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=Welcome to Mr. Schreiber's 8th Grade English Class= "Let's learn feeling the mental burn, and if we do well, I'll get a perm!"



This wiki is for exploring Sherman Alexie's book //The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian//. Over the course of the next month, our major focus will be exploring this book's themes through writing about them on the wiki, creating a trailer or digital video, and creating a digital poem. For each assignment, you must choose a different theme. The digital video or trailer will be done in groups of three while the other projects will be done individually. Below is a quick overview of your assignments and a note on linking web pages to this wiki.

ASSIGNMENTS:

1. Students will use the wiki or blog I created to write responses to themes in //The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian//. Students will list a theme and then write at least fifteen sentences or three five sentence paragraphs in how that theme is presented in the book and its significance to them. Students should write their first draft on the wiki or blog, revise their ideas for their second draft, then edit their paper for writing conventions (grammar, spelling, punctuation, and capitalization) for their final draft that will be graded. All three drafts should be saved as posts on the wiki page or blog as evidence of the writing process. Students can help each other revise and edit their drafts by writing in suggestions in the wiki using red text color or posting suggestions in the blog. Each student is expected to help revise and edit one other student's paper. Students will also write a question generated from their theme response at the end of their response that other students can answer. Each student must answer at least one other student's question with an answer at least five sentences long.

2. Students also will work in groups of three to create and upload a digital video to the wiki where they create a trailer for the book by acting out scenes from the book that display a major theme of the story. Students do not have to act out scenes verbatim from the book. They can use their creativity to construct scenes that show the essence of book scenes. Underneath the trailer link or embedded trailer file, students will write a description of their trailer theme and how their video shows the theme. Each student not part of the group will also write a response underneath the digital video describing what they liked about the video and what they did not understand or what could improve. These responses must be at least five sentences long.

3. Finally, students will write a poem concerning any theme from the book. The poem must include at least four stanzas each one being at least three lines long. The poem must be narrated and also include images and effects that help convey the meaning of the text. Music is optional. Each student (but not the poem's author) will write a response underneath the digital poem describing what they liked about the video and what they did not understand or what could improve. These responses must be at least five sentences long.

LINKING: To link a web page to this wiki all your have to do is copy the web address and paste it to a wiki page. Please paste all posts you find relevant to this book by clicking the discussion tab above and creating a new post with the link pasted on it. Be sure to include your name and why you think the link is relevant.

Here is a link to a book review of //The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian:// http://www.bookbrowse.com/reviews/index.cfm?book_number=2072

Here are two links to the author's biography: http://www.articlemyriad.com/biography_sherman_alexie.htm http://contemporarylit.about.com/cs/authors/p/alexie.htm