This document provides an agenda and discussion topics for an English class. It includes discussing The Hunger Games, grammar lessons on "I" versus "me" and "me" versus "myself", and an in-class writing assignment on exploring one's present perspective and formulating a thesis statement. Students are guided through strategies for recalling feelings and thoughts about a past event, exploring its present significance, and commenting on the event's meaning over time. The homework is to post a draft incorporating description, dialogue, thesis, and reflection on the significance of a remembered event.

1. WEEK 3: CLASS 11
EWRT 1A

2. AGENDA
• The Hunger Games: What is your take on the game so
far?
• Grammar: Me, Myself, and I
• Writing Discussion: “Exploring your present
perspective” and “The Thesis Statement”
• In-Class Writing: Finding your present perspective
Formulating a Thesis

3. Grammar
Practice

4. I versus Me
• John and me/I went to the store
• Me went to the store
• I went to the store
• John and I went to the store
• Maria went to the store with Chase and I/me.
• Maria went to the store with I
• Maria went to the store with me.
• Maria went to the store with Chase and me.

5. Me versus Myself
Me Myself
• Me is an object pronoun, which • Myself is a reflexive or stressed
means that it refers to the pronoun, which means that,
person that the action of a verb generally speaking, it should be
is being done to, or to which a used in conjunction with the
preposition refers.
subject pronoun I, not instead of
the object pronoun me.
• They want me to study more.
• Tell me a story.
• I bought myself a car.
• Between you and me, he's right.
• Carol wants to meet with John • I myself started the company.
and me tomorrow. • I did the laundry by myself.
• The book was written entirely by • I feel like myself again.
me. • Tired of waiting, I just did it
• Please call Hillary or me with myself.
any questions.

6. THINKING ABOUT YOUR
OWN EVENT
Exploring your perspective

7. Review
• Introduction
• Long quotation
• Description of places
• Description of people
• Dialogue
• Online review: Indicate the significance of the event
• The Strategy: Recall Remembered Feelings and Thoughts

8. The Strategy: Recall Remembered Feelings and Thoughts
Answer these Questions in Detail
• What were your expectations before the event?
• What was your first reaction to the event as it was happening and right after it
ended?
• How did you show your feelings? What did you say?
• What did you want the people involved to think of you? Why did you care what
they thought of you?
• What did you think of yourself at the time?
• How long did these initial feelings last?
• What were the immediate consequences of the event for you personally?
•Pause now to reread what you have written. Then write another sentence or
two about the event‟s significance to you at the time it occurred.
•Let‟s explore the significance by adding your present
perspective

9. The Strategy Continued: Explore Your Present Perspective
• Looking back, how do you feel about this event? If you understand it
differently now than you did then, what is the difference?
• What do your actions at the time of the event say about the kind of person
you were then? How would you respond to the same event if it occurred
today?
• Can looking at the event historically or culturally help explain what
happened? For example, did you upset racial, gender, or religious
expectations? Did you feel torn between identities or cultures? Did you feel
out of place?
• Do you see now that there was a conflict underlying the event? For example,
were you struggling with contradictory desires? Did you feel pressured by
others? Were you desires and rights in conflict with someone else‟s? Was
the event about power or responsibility.
• Pause to reflect on what you have written about your present perspective.
Then write another sentence or two, commenting on the event‟s significance
as you look back on it

10. Where is my thesis? Do I
have it in my transition?
Keep in mind that readers do
not expect you to begin your
remembered event essay with
the kind of explicit thesis
statement typical of
argumentative or explanatory
writing. You are not obliged to
announce the significance, but
you must convey it through the
way you tell the story and
through the dominant
impression you create.

11. Goal: Formulating a Tentative Thesis
• The Thesis: If you do decide to tell readers explicitly why
the event was meaningful or significant, you will most
likely do so as you tell the story, by commenting on or
evaluating what happened, instead of announcing the
significance at the beginning.

12. The Strategy
• Review what you wrote for Reflecting on the
Event‟s Significance, and add another two or
three sentences, not necessarily
summarizing what you already have written
but extending your insights into the
significance of the event, what it meant to
you at the time, and what it means to you
now.

13. Before the opening ceremonies, Katniss meets with her stylist, Cinna, to prepare. Cinna
presses a button and a fancy meal of “Chicken and chunks of oranges cooked in a creamy
sauce laid on a bed of pearly white grain, tiny green peas and onions, rolls shaped like
flowers, and for dessert, a pudding the color of honey” appears (65). Katniss thinks about
how difficult it would be to get a meal like this in District 12:
What must it be like, I wonder, to live in a world where food appears at the press
of a button? How would I spend the hours I now commit to combing the woods for
sustenance if it were so easy to come by? What do they do all day, these people in the
Capitol, besides decorating their bodies and waiting around for a new shipment of
tributes to roll in and die for their entertainment?
I look up and find Cinna‟s eyes trained on mine. „How despicable we must seem
to you,‟ he says. (65)
Katniss doesn‟t respond to Cinna‟s statement, but she agrees in her head. “He‟s right,
though. The whole rotten lot of them is despicable” (65).
Although our world does not really consist of a Capitol and many districts, there are still
some people who live more comfortably than others. For people like me who live in privilege,
life is easy. Food is readily available if I want to eat. Outside of school, I don‟t really have
many responsibilities. I don‟t have to worry about how I will survive day to day. My family
has told me on many occasions to think about how lucky I am to live the way I do. In other
countries, life is hard. In Africa, children starve to death as a result of famine and poverty.
People my age in some countries are working more than my parents do. Katniss’s disgust
for the extravagant Capitol is similar to the disgust I felt for myself when I listened to
an account of one man’s visit to factories in China.

14. HOMEWORK
•
Post #13: Post your working draft: Long quotation;
transition; intro to event, description of place(s), description
of people, a dialogue or two, the thesis, the significance of
your event, and end with your framing plan. (Remember, this
is still just drafting.)
Bring: HG and SMG; draft of your outline/writing