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Creative Writing: We workshopped Greene’s “Blueberry” story, and got back the first draft of Story One. Our mission: Revise the thing up to second draft by end-of-class Tuesday.

Journalism: Libel/Privacy Quiz and then we resumed “Shattered Glass.” Homework: Read the Wall of Shame and use it, and the movie, to write a 242-word essay on why it is (or is not) wrong to to be a less-than-credible journalist.  Due Monday, BOC.

Language Skills: Quiz on the identification of nouns, pronouns, and verbs.

Why does Greene wear black every Thursday (Outlaw Thursday)?

Creative Writing: Writing exercise, and a return to critiquing “On Blueberry Hill.” We’ll workshop it tomorrow. Also tomorrow, Publish or Perish, notebook collection, and the return of the first short story.

Journalism: The Red-Pen Fairy scampered all over our articles, causing much self-doubt. There’s a quiz tomorrow, which also is a bit scary. But we watched the first half of “Shattered Glass,” and, suddenly, our life doesn’t seem so bad.

Language Skills: Big, fat review of Nouns, Verbs, and Pronouns. Quiz tomorrow on same.

The First Four Steps of a Critique

Creative Writing: We handed in our short stories and Greene began to walk us through a critique of a short story called “On Blueberry Hill.”

Journalism: Red pens in hand, we read each others stories and found them wanting. We got our own stories back and set to fixing them up. 2d is due tomorrow BOC.

Language Skills: Greene made us read a literary analysis and then set us to finding and typing the nouns, pronouns, and verbs.

Creative Writing: Exercise. Word. Reminder that notebooks will be collected Friday and that 1D of the second story is due tomorrow, BOC.

Journalism: Interviewing, writing and revising for the lunch story, which was due EOC.

Language Skills: Pronouns. Greene gave us a handout and set us to a pronoun word wall.

Creative Writing: Writing exercise, and then we talked about the decline of the American vocabulary. Greene suggested we explore his websites (SoylentGreene and RWWGreene.com), and also recommended we check out Figment. Then,. we did some writing. The next short story is due Wednesday, BOC.

Journalism: Review and explanation of libel and privacy. Quiz Friday on libel, privacy, AP Style, and journalism roles. Story 1D is due tomorrow, EOC.

Language Skills: Parts of Speech word walls. In the old days, kiddies, you would have learned this stuff by drilling and writing each example 10 times. Don’t you love progress?

Creative Writing: We put a set of short stories (1D) into the drying rack, and started another set. These stories are due (1D) on Wednesday, Feb. 8, BOC. We also entered the world of Publish or Perish, an every-Friday occurrence.

Journalism: The newest crop of South journalists continued to gather information about the new lunch-bell plan, and learned a bit about libel.

Language Skills: Today was quiz day: parts of speech and diagramming simple sentences. There was no homework; nothing to worry about over the weekend.

Creative Writing: Writing time. There’s a short story due tomorrow, BOC, which means it needs to be typed up, printed out, and lightly polished. Also, Greene got us stared on the Publish or Perish wagon, collecting our emails and inviting us to the blog.

Journalism: Interviewing and hall passes. Many of us have appointments with the principal tomorrow. The deadline for the first draft, 400 words, is Monday, BOC.

Language Skills: Open-note quiz tomorrow on Parts of Speech and the diagramming of simple sentences.

Creative Writing: We read Shirley’s Jackson’s “The Lottery,” and did a by-paragraph analysis to see if each paragraph did one of two things: reveal character or expand plot. Then we did some writing.

Journalism: Twenty more minutes of AP Style, then Greene hurled another style cheat-sheet at us. Inverted pyramid entered our lives with the speed of a scalded streaker, and we were assigned our first story: those crazy lunch changes.

Language Skills: Greene had us write three paragraphs on our favorite things, then ordered us to seek out and diagram any simple sentences we used.

Creative Writing: Writing exercise, and then Greene went over the narrative modes (advising us to take note). We then had some writing time. Finally, Greene unveiled the drafting stages all our work will go through.

Journalism: We went over the last few elements of our source/question lists, then Greene dumped the world of AP Style into our laps.

Language Skills: We went over the homework, then entered the Ovoid of Learning to bone up on indirect objects, compound subjects and verbs, and the diagramming of same.

Creative Writing: The day started with a writing exercise (remember, if you miss a class/exercise, you can go here, pick one, and spend 10 minutes on it). Soon we were talking about story v. plot and learning how to use a plot diagram. Then we brainstormed characters, problems, and settings and used the results to create a plot. Finally, Greene set us to work on a short story based on our diagrams (up to four pages), due Wednesday BOC.

Journalism: Much ado about journalism roles and ethics. Greene showed us how to make a source & question list and we made one for a story about the new lunch-bell policy. The last bits of that are due in class tomorrow.

Language Skills: We went over the self-tests and started boning up on parts of speech (subject, verb, direct object, articles, prepositions, objects of prepositions, adjectives and adverbs). We talked about independent v. dependent clauses and learned how to diagram a simple sentence.