We had another good class this week. I'm working hard to learn names and to get to know this good group of students.
For our Quick Write today, I used the fact that September 1 - 7 is National Childhood Prevention Week, and I asked the students to write about some injury or accident that happened to themselves or to someone they have known . As a mother of 7, I've made 8 trips to the ER with my kids, and I heard about big and little injuries from the students.
Our Words of the Day were French expressions that have become parts of our day to day language:
RSVP -- fr. French "Répondez s'il vous plaît" -- Please respond; a request for a response to an invitation
déjà vu -- fr. French "already seen" -- th feeling that a situation has already occurred
du jour -- fr. French "of the day" -- used to describe something that is being served on the day or of a current interest
faux pas -- fr. French "false step" -- a slip or slight blunder
bon voyage -- fr. French "good travels" -- an expression used to express good wishes on a journey
For every week's class, I put the agenda for that day along the side of the whiteboard. We always start with the Quick Write and Words of the Day, and following that, we cover writing, literature, and grammar topics. This week, we covered our writing assignments, then literature, and finished with grammar.
Students have finished and handed in the Rough Drafts of their Descriptive Essays. I will go over them this week and hand them back next week. They will then revise the rough drafts and hand them in the following week. Another short writing assignment for them for next week is to write 1 paragraph titled "Penguins as Pets." I teach writing classes at Arcadia Charter School, and this year I'm having students from each school write paragraphs that students from the other school can use for editing practice. These paragraphs should have at least 5 mistakes; these mistakes can be spelling, grammar, punctuation, capitalization, or usage related.
I've assigned the beginning chapters of our book, Animal Farm. Before reading, they wrote about the qualities they thought goes into being a good leader, and we put many of their responses on the board: humble, accountable, servant leader, love for followers, doing what is correct, motivational, handle situations, protect followers, selfless, patient, experiences, loyal, responsible, courageous, self-control, maturity, generous, forgiving, integrity, trustworthy, Christ-like, wise, push to do the best, making hard decisions, considerate, honest, fair, intelligent, has vision, teachable, sees people as equals, loving, fearless.
Students have a Study Guide of questions for each reading assignment, but they may also choose a reading response from the "ala carte" portion at the end of the study guide. I also told the students that I would include links to audio versions of the books. Many students find that either listening or listening while reading helps with reading comprehension.
This week I introduced the Parts of Speech unit. As I explained to the students, every single word that we use in our sentences falls into one of the parts of speech categories: interjections, verbs, adjectives, nouns, conjunctions, adverbs, prepositions, and pronouns. Some students may have a strong working knowledge of these while others use them in sentences but don't understand them as fully; they are important to writing in that they are the building blocks of our sentences, and many times writing errors occur from incorrect usage.
For this unit, students will be put into groups of three to learn and become the "class experts" on their chosen part of speech. On their assigned week, they will teach the class, give them an activity, and provide homework for practice. Next week the students will group themselves and sign up for a part of speech. We will talk more about the "hows" of a project like this.
Assignments for Next Week:
-- Read Ch. 1 & 2 of Animal Farm
-- 3 Reading Responses (at least 2 study guide questions)
-- 3 Vocabulary Words
-- Write 1 paragraph -- "Penguins as Pets" (at least 5 errors)
-- Parts of Speech matching worksheet
Links for this week:
Class Notes
Have a great weekend!
Mrs. Prichard
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