We had a productive day in class this week. Our Quick Write began with a discussion about figures of speech and cliches related to "hands." We compiled quite a list:
I gotta hand it to you; in the palm of my hand; being fingered for a crime; wrapped around my finger; 5-finger discount; back of my hand; a slap in the face; thumbs up/down; give me five; lend a hand; hand it over, etc. After this little brainstorming, I asked the students to write something about hands. They could use some of our cliches or they could write about the use of their hands. When they were done, I had them watch a short video about hands by spoken word artist, Sarah Kay.
This week's Words of the Day were "coined words;" in other words, they were words that someone just made up and they ended up "sticking" in our American vocabulary.
boondoggle -- coined by Robert H. Link, a Boy Scout leader, in reference to a small braided piece on the scout uniform. It has come to mean some project or venture that is a useless waste of time and resources.
heebie-jeebies -- coined by cartoonist Billy DeBeck in the early 1900s; a feeling of nervousness and creepiness
runcible -- coined by Edward Lear as a word with obscure meaning, it was later applied to a combination spoon, fork, and knife utensil; like a spork.
In Writing 1 this week we welcomed a new student, Michelle Sorenson. This gave us a great opportunity to review our essay writing process and the importance of a thesis statement. The Rough Drafts of the Narrative Essays were due today. I will have them back to them next week; they then will revise and edit them into wonderful Final Drafts for the following week. We discussed again the importance of the thesis statement. I use this equation when teaching this idea:
Subject/ Topic
+ Opinion/ Stand
Thesis Statement
We're working on Phrases during the grammar section of class this semester in Writing 1, and we took time to work as groups on Prepositional Phrases. In their groups, they were to come up with a selection of prepositional phrases, then write sentences using them, then determine if the phrases in the sentences were adjective phrases or adverb phrases, and finally draw an arrow from the phrase to the word it modifies. Students can understand that an adjective or adverb is a word that modifies a noun or verb, respectively. It's a bit harder to view a group of words (i.e. phrases) that do the work of an adjective or adverb. They did marvelously!
We briefly discussed the next set of phrases: Participial phrases and Gerund phrases. Because we didn't take much time on this, the students should only do the Participial Worksheet (6 - 4) for next week, BUT NOT 6 - 5.
We did not have time for any literature discussion this week. Nevertheless, they need to keep reading Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde for next week and to do the study guide questions. I've included a link below that has some audio versions of the book.
Assignments for Next Week:
-- Read Chapters 5 & 6
-- 2 Study Guide questions for each chapter
-- Work on Vocabulary Worksheet
-- Grammar Worksheet: 6 - 4 (A: 1 - 10 and B: 1 - 10)
This Week's Links:
Class Notes
Have a great weekend!
Mrs. Prichard
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