It might not feel like it as you look at the weather forecast for this weekend, but it is spring, and we are beginning the homestretch for the semester. We are two-thirds of the way through!
For the Quick Write, I gave the students these options as prompts: National Burrito Day, National Deep Dish Pizza Day, or Prompt #14 from Toastmasters -- What is the difference between existing and living. We had some great comments for all three prompts, and at the end of our discussion, I asked students to list three things in their lives that make life worth living. I'm looking forward to reading what they wrote.
Last week we had "Z" words, and this week our Words of the Day were "H" words.
hippodrome -- fr. Greek hippo, "horse" -- an oval shaped race course for horse or chariot races
hollandaise -- fr. French sauce hollandaise, "Dutch sauce" -- a rich sauce made of butter, egg yolks, lemon juice, and sometimes herbs or spices
hombre -- fr. Spanish hombre, "man"; from Latin hominem, "man" -- a casual term for man or guy
hoi polloi -- fr. Greek, hoi polloi, "the many" -- the common man
I handed back homework, and we had a brief discussion about the e-mails that I sent out this week. If students have any homework that has been graded but they see that it is not on the online grade book, they should hand it in again. I had a student in Writing 2 who had done two assignments on one piece of paper, but I hadn't seen the second assignment on the back. If a student is ever absent, all of the homework can be found in these places: attachments in the weekly class notes, copies on the class blog, and with a link to the document on Google drive.
We had a brief discussion about the next writing assignment: a News Story. I reiterated that these can be actual or imaginary events; they can be current or historical events; they can be prominent or every day events. Unlike an essay, they don't necessarily have the same kind of introduction, conclusion, or organizational structures. Students should feel free to read a couple of newspaper stories for examples. The rough draft is due next week.
We have reached the end of our O. Henry short stories unit, and the majority of the students have said that our last story, Tthe Ransom of Red Chief" was their favorite. Ebeneezer Dorsett's son is the kind of kid you can hardly fathom even exists, and the two criminals are a bit bumbling. As with all of the stories we've read, the end is quirky. The class did a great job in our discussions.
I've given them the next book, which is our poetry for the year. Below is the list of poets from the book that they should read for next week. They should read all of the poems by each author. There will be a quiz next week, so read them all!
For the grammar section of our class, we went over a worksheet from the previous class time that a number of students seemed to have a hard time with. We went sentence by sentence, isolating the prepositional phrases and identifying them as adverb phrases or adjective phrases. When sentences get more complicated, one of the first strategies for figuring out all of the various elements is to eliminate the prepositional phrases.
Assignments for Next Week
-- Read the poetry of the following authors: Hughes (p. 51), William (p. 48), Frost (p. 44)
-- No Poetry Analysis Worksheets
-- News Story Rough Draft
-- No Grammar Worksheets
Links for this week
Class Notes
Have a great weekend! Build one last snowman!!
Mrs. Prichard
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