Again, my apologies for the very late e-mail last week. This week, the class notes are first on my list instead of my pile of rough drafts from the class.
Our Quick Write this week was prompted by the fact that November 3 is National Sandwich Day. I asked students to write about their favorite sandwiches; they could write a description, an advertisement, or an explanation about the importance of sandwiches. We had a discussion about whether wraps or hamburgers qualified as sandwiches.
Our Words of the Day were ghost words. In 1886, a lexicographer named Walter Skeat first used the phrase "ghost words" to describe words that he said had "no real existence." Ghost words are words that weren't real to begin with -- they came about because of an error or misunderstanding -- but they made it into the dictionary anyway.
gravy -- from the French, "graine" -- became a word when a 14th century misread a French cookbook and substituted a "v" for an "n"
tweed -- from the Scottish word "tweel," which is a type of wool and from which we got the word "twill." Some think the word was misheard as the Tweed River.
Dord -- the original dictionary was supposed to be "D or d" (capital "d" or lowercase "d") as an abbreviation for density in physics or chemistry. Whoever worked for the dictionary misread it as a word spelled d-o-r-d. It entered the dictionary in 1934 and was taken out in 1947.
esquivalience -- This is not a real words at all but was invented by an editor at the New Oxford American Dictionary and was included in the 2001 edition to help the company track copyright violators who were lifting entries from the dictionary.
We went over the returned rough drafts of the Examples/Illustration Essays. The students have started a page in their notebooks titled "Watch Out For." When I write notes on their rough drafts, I often have a section with that heading and list common errors or patterns that I see in their rough drafts. I would like them to keep track of these and to use them to guide their writing throughout the year. We discussed at length the writing of introductions and conclusions. The final drafts are due next week.
Following the our writing discussion, the Adverbs crew, Aidan and Joseph, gave a good presentation to the class. The excellent PowerPoint that explained various aspects of this part of speech is attached to this e-mail. The class was led in a charades kind of game with verbs and adverbs, and they were given homework to do for next week.
Assignments for Next Week:
-- Read Stave Two
-- Answer 3 Questions from the Study Guide
-- Define 4 Vocabulary words
-- Final Drafts of Examples/Illustrations Essay
-- Adverbs Homework
Links for This Week
Class Notes
Have a great weekend!
Mrs. Prichard
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