To The Woods

Day 1

Today was the first day of our STEMmersion. We were introduced to the course, given the schedules, and talked about the expectations. Our teachers, Ms. McDaniel and Ms. Kancler also talked to us about the requirements and the grades of this course. We also read an excerpt from "Looking Around" in Bird by Bird: Some instructions on writing and life by Anne Lamott. We then had a class discussion about what the reading meant to us. We then introduced ourselves to the whole class. Then we were divided into two groups to do an activity. we had to get from point A to point B using 4 tiny blocks of wood. There were about 15 people per team. It was a really cool way for a team building activity. We then had a guest speaker, Scott Giesel who is a professor at the Wright State University. He talked to us about nature writing. We talked about what nature writing meant to everyone in the class. We also talked about how to start writing. Mr. Giesel gave us a few points we can ponder on to start writing, they were:
1) Observation
     -sight
     -sounds
     -smell
     -taste
     -taste

2)feelings/ideas; metaphors; personification; relationships/ connection symbolism- we have to make sense of the situation and explain it to other people so they can relate their lives to the writing.

3)Delivery: deliver it in a very specific way so people don't add their own thoughts and are actually seeing what you want them to see.

I had a lot of fun and I am really looking forward to go into the woods and experience nature.

Team building activity!(: