NEWS ALERT! Quick Write

The prompt for Week 5 in Writing 1 was:
NEWS ALERT!  Writing 1 has a bad case of ........
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NEWS ALERT!  Writing 1 has a bad case of the boredom alert.  They get too bored from writing papers!

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NEWS ALERT!! Writing 1 has a bad case of the want for peanut butter.  Because I want some!  You should buy us some peanut butter and spoons for next week.  And bananas!

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NEWS ALERT!! Writing 1 has a bad case of the whispering giggles.  The think Mrs. Prichard can't see them, but she knows.  I sit in the nervous anticipation of the cure or vaccinations she may bring upon us for the purpose of ending this plague.

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NEWS ALERT!! Writing 1 has a bad case of misinformation.  You see most kids see school as something that is not necessary.  They avoid it at all costs.  They procrastinate and a host of other things.  And the only reason why most do school is because they are forced to by parents or teachers.  However, school was something people wanted to do and most of the world would die for the kind of education we have.  So make the most of your education.

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NEWS ALERT!! Writing 1 has a bad case of the lack of candy.  All of Writing 1 needs to work at getting more candy bag runs during class time.  If all of Writing 1 works together to defeat this horrible time, then the world will be better.

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NEWS ALERT!! Writing 1 has a bad case of STRESS!  Writing 1 class can stress your hand out if yo write too much.  It can also stress your eyes.

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NEWS ALERT!! Writing 1 has a bad case of the "overused commas."  It is putting commas in the most random places left and right.  And there are pauses everywhere in your stores, essays, paragraphs, and sentences.

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NEWS ALERT!! Writing 1 has a bad case of the Always Cold Syndrome (ACS).  ACS is a common sickness found most in northwestern states and Canada.  ACS has no real cure except going south of the equator.  Many have tried to cure or stop the symptoms by blanket and fire but none of those do anything.

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NEWS ALERT!! Writing 1 has a bad case of lack of commas.  Without commas, sentences have become confusing and long.  We need to get help so our essays can turn back into the great essays they once were.

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NEWS ALERT!! Writing 1 has a bad case of being tired.  The students depend on their daily fix of caffeine to get the through the morning.  The may have been slowly working doe to a lack of sleep.  They have also been staying up till 11:00 and waking up at 4:00.

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NEWS ALERT!! Writing 1 has a bad case of the fandoms.  Last Thursday a student noticed as they were passing the room to the class that many of the students were going crazy about the many worlds of books.

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NEWS ALERT!! Writing 1 has a bad case of comma errors.  They don't know where to put them and when thy should.  Their teacher tried to teach them, but they still don't use them right.

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NEWS ALERT!! Writing 1 has a bad case of the common sleepy syndrome.  The sleepy syndrome is a case of when you stay up past midnight and get four hours of sleep.  This can be avoided by going to sleep at reasonable times and getting up 8 - 9 hours of sleep.

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NEWS ALERT!! Writing 1 has a bad case of putting pineapple on pizza.  If Writing 1 knew what was good for itself, it'd eat them separately.  I mean, who puts pineapple on pizza?  I say we load our Ninas, Pintas, and Santa Maries full of men and send them to the New World of Pizza to make it literate in the art of pizza.

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BREAKING NEWS!  Writing 1 of CHAT Co-op seems to have come down with a severe case of freetimephobia, also known as the fear of free time with absolutely nothing to do.  Students affected end up working harder on their assignments and have been getting better grades as a result.

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NEWS ALERT!! Writing 1 has a bad case of WWRD, or writers who read disorder.  As a novelist, I find it very hard to handle typos.  If there is a a typo, I will find it.  Unfortunately, one of my favorite authors, Dr. Jay Strack, makes a lot of spelling mistakes.  It doesn't help that my biology teacher spelled DNA as DAN on a test.  People who spell things like armour without a "u" are just plain wrong.

