Greetings!
We had a great first day in class. I'm glad to be back in class at CHAT and working with some hard-working homeschool students. Though the set-up at Grace is different, it seems to me that students are doing well with the change. I anticipate a great year! My focus for the first week is to get to know the students and to introduce the materials. I start all of my classes with a Quick Write, and today's was "I am _________ summer is over because ______ ..." The aim of the Quick Write is to get the students thinking in a writing sort of way. The writing prompts for these are either light-hearted or seasonal or related to a current event. I collect and read them, but don't correct or grade them.
Another activity that I include at the beginning of class is a Word of the Day. Since writing is made of words, I like to explore various types of words in order to expand our vocabulary. Using a book of foreign words and phrases, I had the students select words that began with a letter on the "letter" dice that they rolled. This week we had "anabasis" (a military advance) and "obbligato" (an elaborate especially melodic part accompanying a solo or principal melody).
I handed out the following papers to the class:
Classroom Policies
Writing 1 Fall Syllabus
Essay Rubric for Writing 1 Essays
Week 1 Grammar Handout
Background information for Animal Farm
Animal Farm Study Guide
Pre-Writing Strategies
Description Essay
We discussed the Classroom Policies handout, and part of their homework assignment is to have parents read and initial it. On it I mention 2 additional online resources that I use for the class: a blog (http://chatwriting1.blogspot.com) and Dropbox (www.dropbox.com) On the blog I will post the content of the Class Notes e-mails, copies of any handouts, video lessons, and posts with any interesting information or links related to our studies. Dropbox is an online document storage site, and I will have all of the handouts available there. I will also send as attachments any papers handed out in class. This may seem like a bit of overkill (having information in 3 places), but since I've been doing this I haven't had any instances of missing worksheets, etc. You will be getting an invitation to join the Dropbox folder for Writing 1.
During this fall semester, the class will write 4 essays. The rough draft for our first one, a Descriptive Essay, is due next week. The first two essays will be done in 2 steps: rough draft and final draft. As the essays become more complex, we'll write them in 3 steps: pre-writing, rough draft, and final draft.
The book we're reading for the first part of the semester is Animal Farm (George Orwell). Orwell called this book a "fairy tale," and we talked about elements that you might find in a make-believe fairy tale. They are to be on the lookout for these elements in the book. They won't really find any, which is part of the irony of the book itself. They have a handout that discusses socialism, communism, Stalin, and Trotsky in addition to a study guide. I'm looking forward to discussing the book with them.
Assignments for Next Week:
-- Have a parent read through the Classroom Policies handout and initial it.
-- Read the background information about Animal Farm
-- Read the Introduction in Animal Farm
-- Write a paragraph entitled "What Makes a Good Leader"
-- Write the rough draft of the Descriptive Essay
Have a great weekend!
Mrs. Prichard
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