Greetings!
We had a good second class. I'm enjoying getting to know the students. Our Quick Write
was food related. The students could choose one of two options: 1)
Write about your favorite meal; 2) Come up with a recipe for "Elephant
Stew." Usually I have the students write for 5 - 7 minutes. I also
include Vocabulary Builders from time to time. This week we had
the words "masticate" (to grind or crush with teeth for swallowing),
"gastronomical" (good eating, culinary culture), and "repast" (a meal).
When I introduce words, I also like to look at the roots of words and
other related words. One of my goals for the class is to expand their
vocabulary.
We discussed the rough drafts for the Observation Reports. It
was not necessary that these essays have thesis statements, but we
discussed how a thesis statement is a sentence about your topic in which
you take a stand or express an opinion. The students handed in the
rough drafts, and I will go over them and hand them back next week. I
gave them advance notice that they should expect to find lots of red
marks and comments.
We didn't take time to discuss much Grammar today. According to
my plan, we were to briefly discuss verbs as one of the parts of
speech. Next week we'll discuss verbs, nouns, and pronouns.
We took a longer portion of the class to discuss our book, Animal Farm by
George Orwell. The students were to read the Preface and Introduction
which are more difficult reading than the rest of the book. We
discussed how we might experience the book as a fairy tale (the
subtitle) and the background political ideas of capitalism, socialism,
and communism.
Assignments for Next Week:
-- Read Chapters 1 & 2 of Animal Farm
-- from the Animal Farm Study Guide:
-- Choose one question from the Discussion section and write out the answer.
-- Choose one question from the Short Writing Exercises and write out the answer.
Have a great week and enjoy the wonderful fall weather!
Mrs. Prichard
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