Thursday, August 22

Agenda
1. Journal Entry #3
2. Inventing the Truth:
-- "Two Truths and a Lie" game
-- Identify "untruths" in memoirs
HW: finish vocab packet/study for spelling test; work on Memoir Project (first ten assignments due next Monday)

Today we wrote in our journals again, this time to the following prompt:
"Discuss your thoughts, plans, and preparations for your memoir project. Also explain how your mood observation write-up affects the way you understand your memories."
The second part of the prompt referred to last night's homework, where we sat at a table (like we had at school), but this time in a different mood; we had to write about the experience. We basically had to compare how our experiences differed because of our moods, and how our mood really shapes our experience.
Then we talked about how we are allowed to include "untruths" (basically exaggerations or embellishments) in memoir-writing, because it's more about the memory and the emotions and theme rather than the hard, dry facts of the incident. We practiced this by playing the game "Two Truths and a Lie", where each of us wrote three things on sticky notes, but only two things were in fact true. We read them aloud and tried to guess each other's lie. (We got most - if not all - of them right.)
Then we were given a different memoir (Obama, McCain, My Family and Other Animals, All Creatures Great and Small, "War") and we had to identify FIVE examples of "untruth" and then analyze: how could we tell it was an "untruth"? why was it included? what was its purpose in the story/memory?
We did not have to finish this for homework, since we'll have class-time tomorrow to complete it.