Writing 1: ransom of red chief

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Thursday, March 24, 2022

Writing 1 Class Notes -- Week 10 (March 31)

Greetings!

Another great day!!

Here are our prompts for the Quick Writes:

Prompt #1
On March 24, 1603, Elizabeth I died and King James I was crowned the King of England, and on March 25, 1306, Robert the Bruce was crowned King of Scotland. How much do you know about the history and rule of other countries? Is this important knowledge for us to have? Why?

Prompt #2
On March 26, 1874, American poet Robert Frost, much admired for his depictions of rural New England life and his realistic verse portraying ordinary people, was born in San Francisco. What are your thoughts about poetry? Do you like to read it and do you think it’s an important part of our culture?

Prompt #3
Next Week is National Cleaning Week. How would you describe your cleaning style? Do you do fall or spring cleaning at your house? Write about anything cleaning-related.

Our Words of the Day from Grace, Megan, Chase, and Ike

anatadaephobia-- the fear that somehow, somewhere, a duck is watching you

cachinnate-- to laugh loudly

venustraphobia-- the fear of beautiful women

boanthropy -- a type of insanity in which people think they are cows

We had a brief check in on their News Stories; the rough drafts are due on March 31. Some students have given this some thought, and others have waited until next week to work on it. I reminded them that they could do a news article on a current event, a past event, or even a fictional event. They could also do a review of some kind.

We had a discussion about our short story "The Ransom of Red Chief" this week. We agreed that the story was both funny (a boy so bad and mischievous that his family didn't want him back from the kidnappers) and sad (for the same reason).

We are finished with our Short Stories and are now onto Poetry. To kick off our poetry unit, we played the game Poetry for Neanderthals. In this game, students give one-word, one-syllable clues to get their teammates to guess a word. If they use multi-syllabic words, they get bonked on the head with an inflated club. (We hit the table instead of one another.)

Class -- please note this next information -- it was not discussed in class

After the students read all of the poems, they are to choose 2 poems to respond to. They need to respond to 2 poems, and here are their options:

1. Fill out a Poetry Worksheet for one or both

2. Write a paragraph about the poem(s) that analyzes the poem; discuss what you think it means and why you like or don't like it.

3. Instead of writing a paragraph, record a video commentary about the poem. Youtube LiveStream or some other app on a device is OK as long as it can be seen by me.

4. Do a piece of art that connects with the content and meaning of the poem.

5. Make a video of your recitation of the poem.

Finally, for our Grammar portion of the class, I gave some worksheets for continued practice in identifying sentence elements for the various sentence patterns that have been covered this semester.

Assignments for Week 11 (April 15)

-- News Story Pre-Write

-- News Story Rough Draft

-- Answer the Question: Why this Topic?

-- Read Week 11 Poetry

-- Poetry Response (2 Poems)

-- Complements Worksheet (John Updike)

-- Sentence Patterns (Mr. Jackson)

-- Sentence Patterns Practice (Four bakers)

Links for this Week:

Writing 1 Class Notes -- Week 10 (March 24)

Zoom Recording (3/24/2022)

Poetry for Neanderthals

Week 11 Poetry Readings

Tamera M. Prichard

Writing Instructor at CHAT

Writing 1, Writing 2, Writing 3

ACT Prep, British Literature

Thursday, March 25, 2021

Writing 1 Class Notes -- Week 9 (March 25)

Greetings!

It was a beautiful day outside and a fun learning day inside.

Our Quick Write this week included prompts from the students themselves:

If you could start a business or company, what would it be?
What kinds of hairstyles do you like or not like?
If you could change your name, what would it be?
What were the highs and lows of this past week?

For our Words of the Day were feline and canine inspired. One of my favorite books, The Play of Words by Richard Lederer, has fun lists of words, including words that start with "cat" and "dog." Our words included catastrophe, category, catacombs, doggerel, dogma, dog-tired, dog-fight, and dog-tags.

Students have handed in the Final Drafts of their Examples/Analogy Essays. We're now ready to start our final "from scratch" essay. (Following this essay, students will complete a re-write of an earlier written essay and a short reflection paper.) This next writing assignment is a News Story. We talked about the differences between an essay and a news story. For a news story, writers give out the broad, general information and progress to more details. Journalists are aware that readers could stop reading at any point (or not be interested enough to turn the page and finish the story.) Students can write a factual news story, a news story about some historical event, a fictional news story, a movie/theater review, or a review of something else that would be news-worthy. The rough draft and pre-write are due April 15.

Following the writing discussion, we briefly covered our two O. Henry stories: "Retrieved Reformation" and "The Pimienta Pancake." The students had some good insights and comments on the humor of these stories. Next week we will read "The Ransom of Red Chief." In the links section below are some videos and an audio version of the story. (And there's a chance we'll have a quiz next week. Just FYI.)

We continue to work on sentence patterns and sentence elements for our Grammar instruction. Last week and this week we practiced identifying direct objects and indirect objects. We worked on the worksheets during class in case there were any questions. If not finished, they are due next week.

Assignments for Next Week