Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Quick Writing Ideas

My grade 8's are supposed to be using some of their time in the computer lab to write blogs.  I thought it was a genius idea at the time.. the thing is they have been slacking.  BUT we are in the process of reviving these blogs of theirs and to help I've been given them one written suggestion that they can do every week and one commercial that they can respond to.

This week they can either respond to this question

What if it actually rained cats and dogs?

OR

I showed them the Dove Real Beauty Sketches Commercial


I warned the class ahead of time that it was about girls... except I think it went a little something like this

"So I'm going to show you a commercial and I don't want any of you to complain.  Especially the guys.  I think we can all learn something from this and we have moms, sisters, aunts, grandmas, cousins, and friends who are all girls."

"So there's a girl in it Miss Penner?"

"Umm... yeah... there's a girl in it"

They were all quiet for the commercial (I showed them the longer 7 minute version posted above).
We had a short discussion about it after.
Just basically going over what we saw ourselves as was not always what the rest of the world would see us as.
I asked them if they thought the first sketch (where the person described herself) was more accurate or the one where a stranger did.  They agreed that the 2nd one usually was more accurate (except in one case).  
I heard them talking about it on the way out and I REALLY hope that if there are any issues with beauty or someone not feeling good enough that this well help.
I also hope that someone forms a response to it on their blog.  
That would be cool.

No one cared about the Sony Bouncy Ball commercial enough to write about it (they loved watching it though... I showed them many different Sony commercials over the course of the week).

Oh yeah, and if they choose to not write about either of these this week that is also allowed... they just have to think up something else they could write about.

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