Writing 1 Class Notes -- Week 2 (Sept. 4)

Greetings!

(Firstly, my apologies for the lateness of this update.  Our family had neither phone nor internet connections until Sunday afternoon.  We survived quite well without them, but some work items were delayed.)

We had a good, productive day in class this week.  The prompt for our Quick Write was inspired by the 50^th anniversary of Gilligan’s Island (one of my favorite childhood TV shows.)  The students were to write about being stranded somewhere.  We had some students in some unusual places, including a time machine. 

Our Words of the Day came from my book on foreign words and phrases.  This book has a great variety of common and less common words.  One of my goals for this class is to increase the vocabulary of my students.  Below are the words for this week:

-- Concessionaire -- a person or group who has the right to sell something.

-- Concierge -- (fr. Latin; conservus, fellow slave)  an employee of a hotel or apartment building who serves the guests with help and information

-- concour d’elegance -- a parade of prestigious vehicles that is judged and rated

Students handed in their Descriptive Essays.  I will go over these and hand them back next week.  I am fairly thorough with my marks and comments on these rough crafts.  Much of the learning about writing comes as students revise and correct their rough drafts for the final drafts.

We began our discussions about Animal Farm.  The students were to read the introduction/preface written by C.M. Woodhouse. (I promised them that the rest of the book is not as complicated or boring.)  While the book is a fascinating study of leadership, politics, and economics, the historical setting for this book is important. While Orwell supported socialism, he disliked communism.  Additionally, we discussed how the story might be a “fairy story,” as Orwell designated it.  We also listed those qualities in a leader which we thought were important.

We discussed the Grammar lesson from Week 1:  The 8 parts of Speech  These parts of speech are:  Nouns, Verbs, Pronouns, Adjectives, Adverbs, Conjunctions, Prepositions, Interjections.  They have a worksheet to do for this week.

Assignments for Next Week:

-- Read Chapters 1 & 2

 -- Write out answers to 3 Study Questions and choose 3 vocabulary words

-- Grammar worksheet:  8 Parts of Speech

Have a great weekend!

Mrs. Prichard