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NEWS ALERT!  There have been recent reports from local news stations that Writing 1 has a bad case of sentence fragments.  While the student have remarkable vocabulary and great punctuation, they struggle with having complete sentences and complete thoughts.  As the moment, the cause is not yet identified, but there are some suspicions that there is an anti-sentence but traveling through the writing books ...

Literary Love Letters, 2017

Below are submissions by the Writing 1 class for the Quick Write prompt to write "Literary Love Letters."
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Ode to Verbs

Verbs are tantalizing.  One thing I cannot stand is too many boring, commonplace verbs.  When I make my characters talk in a story, they may have joked, puzzled, suggested, noted, or giggled, but never "said."  Said is among the greatest literary banes in my existence.  Only those who are lazy write “said” more than two times in a row.  A good verb is truly able to lighten up any sentence.

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Dear Parenthesis,

     I love how you make my life complete, even thought you only sit on a piece of sheet.  You help me know what is important, even if it does not seem worth it.  You can be in the beginning, middle, or end of a sentence, and you give everything a certain essence.

     Oh wonderful parenthesis, you are always written so fine, I would love it if you would be my Valentine.

Forever and always,

Yours

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To Essays,

I love writing essays because they inform, entertain, give life stories, and more.  They are also pretty easy to write for me.  I love writing stories about my life and about friends and family. The you can add dynamics like the right punctuation and all that fun stuff.  I love essays.

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To Questions Marks,

I love question marks.  I love it when people ask me things if I know what it is, and I also like to ask lots of questions.  Question marks and I could become friends.

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To the Puns of the World,

You have so many thoughts and can make anyone happy.  Some may hate you and would punish others if they talked about you.  But doughnut worry about what otters may think about you.  For I will always bee happy to talk to ewe.

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My Dear Commas,

I love you so much.  Thank you for all your hard work you do.  I love how you make things flow together.  How you make things make sense and lovely.  I couldn't life without you.

Love you!

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Dear Adjectives,

My excessive love for you is shown through my long, exciting novel.  In which you are quite commonly use.  You are far more enjoyable than diabolical complex sentences and their evil subordinating conjunctions.  I love you even more than compound-complex sentences though they do add flair to my writing.  Still, they are like a 49er without bacon when lacking you. I find you in Hallmark movie titles, Pokemon cards, my book, and more.  I love you, Adjectives.

Your Beloved

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I love, with steaming intensity, to dislike you, comma.  You are a nagging, ceaseless, confusing part of grammar that I always will find on a rough draft of mine.  For some reason which I am unaware of at the moment, you are probably the most confusing part of grammar, yet used very frequently.  I truly have feelings for disliking you, and you have changed me forever.

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Oh ". . ." how I love your dramatic pause.  The suspence you add to a simple story excites me.  You ". . ." can make any story a mystery.  You can add som much life to a story.  The conversations we make with you are, so endearing, so memorable to me.

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Dear Mr. Period,

I want to express to you the deep adoration I feel for all that you do to make a sentence complete.  You know it is my opinion that the periods importance is overlooked.  However, I believe that you are as important as the subject or the verb.  You are a very valuable part of all writing.  I hope that all good writers will never overlook you, but place you with pride at the end of each sentence.

Sincerely Yours

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Dear Which/Witch,

You confuse my life daily.  When writing to my grandma, I may accidentally call her a witch, when I am just trying to ask which airline she is coming on.

Confused

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Dear Grammar,

I don't like you.  It's not me.  It's you.

Writing 1 Student

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Writing 1 Class Notes -- Week 5 (February 16)

Greetings!

We had a good class this week even though I made to take frequent breaks to sneeze or deal with my runny nose.  Our Quick Write prompt this week was to finish and elaborate on this sentence:  "NEWS ALERT!  Writing 1 has a bad case of the ...."  For students who are willing, I will put their Quick Writes on the class blog.

