Greetings!
The class handed in their first final copies of an assigned essay. I'm looking forward to reading them. You can tell students all day long how long to be good writers, but they don't really learn until they do their own writing.
Our Quick Write this morning was to imagine what 5 items they would take if they were to be banished to an igloo for the rest of their lives. They were quite creative and awfully unrealistic, but that's what these exercises are for.
We followed this writing with our Mystery Words. This week's words were animal-related words: crabwise, testudinate, gadfly, kangaroo court, and waspish. We also encountered the word "cancrine," which means crab-lik, or palindromic. For extra credit, the students can bring to class some information about J. S. Bach's Crab Canon which is the same forwards, backwords, and upside down.
Another optional extra credit activity involves writing a paragraph explaining the meaning of the following quote by Kahil Gibran:
"Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary."
Our Grammar lesson covered a quick review of the four basic types of sentences: declarative, interrogative, exclamatory and imperative.
Our next writing assignment is a Narrative Essay. A description of the assignment is on the handout they received in class. This handout is also available on Dropbox and as a blog entry. A narrative essay is not a short piece of fiction but a non-fiction activity in which the writer retells an event. The rough draft of this essay is due next week.
I divided the class into groups to discuss some of the questions from the study guide for Animal Farm. Small group work is helpful in that it allows students to interact together with the material.
Assignments for Next Week:
-- Read Chapters V & VI in Animal Farm
-- Write Narrative Essay rough draft
-- Extra Credit options:
-- Write a paragraph telling the meaning of the quote by Kahil Gibran
-- Bring in some information about J. S. Bach's Crab Canon.
Have a great week!
Tammy Prichard
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