ELA 9 Name ______

Men of Stone

A Tale of Three Russians

Journal Assignment

After reading of the experiences of Juri and Viktor, your assignment is to select ONE of the brothers and write THREE journal entries that chronicle that brother’s experiences during the Russian Revolution.

It is expected that you write using STRONG personal narrative, which means you will be writing in first person, or in the PERSONA of the brother you choose. Your ideas will need to be presented in a strong narrative form and you must also weave in effective description that has your desired effect on the audience.

In order for your narrative to be believable as well as effective, you will need to conduct research in the computer lab that will help you capture the experience of the brother you have chosen. You will want to either research life in Stalin’s army, or you will want to research what life was like for the prisoners of Kolyma.

All questions, answers, research notes and website evaluations MUST be handed in with this project.

It is expected that you follow the I-Search research process, create a detailed plan of your three entries, draft those entries, have them peer and self edited/revised and then create a final draft of your work for evaluation.

Look carefully at the rubric attached to this assignment and the checklist that has been designed to help you create the BEST assignment you possibly can.

Initial Planning Questions

1.  Which brother have you chosen to write about? Why?

2.  What specific details from the novel will you use? Consult the notes you took as “research” from the novel.

3.  Fill in the attached chart, providing questions you need answered through your research in the computer lab.

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4.  Find the answers to your questions above, keeping track of the websites that you get your info from.

Answers to Questions Above / Web Sites Information Was Taken From
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5. Look closely at ONE of the websites you chose to take information from for your

research. In the space below, discuss what makes the INFORMATION ON THE SITE RELIABLE AND THEREFORE SOMETHING YOU CAN TRUST AS BEING VALID. Write your response using a PROPER DOUBLE SPACED paragraph!

Consider the following elements:

*sponsored by?

*author named?

*contact for author?

*updated recently?

*links that work?

*good balance of graphics and text

*could the creator be biased (being paid to say what they do, affiliated with a program to promote the ideas there, etc.)?

*type of language – does the language used fit the type of site? The information? The topic?

*number of advertisements and popups?

You can state that the website MAY NOT be reliable, for specific reasons, or you can defend its reliability. The key is for you to look carefully at the sites you are taking information from and be more discriminate in your choices. The internet does contains FALSE information!

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