I always give the students 20 minutes of self-selected
reading, so just make sure everyone has a book and is focused on it for the
first 20 minutes.
Yesterday we read our first Poe work and talked about his
style. Today I am going to let the students try to imitate a piece of his
writing. We are using a section of “The Fall of the House of Usher” (see
attached). Read through the section once without comment and then read it
through a second time bringing out the elements from the notes. Then give
students the Vivid Introduction assignment. Stress that it doesn’t have to be
scary, and it is limited to one page. Allow them time to begin to work and
brainstorm what they might write about. Tell them that they will be meeting
with their writing groups (the same ones we used for the Pet Peeve paper) to
share their assignments.
