Writing 1 Class Notes -- Week 12 (November 13)

Greetings!

We had a good class yesterday.  This is a hard-working class and are developing into a cohesive group.

Our Quick Write was inspired by Robert Louis Stevenson whose birthday was November 12, 1850.  He wrote some great classics:  Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and The Strange Adventures of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  I had the students write about what it would be like if there were two of them?

Our Words of the Day were:

Hoc loco -- Latin, "in this place"

Hoi polloi -- Greek, "the many" -- the general populace  

Hollandaise -- French, "Dutch sauce" -- a rich sauce of butter, eggs, lemon sauce, and vinegar/wine

Hombre -- Spanish, hombre, man; Latin homo-, man -- man, fellow, guy

We had a full class, and we didn't take time to go over the final drafts of their most recent essays.  We'll go over them next week.  'm enjoying seeing them improve with each paper that is written.  I graded them using my essay Rubric. The value in a rubric is that a paper can be evaluated in a number of areas:  focus, content, organization, and mechanics.  

We discussed the next writing assignment which is either a Biography Essay or an Historical Essay.  We talked at length about difference between  a report and an essay with a thesis.  We did some brainstorming about some ways to develop a thesis for this kind of essay.  The Pre-Write was due this week, and the rough draft is due next week.  This is the last essay of this semester.

For a combined Grammar and Writing exercise, I had the students write a series of sentences with the following guidelines:

1.  There is/there are sentences

2.  A sentence using "things"

3.  Pronoun & antecedent don't agree

4.  Subject & Verb don't agree

5.  A subordinate clause written as a complete sentence. 

Once they finished their sentences, I had them share them with their "high five" partners so that they could correct them.  With each of these incorrect sentences, we had a mini-grammar lesson.  

We closed our class with a short discussion about A Christmas Carol, which include a couple video clips from my favorite version of this piece of literature:  The Muppets Christmas Carol.  As per a request from a student, we ended the class with "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer."

Assignments for Next Week:

-- Rough Draft of .History Essay or Biography Essay

-- Read Stave III

-- 2 Study Questions and 4 Vocabulary Words

This week's links:

Class Notes

Muppets Christmas Carol "Marley and Marley"

Have a great weekend!  Keep Warm!

Mrs. Prichard