We had a good, full class today. I had a lot of papers to hand back and discuss in addition to discussing our next writing assignment and Animal Farm
I used a game that I had purchased in England for our Quick Write. The game, Give Me 5, is very similar to Scattegories, but for the Quick Writes the students were to use the categories as topics to include in their writing. It was interesting to hear how the students connected the odd mix of topics.
Our Words of the Day were:
archipelago -- Italian: any large body or water with a chain of islands
tandoori -- Hindi: food cooked in a cylindrical clay oven, fired to a high heat by wood or charcoals
Following our beginning-of-class activities, we discussed the Grammar Quizzes that were taken during class last week. The test was part fill in the blank, some sentence corrections, a few prepositional phrases identification, and 7 sentence building activities. I've found that many students have an instinctive knowledge of grammar usage, but they don't always know the terms. We'll continue to work on grammar topics throughout the year.
Before I handed back the quiz, I had them retake a portion of the quiz. In the preposition section, When I changed the quiz from last year's version, I deleted some of the sentences but forgot to change the number of phrases, leading to some un-necessary confusion.
I handed back their Final Drafts of their Process Essays. I used the rubric that I had used for the last essay. Most students are firmly in the "proficient" category and are working towards the "exceptional" kind of essay. The rubric is to be used not only for evaluation but as a learning tool.
We discussed our next writing assignment. The students are to write and Example/Illustration Essay. We also discussed a handout on Introductions and Conclusions. For this next essay, I'd like them to pay special attention as they write the introductions and conclusions.
The highlights of the class were the character presentations for Animal Farm by the students. I grouped the students together and had them plan how they would present to the rest of us. They shared some great insights, and the class had some good thoughtful questions for them. We heard about Benjamin, Napoleon, Molly, Boxer, and Squealer. We will have a final exam next week.
Assignments for Next Week:
-- Write the Rough Draft of the Example/ Illustration essays
-- Pay special attention to the writing of your introduction or conclusion
-- Review Animal Farm
This week's blog posts:
Class Notes
Have a great weekend!
Mrs. Prichard
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