We had a great first class for our 2015 school year! This is a great group of students, and I'm looking forward to this year.
This first week of classes is about taking care of the business regarding how the class is run. I handed out a lot of papers, which you will find attached to this e-mail, inserted into the blog and on Dropbox. As I told the students, they have multiple ways to find assignments and handouts should they be missing any.
We began the class with a Quick Write, which we will do every week. The purpose of the Quick Write is to get the students in a writing mood. Most of these are light-hearted; often they are connected to a current even or something that happened on that day in history. Today's Quick Write was to write about what they did NOT do over summer vacation.
Another key beginning-of-class activity is our Word of the Day. This semester, we will be selecting words from my book of foreign words and phrases. Some of the words and phrases in the book are familiar, but the students will probably not be acquainted with many of them. My goal is to expand their vocabularies and to pique their interests regarding words.
For today, I chose the word:
aptronym -- a person's name that is peculiarly appropriate to his/her occupation or character traits. e.g. Dr. Driller is a dentist; Felicity Foote is a dancer; Mr. Updegrave owns a funeral home. I asked the students to try to think of a name that might fit them.
Because we will be doing a lot of large and small group discussions, it is important that we get to know one another. I had the students participate in a short activity: in groups of 2 or 3, they were to find 3 similarities and 3 differences and then share these with the class.
After these beginning exercises, we got down to business with all of the handouts. We went over, at length, my Classroom Policies for this class that included conduct, communication, and grading. I especially talked about electronics and cell phone use in class. More and more students have smart phones, and some find it difficult to keep them stowed away during class. This year, if I suspect a student is using his/her phone, I will ask and then confiscate the phone if needed. Parents will get an e-mail if this happens. The students were in agreement with me, and I don't anticipate this being a problem with this class.
The rest of the handouts for today include: Writing 1 Syllabus, Animal Farm Introduction, Animal Farm Study Guide, Animal Farm Vocabulary Worksheet, Pre-Writing Exercises, Drafting the Essay, Descriptive Essay, Essay Rubric, Grammar: Week 1 & 2, Animal Farm: What Makes a Good Leader?
I gave a brief introduction to our literature selection, George Orwell's Animal Farm. For next week, they are to read the Introduction handout and to write a short response to the question, "What Makes a Good Leader?" On the handout, they can ignore the second set of writing assignments.
I also assigned them their first essay, a Descriptive Essay. The handout explains that this essay is to choose a place or situation, observe carefully, and describe it using the 5 senses: sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. The rough draft for this is due next week.
Assignments for Next Week:
-- Read the Classroom Policies and have parents read and initial.
-- Read the Introduction handout for Animal Farm
-- Respond to the question, "What makes a good leader?"
-- Write the rough draft of the Descriptive Essay
Links for this week:
(Note: Most of these links are to the blog and are copies of the handouts for the week's class and discussions. Occasionally I will include links to other helpful or interesting web resources.)
Have a great week!
Mrs. Prichard
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