We had a good class this week, as always! It's a good, engaging group of students, and we always seem to accomplish a lot.
Our Quick Write, which was to write something car-related, was inspired by the fact that October 5 is the anniversary of Enzo Ferrari's first race. Ferrari worked and raced for Alfa Romeo until he left and started his own company. When I was 20 I worked as a nanny for a family that had 5 vintage Ferraris, so I was especially interested in this little bit of trivia.
Our Words of the Day:
c'est la vie -- French "that is life" -- an expression that refers to the fact that all kinds of stuff happens in life. Some students once suggested that "Whatever" might be a comparable English expression
bona fide -- Latin "in good faith" -- refers to something that is true or verifiable
savior faire -- French "know how to do" -- a quality of accomplishment, polish, tact, or sophistication
enfant terrible -- French "a terrible child" -- can refer to a misbehaving child or to a person who intentionally tries to shock others
je ne sais quoi -- French "I do not know what" -- a quality that can not be easily described, something inexpressible
I usually take the time that students are writing their quick writes to hand back homework, so discussing the homework often comes after these two beginning activities. This week they had more to hand in than I had to hand back. The Final Drafts of their Personal Essays were do this week, along with literature and grammar homework. When students hand in their final drafts, I also require them to hand in their rough drafts so that I can see the corrections that they make.
We are starting our third essay -- an Examples/Illustration Essay. Our two previous essays were done with a two-step process: a rough draft and a final draft. As the essays get more complicated, a third step, a Pre-Write, is incorporated. For this step that precedes the rough draft, students are to brainstorm ideas, conduct any needed research, and organize their thoughts before writing the rough draft. The Pre-Write should be done for next week, BUT they are not to hand it in until the following week when they hand in their rough draft.
We had two excellent Parts of Speech presentations today. Blake, Bailey, and Jacob prepared good information about Pronouns, and Emma, Laura, and Corrie presented on Nouns. At the end is a link to the PowerPoint for the Nouns presentation, and I will have copies of the pronouns presentation for the class next week. Next week we will hear about adjectives from Owen, Bryar, and Jarrett.
Below is a chart that I put on the board for the variations of pronoun cases.
Subject
|
Object
direct object, indirect object, object of preposition
| |||
Singular
|
Plural
|
Singular
|
Plural
| |
1st person
|
I
|
we
|
me
|
us
|
2nd person
|
you
|
you
|
you
|
you
|
3rd person
|
he/she/it
|
they
|
him/her/it
|
them
|
We have reached the end of our book, Animal Farm. Next week we will wrap up the book with some discussion and a final test. The syllabus says that we will have character presentations, but I've decided to NOT do those due to the hard work students are putting into their parts of speech presentations.
Assignments for Next Week:
-- Finish Animal Farm
-- Finish any incomplete Reading Responses or Vocabulary word assignments
-- Pronouns Homework
-- Nouns Homework
-- Examples/Illustration Essay Pre-Write
Links for this week:
Class Notes
Have a great weekend!
Mrs. Prichard
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