We had a good day in class. I began the class by asking the students why doing Quick Writes are a good idea and why they might be helpful. Their responses showed me what thoughtful students they are; I had a comment about how as a teacher I want them to learn to think and another comment about how important it is to get our thoughts on paper. We talked about the fact that writing often stirs up thoughts that we didn't know we had.
Students had three options for the Quick Write: 1) March 22 was National Goof Off Day; 2) March 23 was National Chip and Dip Day; or 3) National Puppy Day. Students could take any of the days and write about it from an direction.
Words of the Day:
Lingua -- Latin, tongue, language -- lingo, language, bilingual, linguine, poly-lingual, sublingual
Luc/lux -- Latin, light, bright -- lucid,, elucidate, translucent, Lucifer
Lumen -- Latin, light, shine -- illuminate, lumen, Illuminati, lumanaire, luminous, luminary
Students handed in their final drafts of their most recent essays, the Themes/Character essay. We are now on to our next writing assignment, which is a News Story. We discussed how a news story is different from an essay. News stories are generally a report of facts while essays are thesis-driven papers that take a stand on a topic and support it with details. We also covered how reporters can be biased and that not all news is accurate. One of their homework assignments is to bring in a news article with biased/opinionated words circled or highlighted.
In our reading of O. Henry's short stories, we read one of my favorites for this week -- "Makes the Whole World Kin," In this story, a burglar breaks into a house, discovers that he has the same ailment as the homeowner, discusses remedies, and finally takes the guy out for a drink. We read aloud the first portion, enjoying the language. O. Henry's plots, characters, and word choices are wonderfully imaginative and peculiar.
We were Grammar-focused for the last part of the class. Following commas, we are working with other punctuation bits: periods with abbreviations, semicolons, colons, and italics. Students usually have some knowledge about these, so this is mostly review. Our review was brief, so I've included some links to websites below that might be helpful.
Assignments for Next Week:
-- Read "Retrieved Reformation" (p. 49); "The Pimienta Pancake" (p. 29)
-- No Short Story Worksheets
-- News Story Pre-Write
-- Bring a News Article with biases/opinions circled or highlighted
-- Grammar Worksheets: 13-1, 13-7, 14-1
Links for this week:
Class Notes
Have a great weekend!
Mrs. Prichard
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