Friday, September 26, 2014

Writing 1 Class Notes -- Week 5 (Sept. 25)

Greetings!

We had a great class this week.  Students were engaged and we covered a lot of material.  

Our Quick Write the morning was in honor of tomorrow's birthday of Johnny Chapman, aka Johnny Appleseed, who was born in 1744.  The students could either write about their favorite way to eat apples OR they could make up a story about someone's seed-sowing adventure.  This theme also seemed appropriate considering the fall season.

Below are the Words of the Day, taken from my foreign words and phrases book:
Cappuccino -- fr. Italian, Capuchin, an order of monks who wore light brown habits -- a coffee drink made from espresso, steamed milk, and foam
Carabiner -- fr. German, Karabinerhaken, carbine hook -- a metal ring with a spring catch used by mountain climbers
Carafe -- fr. Arabic, gharrafah, a drinking vessel -- a wide-mouthed glass or metal bottle for serving beverages
Carousel -- fr. French, carrousel, a knight's tournament -- a rotating platform carnival ride with horses as seats.
We had a few questions arise during our Words discussion.  Is Capuchin also the name of a monkey?  What exactly is a Karabinerhaken? And what is the difference between a merry-go-round and a carousel?  We solved the last question -- a carousel can only have horses, while a merry-go-round can use other animals for the seats of the ride.


I handed back a number of papers, including study guide questions, Quick Writes, grammar worksheets, and the Final Drafts of their Descriptive Essays.  I used a rubric for the essays.  If you look at it (attached to this e-mail) you'll see that the papers were evaluated in four areas (Focus, Content, Organization, and Mechanics) and at four levels (Beginning Developing, Proficient, and Advanced)  Since this was our first paper of the year and almost half of the students are new to my way of grading, I was generous in my scores.  To be honest, scores don't mean a lot when writing because so much of the evaluation is subjective.  What's most important is that students are learning and using skills in order to grow with each writing assignment.

After talking through the rubric, I took time to discuss the Focus section, in particular the thesis, introduction, and conclusion.  We reviewed my equation for the thesis statement and talked about the elements that need to be included in the intros and conclusions.  This is somewhat familiar material for the students, but review never hurts.

I had accidentally given the students in Writing 2 the Grammar worksheets that I had set out for Writing 1, rather than their own pile for Writing 2.  Although we didn't have any new worksheets, we were able to clean out our folders with some older worksheets.  We've had a couple of class sessions during which I handed out grammar sheets at the beginning of the class, but put that lesson on hold because we covered other material in the class.  The Verbs worksheet was due this week; the Parts of Speech worksheet is due next week (10/2) and the Nouns/Pronouns sheet is due in two weeks (10/9).

For our Animal Farm discussion, we discussed the kinds of leaders we were discovering in the book as compared to our initial essays, "What Makes a Good Leader."  We also noted that while some leaders seemed to lead in a strong manner, they didn't always lead towards good.  If they are behind in their reading, this is a good week to catch up.  We will have a quiz on the book in two weeks.

Assignments for Next Week:
-- Read Ch. VI & VIII
-- Write out answers to 3 Study Guide questions and do 3 vocabulary words.
-- Complete the Parts of Speech Worksheet

This Week's Blogs:
Class Notes

Have a great weekend.  The weather is supposed to be wonderful.  Enjoy!
Mrs. Prichard

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