Writing 1 Class Notes -- Week 3 (Sept. 11)

Greetings!

Today was a good day in class.  Since it is 9/11, I had the students write a short Quick Write titled "Patriot Day."  In 2009, September 11 was named Patriot Day as a means of memorial and as an encouragement to Americans to offer volunteer service to others.  I asked the students to write about some way they give service or would like to give service to others.  I appreciated the comments that they shared.

Because today was "Patriot Day," I chose for our Words of the Day some words from the same Latin root. 

-- pater (fr. Latin, pater)  father

-- paternoster (fr. Latin, pater, father; noster, our) the "Our Father;" the Lord's Prayer

-- patron (fr. Latin, patronus, defender) a person who gives money and support to an artist, organization, etc.

-- pax vobiscum (fr. Latin pax, peace; vobiscum, be with you) "peace be with you"
Remember:  These words from the novel will be part of an end of the semester test.

We took most of the class to discuss their rough drafts.  One of my strategies is to go over these and to discuss the most common errors.  I feel that students can learn more about grammar and writing as they write and make mistakes than they can from worksheets.  We talked about commas, compound sentences, pronoun/noun agreement, formatting, "There is/are" sentence structures, and avoiding the word "things."  For next week, they are to revise/edit/correct their rough drafts and make them final drafts.  I gave them a half-sheet on which they are to list their first 5 errors and then the area that they would like to work on for their next paper.

Although we spent most of the time talking about the rough drafts, we were able to take the last few minutes to talk about Animal Farm.  We discussed the events that transpired in the first two chapters of the book.  The animals have rebelled against Mr. Jones and have taken over the farm.  We'll continue to read to find out how well they are able to do.

Assignments for Next Week:
-- Read Ch. 3 & 4 of Animal Farm
-- Choose 2 Study Questions & 3 Vocabulary Words
-- Correct and revise rough drafts.

-- Complete the half sheet about errors, etc.

This Week's Blog

Have a great weekend!Mrs. Prichard