Our Words of the Day:

equa/equi -- Latin, "same/even/level" -- equal, equation, equality, equinox, equilibrium, equate, equidistant

ex/e -- Latin, "put out of" -- exclude, exterior, exclaim. excavate, exhale

extri/extra -- Latin, "outer, outside of" -- extricate, extraterrestrial, extract, extraction, extraordinary, extrovert

Students handed in the Final Drafts of their Narrative Essays.  If a rough draft was handed in late, I will get it back to them within the week so that the final draft can be brought to class after our break.  We are now ready to start our next essay.  This may be the hardest essay that they will write this year because it is an essay with few options and more guidelines.  For this essay, they are to do a literary analysis and write about either a character or a theme.  

In class we discussed critical and analytical thinking as we talked about how to take apart and then put back together a piece of literature.  We talked about the essay and the book, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,  at the same time this week.  Students should use the charts they have been working on as their "research" for this paper.  The Pre-Write is due March 2.

We took a longer time to work on our Comma studies.  As I corrected the worksheets, I saw that we needed some more time to go over subordinate clauses/complex sentences, introductory elements, and items in a series.  After a quick review, I divided the class into groups.  Their first assignment was to review as a group to make sure each one of them could explain subordinate/dependent clauses to someone else.  We used the rest of the time to work through the other two uses for commas:  introductory elements and items in a series.

We do not have class next week, so they have two weeks to do their assignments.

Assignments for March 2:

-- Read Ch. 9 & 10 of Jekyll/Hyde

-- Answer 2 study guide questions for each chapter

-- Pre-Write for Themes/Character essay

-- 3 Comma Worksheets (if not completed in class)

Links for this Week:

Class Notes

Independent and Subordinate Clauses

Commas with Introductory Elements

Commas and Items in a Series

Have a great weekend and a lovely break!

Mrs. Prichard

Commas and Items in a Series

Use a comma to separate words and phrases in a series.  Present usage advocates the use of the comma before and connecting the last two words of a series; some writers, however, prefer to omit the comma before and.  This comma is called the “series comma” or the “Oxford comma.”  When etc. ends a series, it should be preceded and followed by a comma.  Use commas to separate pairs of words in a series.  Use a comma between adjectives preceding a noun when they are coordinate qualifying words.

Examples:

·         The vendor sells hot dogs, pretzels, hamburgers, and soft drinks.

·         For my birthday I got a sweater, a pair of gloves, a hat, and several other items.

·         Last week a sale of chairs, beds, desks, etc., was advertised in the newspaper.

·         Official and nonofficial, national and state agencies attended the convention in Boston.

·         The boss agreed on a form for a shortened, simplified uniform report.

EXERCISES

1.      It makes me wild  mad  crazy and frustrated when teachers give too many assignments about commas.

2.      Your brother dropped by with your suitcase blanket lamp books and box of junk.

3.      The corn beans squash tomatoes and various things I don’t recognize are coming up in the garden.

4.      If you’re going upstairs please carry this basket of clothes the pile of mail and whatever those things are over there in the corner.

5.      He collected stamps from Great Britain Ireland Spain France Italy Switzerland and Germany.

6.      We toured the quaint old mining town in Flagstaff, Arizona.

7.      For our picnic, I packed peanut butter and jelly ham and cheese and egg salad sandwiches.

8.      My mother washed by favorite brown flannel shirt.

9.      I couldn’t decide if I wanted to go to Florida California Texas or Mexico for spring break.

10.  My parent’s cousins neighbors Mr. Smith and Miss Larson came to my recital.

Commas with Introductory Elements

NAME _____________________ CLASS ___________ DATE ________

Use a comma after certain introductory elements.

(1) Use a comma to set off a mild exclamation such as well, oh, or why at the beginning of a sentence. Other introductory words, such as yes and no, are also set off with commas.

EXAMPLES

Oh, I see.

Yes, she has that book.

(2) Use a comma after an introductory phrase or clause.

EXAMPLES	At the bend in the road, turn right. [two prepositional phrases]
	Signaling carefully, she changed lanes. [participial phrase]
	To water the garden, use the sprinkler. [infinitive phrase]
	When the artists painted, they followed several rules. [adverb clause]

EXERCISE A In the following sentences, insert commas where they are needed. If a sentence is already correct, write C to the left of the item number.

