where authors get ideas from. This text is excellent for teaching ideas because students can relate to the character. The story is about a student who is given a writing assignment. The teacher informs students to write about what they know and the story that follows is a great example to use when teaching students about where authors get ideas. Organization Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst is an excellent book for teaching organization. This story focuses on the chronological organization of a very bad day in Alexander’s life. The students will be very amused by the story of the day’s events and will probably …show more content…
LaRue: Letters from Obedience School by Mark Teague is an excellent selection for teaching voice. This story has strong voice from the beginning to end. Students will enjoy hearing the voice used in this story through the comical letters from Ike. The main character, Ike, is highly insulted that he was sent to obedience school and you can hear his frustration through the letters he writes. Students will feel as if the can hear Ike’s voice coming right out of the story to speak to them. Sentence Fluency Home Run: The Story of Babe Ruth by Robert Burleigh is a great story for demonstrating the importance of sentence fluency. This text uses sentences of different lengths to convey feeling. There are a variety of great passages to choose from to show students the many different types of sentence structure used in this text and how they affect the story. Word Choice Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs by Judi Barrett brings to life the importance of word choice. Students will thoroughly enjoy the powerful words that bring to life the story of the town of Chewandswallow. This main entertainment from this story comes from the adjectives and adverbs that bring it to life. Using this mentor text will allow students to see firsthand the importance of using powerful
The world is a very different place than what it was in the 1920’s; however, despite our differences, many things have stayed the same. No matter what, there’s always something to refer back to. Nearly one-hundred years ago, the 1920’s holds a great deal of historical events that changed the world. One of these historical events is when Babe Ruth changed the outlook on negro leagues and african american baseball players. Ruth could do many things that other people couldn’t in baseball. He in general was an amazing baseball player, but he also did something much more, something that would change the world’s views of not just him, but everybody.
Bill Meissner is an author who enjoys writing stories about baseball that include nothing about baseball. In his stories there are many hidden messages which the reader tries to decipher and figure out the theme. Meissner uses baseball as his main attraction to catch the reader’s eye. Bill ties the character to baseball so he could demonstrate symbolism, which could help discover the theme of the story. In all his stories he establishes a lesson in which the character will uncover throughout the journey. The character in this story acts as a “weak” (42) human being which triumphs at the end by becoming the total opposite. In the story “Midgets, Jujubes, and Beans”, Bill Meissner expresses the theme of how a person should never lose hope on something they love by using a boy named Martin experiencing various challenges and in the end coming out on top.
baseball team. R.A. Dickey tells the story in an informal, conversational writing style written in
In this day and age, writing is being portrayed through various mediums, such as film and television. Some of those portrayals depict writing as both good and bad depending on the situation that is present. Authors such as, by E. Shelley Reid, Kevin Roozen, and Anne Lamott all write about important writing concepts that are being depicted in films, like Freedom Writers. The film Freedom Writers shows a positive and accurate portrayal of writing in the sense that the writers should have a connection to what they are writing about, writing is a form of communication, and that writing does not have to be perfect the first time.
But a sports writer named Tris Speaker thought that maybe he should have stayed as a pitcher when he joined the Yankees when he said this, “Ruth made a grave mistake when he gave up pitching. Working once a week, he might have lasted a long time and become a great star. After Babe’s first year with the Yankees, he already looked like he was going to be a once-in-a-lifetime talent. He brought so much power to the plate and so much excitement to the game, it was unreal. In his first year with the Yankees, he had a .376 batting average with a insane 54 homeruns, the most ever in a season by a player. That wasn’t the only year he set the homerun record. The next year he hit 59 homeruns, and then he hit 60 homeruns in 1927. In Nine years with the Yankees so far, Ruth as a .355 batting average and an enormous amount of homeruns with 467. Teammates have loved playing with Ruth, including one teammate Lefty Gomez, as he said this, ”No one hit homeruns the way Babe did. They were something special. They were like homing pigeons. The ball would leave the bat, pause briefly, suddenly gain its bearings then take off for the
Benjamin Franklin Rodriguez was a young Latino who had a passionate love for baseball. He was like any normal kid in the neighborhood apart from his strikingly athletic good looks, strong natural leadership and obsession with baseball. “Benny”, as his closest friends would call him, was a true hero to his inner circle of teammates. Especially to Scotty Smalls, as it was Benny who saved Scotty from a life sentence by retrieving his step father’s prized Babe Ruth autographed baseball from the jaws of the notorious junkyard “Beast” and making himself a neighborhood legend.
...d but he could not achieve his goals. His situation is relatable to the audience even if one is not a baseball player. The book teaches the audience to avoid company and mistakes that can rob them their success. Roy Hobbs misfortunes remind the readers how some obstacles can alter someone’s dreams.
“The Road Not Taken.” Literature and the Writing Process. Ed. Elizabeth McMahan et al. 8th ed.
For this rhetorical analysis paper I chose one of my favorite, and most famous, sports speeches of all time, Lou Gehrig’s farewell to baseball address. Lou Gehrig was a famous baseball player in the 1920’s and 30’s. Lou didn’t really need to use a attention getting introduction, he was well known and loved by so many that people piled into Yankee Stadium to watch and listen to him give this speech. Although he didn’t need an attention getter, he began his speech with one of the greatest baseball quotes of all time, “Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about a bad break I got. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.” (Gehrig, 1939) Every single time I hear or read that opening line it sends chills down my spine and stops me for a moment to reflect on everything that is going on in my own life.
The very first chapter we read of Mindful Writing changed my perspective to see that anyone and everyone can be a writer. Brian Jackson, the author of Mindful Writing, wrote, “In this book I want to convince you that anyone writing anything for any reason is a writer…Writing is not something we do just in school. It is a vital means of influence in all facets of life.” It was through that very first reading that I began to think about writing as more than just a dreaded part of school, and I began to think of myself as more than just a student forced to write. Our very first assignment, My Writing Story, helped me to reflect on my identity as a writer. I realized that I was a writer every time I wrote in my journal or captioned an Instagram post. Throughout the semester, as I came to love writing more with each paper I wrote, I was able to create my identity as a writer. I learned that I loved research and analyzing others’ thoughts and ideas, but that writing simply on my own opinions, wasn’t my favorite past time. Through the countless readings this semester, I saw which writing styles I loved and which didn’t speak to me. Each day of class, I chipped away at creating my identity as a writer, and I’m grateful for the lessons that helped me shape and realize that
... In Teaching Short Fiction 9.2 (2009): 102-108. Literary Reference Center Plus. Web. 2 Apr. 2014.
The first person narrative is moving.” I agree with both sources because after reading Baseball Saved Us I was blown away with the writing style and the illustration. It is a heart-felt story and leaves readers touched after the insight of what was a serious historical event. The book drove me to do extra research to get an understanding of what life was possibly like for those
Meyer, Michael, ed. Thinking and Writing About Literature. Second Edition. New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2001.
... Short Stories for Students. Ed. Kathleen Wilson. Vol. 1. Detroit, MI: Gale, 1997. 105-107.
Lerych, Lynne, and Allison DeBoer. The Little Black Book of College Writing. Boston, New York: