We had a great class again! Because our class followed Valentine's Day, for the Quick Write I had the students write the annual "Literary Love Letter." They could write to an author, a character, a part of speech, a punctuation, etc. Below are three links to letters written in past years. I will let you know when I've gotten this year's letters posted on the blog.
Our Words of the Day were a bit of a mystery. After setting up the classroom for the day, I went downstairs to the cafe and got a cup of coffee. Upon returning to the room, I found three words on the board, which became our words for this week. One student claimed responsibility for one word, by the origin of the other two are still a myster.
- Morior invictus -- Latin, "death before defeat" -- This phrase has become a motto for sports teams and heavy metal groups.
- Sputnik -- Russian, "fellow traveler" -- an artificial satellite launched by the Soviet's in 1957
- pine cone -- While there was an insistence that the definition of this word is "tree poop," as proposed by the videos "Neature Walks," a pine cone is a conical or rounded woody fruit of a pine tree, with scales that open to release seeds. This word brings up interesting information about compound words. We all know that compound words are two nouns that are put together to make one words. These are considered closed compounds. However, we also have open compounds that are two words that must go together but have a space between them.
Students handed in the Final Drafts of their Narrative Essays. With those in the homework bin, I introduced the next essay, which we have been preparing for since the beginning of the semester. This will probably be the hardest essay that they will write all year for three reasons: they don't have a choice about what they can write; they are writing a literary analysis, which can be challenging for some; they might not have done a thorough reading of the book, so they are not well-prepared to write the essay. They were given two charts to be filling out as read The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. One for a character and one for a theme. For the next essay, they are to choose a character or theme to write about. The pre-write is due when we get back from break on March 1, and the rough draft is due the following week.
We went on to our literature discussion, I'm afraid I caused a bit of confusion. I started reading from a chapter they had not yet read and couldn't figure out why they weren't responding very much. I realized that I had gotten ahead of myself in the schedule. We still have a couple of chapters to the end of the book when all of the mysteries will be explained.
Our final discussion centered on sentence patterns, N-LV-ADJ and N-LV-N patterns, to be specific. They have 3 worksheets to do for our next class time.
Remember -- no class next week!
Assignments for Next Week
-- Themes or Character Essay Pre-Write
-- Finish The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
-- Finish the Themes and Character charts (due 3/1)
-- Finish the Vocabulary chart (due 3/2)
-- No study guide questions
-- 3 Grammar worksheets
Links for this Week
Class Notes
Have a wonderful weekend and a good break!
Mrsl Prichard
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