Description of Place or Object Paper:

UNIT ONE: Direct Teach with guided practice on exercises and quizzes (80% or better) 1-8; 82:Writing Guide Page; Glossary, and Academic Integrity Lesson.

The Short Prose Reader Assignments: Chapter 3: Description. Read (100-104) and Annie Dillard "In the Jungle" (114-122) and Suzanne Berne "My Ticket to Disaster" (130-138).

Short Papers: Description of Place

Setting and Action

Rubric: 1-8 (+1 for a parenthetic expression, +1 for semicolon, +1 for parallel

structure)

Quiz: 1-8, Glossary

Definition:

An expression in vivid language that suspends an object or place in time and evokes sight, sound, smell, texture, and taste. This expression often evokes one dominant impression-the overall pervading emotion, idea, or concept implied by the description.

Descriptive Writing Assignment:

Write a description about a place or object that has a special significance to you. This description must evoke a dominant impression in the reader. Write the dominant impression as the title of the piece. Be sure to employ 3 of the 5 senses in your description.

Description of Place, Setting and Action

"Kilimanjaro belongs to Ernest Hemingway. Oxford, Mississippi, belongs to William Faulkner... a great deal of Honolulu has always belonged for me to James Jones... A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his image." --Joan Didion

Writing Invitation

Definition: Description is an expression in vivid language that suspends an object, place, or action in time and evokes sight, sound, smell, texture, and taste. This expression often evokes one dominant impression-the overall pervading emotion, idea, or concept.

Assignment: Write a description of a setting or an object This description must evoke a dominant impression in the reader. You may write the dominant impression as the title of the piece. Be sure to employ three of the five senses in your description of setting and action.

Pre-Writing

Here are some questions that might help guide you:

• • What place / object do you know the best?

  • What place / object interests you the most?

  • What place/ object do you feel that you can render powerfully for the reader?

  • What place / object do you love or hate?

Details

For now, as we gear up to start the term, I’d like you to adhere to the following guidelines as you write your first draft of your paper.

Your paper will:

• • be 50 words or less

  • have a clear dominant impression-the overall pervading emotion, idea, or concept.

  • be organized into paragraphs

  • show evidence that you spent time thinking about issues pertaining to organization

  • focus on a specific, relatively short period of time and location

Assessment

Your success will be assessed using the rubric.

Sample Descriptive Writing Paper:

The Forest: A Perfect Whole

The 200 foot cedar and hemlock trees extend, trying to reach the sky. At the base of these giant trees exists lush, vibrant life. Everything is covered in moss. Rich ferns and mushrooms are everywhere. It smells of fresh rain and soil. Not mud, but fresh rain and soil isolated as two different smells mix together to form a single scent. Fog surrounds us. The forest and the fog compliment each other to create a surreal and amazing ambiance. The forest seems as if it would not be a whole without the fog. Nearby, I hear the soft trickling of a creek. I look around to locate it, but I cannot find it. The fog slowly dissipates. As it does, the sun’s rays begin to pierce the canopy of the trees in some places. The remaining fog swirls in spirals within the rays of sunlight.

-Commentary: Notice how the writer is able to evoke multiple visual, auditory, and olfactory images in order to create the dominant impression that all in the forest is intricately interconnected aesthetically.

A WALKING STICK: natural art

I run my thumb over the hardened bark of the staff. Hand-carved swirls and bands stud its leathery surface like great white scars on a tanned arm. In front of me, the crash of the waves sounds like the exhale of a massive, watery beast. SOUND The air smells clean and saline, mixed with the smoke of a cooking fire off in the background. SMELL I take one last look at the grand vista that is the pacific coast, from giant rocks I passed earlier in the week to the unending blue ocean in front of me. Back to the task at hand. With a jab, a two-handed stance is assumed and I begin dragging the muddy, worn-down tip through the wet sand. TOUCH The tip that, in the past week, kept my balance descending slippery cliffs in the predawn moonlight. The tip of the stick that had shared almost every step of the trip with me. My hands twist around the flesh of the wood, once a ruddy red but now worn to a shiny purple from my sweaty palms. VISUAL I jam the weather-worn and sea tossed walking stick in the wet sand. The churning sand sighs as I part it, the soft sound of thousands of minute grains being thrown aside. SOUND I may never stand in this spot again. I’m going to leave a mark. No matter how soon the tide will wash it away.

Christmas Eve Ice Show: magical realism

People from places far and near gather together to watch the Christmas Eve Ice Show. It’s captivating with its beautiful array of colors and strings of holiday decor As the sun dips behind the snow capped mountain peaks, rows of delicately hung red, green, and white christmas lights illuminate the silver ice. More lights twinkle from the fragrant garland strung upon the frosty, metallic rails. VISUAL Children’s sweet laughter and the soft sound of Christmas music bring life to the cold, frozen ice. Red, iridescent leather is hung upon the wooden pillars that extend out from the warm, inviting lodge. The delightful smell of cinnamon, vanilla and pine wafts in the air leaving smiles upon the children’s rosy faces. Glowing faces peer out from behind foggy glass and wait for the show to begin. More people bundled in their warmest wool blankets huddle together atop the chilly bleachers. As they wait, they sip on apple cider that warms their chilly fingers. Backstage people bustle about, tripping over boots as they hurry to get into their colorful garments. One by one they step outside into the cold, shrouded by the black curtains. As excitement builds up, the announcer's voice comes on the speakers, and the show begins.