Example

1.      On the shores of the Nile, a great civilization was born.

1.     No the Egyptians were not just farmers.

2.     Concerned with the afterlife Egyptian rulers built great tombs for themselves.

3.     Built for monarchs and nobles many great stone tombs contained supplies for use in the afterlife.

4.     While he was alive the king had his picture painted.

5.     On the wall of his tomb a picture shows the king hunting.

6.     Well it shows how the king once hunted.

7.     When I saw the jewels I thought the kings were rich.

8.     Why they believed they could take jewels to the next life.

9.     Based on things found in tombs the assumption can be made that they believed they could take almost everything!

10.  In Egypt great riches have been found in these tombs.

Writing 1 Class Notes -- Week 4 (February 9)

Greetings!

Another great class!  Our discussions were good, and we learned quite a bit, too.

I asked the students to write "Literary Love Letters" for the Quick Write this week.  Every year I use this as a prompt during the class closest to Valentines Day.  I have a collection of these letters written by previous students.  (See the links below,)

Our Latin roots for our Words of the Day:

dict -- Latin, "to say/speak" -- derivatives:  dictate, dictation, dictionary, contradict, predict, dictator, 

dorm -- Latin, "to sleep" -- dormant, dormancy, dormitory, dorm

duct -- Latin, "to lead" -- conduct, conductor, introduce, introduction, reduction, abduct, deduct

When I handed back homework, if students were missing any pieces of homework, they got a print out listing that homework.  Now that I'm more familiar with My GradeBook, I'm hoping to get these out every 3 - 4 weeks so that students don't get behind with their work.  Students and parents can also check on progress.  For specific information for signing in, follow the link at the bottom.

I handed back the Rough Drafts of the Narrative Essays -- these were all very well written papers.  We discussed the most common errors found in the essays:  punctuation with dialogue, appropriate verb tenses, run-on and comma splice sentences, and "there is/are" sentences.  I chalk up to the story-telling aspect of the narrative essay, but many students wrote their longest essays so far.  The Final Drafts are due next week.

Students read Chapters 5 & 6 of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  We discussed one of the prominent themes -- the ideas of reputation and appearances.  Students made some interesting comments about the nature of reputation and the role of reputation in this 21st century.  For next week, they are to read the next two chapters.

Assignments for Next Week:

-- Read Ch. 7 & 8 of Jekyll/Hyde

-- Continue to work on the Themes, Character, and Vocabulary charts

-- Final Draft of Narrative Essay

Links for this week:

Class Notes 

My GradeBook Information

Literary Love Letters, 2016

Literary Love Letters, 2012

Grammar Girl -- There is/are

Reduce Expletive Constructions

Have a great weekend!  Rumor has it that warmer weather is coming!

Mrs. Prichard

Literary Love Letters, 2017

Each year, either just before Valentine's Day or right after, I assign the students to write a "Literary Love Letter" as their Quick Write.  Below are this year's contributions.

To the Jason Bourne trilogy:
You always keep me entertained.  It is never a dull moment with them.  The suspense, action, and drama keep them interesting.
~Your admirer

To Free Writing:
I love writing free write stories!  To me they are fun, exciting, passionate, even.  If I could, I would write them for as long as I could.  Sometimes I would stay up into the night when I had a good story going.  I love them almost enough to spend the rest of my life doing them.  Although, eventually I think I would get tired of it.
~ Your admirer

Dear Space,
It is hard to imagine what reading would be like if you didn't exist.  Words would just be  jumble of letters all strung together.  Nothing would be legible.  Iwouldbe writingsomethiglikethis.  So, space, spacing -- whatever you want to be called, your job is important.
~ A thoughtful student.

My GradeBook Information

Greetings Students and Parents!

