As always, we had a good class this week. We began the class with our Quick Write. Each week it seems that this activity could take more time than I give it. And that's a good thing. One of the best ways to become a good writer is simply to write a lot. This week our Quick Write assignment was to either 1) Write a literary love letter; or 2) Write about your Lenten plans. For the love letter, the students could choose an author, a book, a character, a bit of punctuation, a part of speech, a literary device, etc.
Our Latin Phrases for this week were as follows:
ad hoc -- "for this purpose" refers to a group or activity that is for a specific, limited reason
ad infinitum -- "for infinity; never-ending" refers to something that goes on and on and doesn't seem to end
ad litem -- "for this suit/case" is a legal term that is usually used in regards to a guardian ad litem, which is a person who is assigned to help a minor is a legal situation
ad nauseum -- "to sickness" Like the term ad infinitum, this refers to an activity that continues to the extent that you feel bodily sick. Literally,nauseum means seasickness.
As we continue in our reading of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, we looked this week at the aspects of Stevenson's writing that lends a mysterious dynamic to the story. Many time we finish a chapter with more questions and fewer concrete answers. Next week we will discuss chapters 9 & 10.
For their next writing assignment, they are to write either a Themes Essay or a Character Essay. As they have been reading the novel, they had charts for filling in details about a character and one for details about one of the many themes. This information will help them with the supporting details for their papers.
We're still working to develop a "Comma Expertise," and we worked on a worksheet on appositives and parenthetical expressions. Next week, I'm planning on having the students give mini-grammar lessons that I will record as videos. I'd like to put them on our class blog, but I want to make sure that I have permission from parents. Let me know if you DO NOT want any videos of your child posted.
On the class blog, I posted a video of Dr. Ben Carson's speech at the National Prayer Breakfast. While this is not specifically writing-related, I was impressed by his forthrightness and integrity and wanted to share it with my students and their families.
Assignments for Next Week:
-- Read chapters 9 & 10 of Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde.
-- Answer 4 questions from the options for those chapters
-- Continue to fill out the Character Worksheet, the Themes Worksheet, and the Vocabulary Worksheet
-- These will be due at the same time that the essays are due.
-- Pre-Write for the Character or Theme Essay
This week's blogs:
Class Notes
Have a great week!
Mrs. Prichard
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