The skaters glide with grace and control across the smooth ice, each unique dress glistening with every swift movement the skater makes. As the night gets colder even the skaters breath can be seen, but as they perform their bare arms begin to warm. The audience cheers with delight as skaters leap into air flawlessly. Children leave their seats and plop down on the ground of their mother’s feet to try and get closer to the ice. They gaze in awe as skaters twirl and jump atop the frozen surface on nothing but a sharpened thin blade. Snow falls from the moonlit sky, --------------10----------------covering the ice in a thin layer of white flakes. The skaters go in and out of the crowded skate house, --------------10----------------changing costumes in a matter of minutes before returning to the marked up ice. Like walking in cursive, the skaters flow with elegance and direction. From behind the black curtains, other skaters peer out to see how the show is going. After a final performance, all the dewy faced skaters return one last time to greet the people and gather in the center of the rink to prepare for one final spectacular show.

The stars shine above the gazing crowd as pops of color explode in the night sky. Families, friends, and strangers all stand together admiring the display of fireworks that light up the night. Guests crowd on the lodge balcony to watch as the fireworks explode in the air. Atop their father’s shoulders, gaping mouths of children point upwards at the sky, their eyes reflecting the array of colors painted above them. The crowds ooooo and ahhhh at what is a perfect, beautiful night. People breathe in the fresh, crisp air, --------------10----------------closing their eyes to lock in that moment in their memories forever.

As the popping sounds fade, and the fireworks cease, chatter begins among the families and friends who gathered together to spend their Christmas Eve at the Sun Valley lodge. Hand in hand families ease their way back to their cars. The kids skipp along with their tongues out, waiting for a flake of snow to fall into their smiling mouths. Friends reminisce about their night as they pile into their cars, the thought of Christmas circling their minds.

HISTORY 10 DESCRIPTIVE PAPER PROMPT:

Description of and Object / Place Paper - Life in the Trenches

Objective: To creatively demonstrate your detailed understanding of the experiences of soldiers during World War I - from the text, PBS’s The Great War: Slaughter, and Life in the Trenches reading.

Requirements:

• 1. You must select an object/perspective to write from. For example you could write from the perspective of a boot, helmet, canteen, barbed wire, mud, etc. Obviously you are giving your object human characteristics like thought, sense, emotion etc.

  2. Must be typed and at least a page in length.

  3. Must show thorough, accurate, and detailed understanding of Life in the Trenches during World War I. Please use your text, PBS’s The Great War: Ep. 4- Slaughter, and Life in the Trenches reading. Use in text citations if necessary.

  4. Include on a separate sheet of paper an original WWI image that represents your object or a theme in your essay.

  5. Be sure to be creative and concentrate on word choice that evokes emotion and the senses.

Can’t wait to see what you come up with!

History 10

Life in Trenches Object Essay

Sitting still, I peer out a small hole where the night rushes in. Scanning the men digging, I look across at the barb wire, the artillery holes, and the men. I stop at the spot where the enemy trenches are. Scanning them, looking for any sign of light that showed where the enemies were working. Being the bullet of a British sniper, I saw all, knew all, saw the struggle that the men went through, the torture of war that came on a daily basis.

The torture of the trenches I had witnessed all that day after being loaded in during morning hate, then not being fired, this gives me the rest of the day, to look out over the war, scan, and watch the trench warfare torture. Scouring the trenches, I noticed it is its own battle in the trenches, the battle against the men's minds, battling the urge to sleep, relax, or even to die to escape the hell that is the trenches. The trenches were a grim, depressing, gray place, where the smell of death, rotten skin, metal, gun powder, and men who were there for weeks overcame all and was everywhere. Death was like a cloud that hung over everything, for me that was my job, to cause death. I would explode from the barrel of British standard issue .303 P14 Lee-Enfield sniper rifle, I the British .303 APX Mark VII would leave the barrel of the Enfield at 2,441 Feet per second and cross the couple hundred yards that was no man's land, I would reap death on an opposing man probably just as the soldier that I was in the hands of, had no desire to be in the trenches, both sides shared a hatred for the trenches, put there by their country, wanting to back with their families. The trenches were a place no man should be forced to go to, no amount of patriotism could justify these places. The trenches were a pre-built grave for the men in them. The people men put into these would usually never come out. The trenches were 7ft deep, and 6ft wide, just enough room for soldiers to move around but small enough it was hart for artillery to hit. I would scan watching them men, ankle deep in murky, bloody, water. The men would grip their canteens that got filled once a day like a lifeline, the food would be so disgusting a rat wouldn’t even it, but them men would wolf it down so fast that their body wouldn’t have time to realize what they are eating. The men would be in this ankle deep murk, stepping over their fallen comrades for months at a time. The men would have a couple of hours of sleep a day. Then be awake all night striking a pick axe on rocks, shoveling the debris out, making slow, backbreaking work all night, moving through the earth inch by inch. The men would hear the ringing a pickaxe, or the scoop of a shovel all night, this sound probably never left the men. The lack of sleep made the men look brainwashed when they moved, their movements were the opposite of what our vision of soldier is, they were slow, uncalculated, and clumsy. The soldier's feet would give out, trench foot would set in, soldiers would barely be able to walk but they would be forced to by their officers. I watched the men tortured mentally, and physically all day now. Throughout the night I watched the men strike their tools. I looked across no man's land to see if I saw any light, the light of a cigarette any enemy soldiers I could reap death on. I scanned all night, at 5am I saw a man light a cigarette. I stared at him through the night, all the sudden an explosion, I flew across no man’s land getting closer to the man, closer and closer, until I tore through the flesh of his head. He dropped down me in the wall of the trench. I watched the nearby soldiers try to do something. After they realized nothing was possible, they left him in the murk, they left him there.

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