Below are instructions for signing up for the online grade book that I will be using this year.  In past years, I've used Engrade, but that site is no longer available to individual teachers.  After lots of research and trials, I've settled on MyGradebook.  As we progress through the year, I'd appreciate any feedback.

First, a quick note about your use of this resource.  I'm using this online resource to help me compute grades and to divide the grades into categories.  Parents and students can use it to see scores and to check for missing assignments.  But a word of warning -- some weeks the homework scores will make it to my 3-ring binder but not immediately to MyGradebook.  I will send out mid-term reports and a "grades update" a few weeks before the end of the term.

Directions for Signing Up:

1.  Go to www.mygradebook.com

2.  In the username box, give the class code:  

          writing1spring17

3.  Your password is the student's first name and the first letter of the last name, all lower case.  For example,  Bobby Smith's password would be "bobbys."

4.  Click on "My Account," and on that page click on Create Primary Login.

5.  Set the Primary Login (username) and Primary Login Password that you want to use for this class.  (Note:  This username and password will be the same for the student's account, so parents and students should communicate the choices with one another.)

6.  If any of the e-mail information needs updating, click on "update email."

7.  When all information is updated, click on "save."

When you have finished these steps, you can go to the assignments page, the calendar page, etc. for the class.  I'm hoping this website will not be difficult for all of us to navigate.

Blessings,
Tammy Prichard

Writing 1 Class Notes -- Week 3 (February 2)

Greetings!

We had a productive class this week and covered a lot of material.  I brought two dates up for the Quick Write:  1887 was the first official "Groundhog Day" in the US (it had been a tradition in Europe and according to folklore, if the groundhog, or hedgehog in Europe, sees its shadow, we will have 6 more weeks of winter); and 1996, which was the day the record low was recorded in Minnesota (60 degrees below zero in Tower, MN).  I asked the students to put together a Winter Survival Kit.

Our Words of the Day were the following Latin roots:

capit -- Latin, "head" -- derivatives:  captain, capitol, capital, decapitate, chief, chef, chapter, recapitulate

circum -- Latin, "around" -- derivatives:  circumference, circumnavigate, circumvent, circular, circumstance

contra -- Latin, "against/opposite" -- derivatives:  contrary, contract, contradict

cred -- Latin, "believe" -- derivatives:  credible, incredible, credit, credence, creditor

Students handed in their rough drafts of their Narrative Essays.  I've told them that if they ever forget their homework at home, they can bring it in the next week, except for when Rough Drafts are due.  I need the week to grade them, and if they come in late, then their final drafts are late.  If a student didn't bring a paper copy to class, he/she can share it on Google docs or send it as an attachment either as a Word doc or a PDF.  (I don't have a patch in my computer to open documents from Apple Pages.)  I will have the rough drafts back next week for them to revise.

We took the bulk of the class for Grammar in order to go over compound and complex sentences.  In our quest to be experts in the Comma, we need to learn many other elements of grammar and sentence construction.  Students have encountered and written compound and complex sentences but are not 100% sure about how and why they work.  We did work at the board with a number of class "volunteers."  

We briefly walked through the content of the assigned chapters of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  These are short chapters, so the reading time should not take too long.  As they read, they should continue to be filling out the charts (Character, Theme, Vocabulary) as they encounter pertinent information.  These are to be handed in when we finish the book.

A final note:  This is a large class, and many of the students seem to have good friends in the class.  This last week the neighbor-to-neighbor chatting seemed to be more than usual, so I'd like to remind all of the students to stay engaged with the class and to resist the urge get involved in those little conversations that distract everyone.  I will start separating people during class if it seems necessary to the wellness of the class.

Assignments for Next Week:

-- Read Ch. 5 & 6

-- Answer 4 Questions

-- Continue working on Character, Theme, and Vocabulary worksheets

-- 2 Introductory Elements Worksheets

Links for this week:

Class Notes

Commas and Introductory Elements

Commas with Introductory Elements

Video:  Introductory Elements

Have a great weekend!

Mrs. Prichard