We began class this week, as usual, with a Quick Write. This week's prompt was inspired by the fact that it was National Cheese Pizza. I asked the students to write something pizza related. As they shared their responses, they expressed their opinions about square pieces over triangular pieces, thin crusts vs. thick crusts, and the important question regarding the appropriateness of pineapple on pizza.
Our Words of the Day were contributed by students and selected from this week's reading of My Antonia:
ensconced -- verb, fr.Old French enscunser, "to hide or obscure" -- sheltered, concealed, settled
ecstasy -- noun, fr. Middle English, extasie, "elation" -- overwhelming emotion; rapturous delight
gambolled -- verb, fr. French, gambade, "the leap of a horse" -- to skip around; frolic; play
Most of the time while the students are writing their Quick Writes I am passing out completed homework, and we follow the Word of the Day work with any questions pertaining to the homework. This week we followed our beginning of class work with the Writing portion of the class. Whenever I hand back rough drafts of essays, I take a good portion of the class to go over common errors in their writing. In my classes I have students label a page "Watch Out For," and under this title they are to list the items that I noted on their corrected rough drafts. We will use this list to develop writing goals as the year progresses. This week we talked about contractions, conjunctions, sentence fragments, subject-verb agreement, and the word "things." For next week, students are to make corrections on their rough drafts so that they can hand in finished final drafts.
Students have read the first two chapters of Animal Farm, so we started our discussion with the first chapter in which we meet the main characters and discover the main conflict/issue of the story. Old Major, the distinguished older leader of the animals gave a rousing speech and taught the animals a song. We did a little singing ourselves. Apparently, the song is a cross between La Cucaracha and Clementine, and obviously, the animals would sound like animals. After having half of the class work on the melody for La Cucaracha and the other half Clementine, we assigned animal roles, and the class "sang" the melody for the "Beasts of England." (Note: a teacher popped her head in during lunch and asked what we had been doing because it sounded like a barnyard.)
This week students signed up for their parts of speech. They are to learn about their part of speech and then teach the class. In addition to an explanation, they are to come up with an in-class activity and homework that will help their classmates practice. Below is the list of student groups and their dates for presenting:
Interjections -- Bennett, Josh, Jesse (9/19)
Verbs -- Elliot, Izzy, Ellie (9/26)
Adjectives -- Nalani, Gabbie P, Josie (10/3)
Nouns -- Ethan, Carson, Mike, James (10/10)
Conjunctions -- Marie, Gabi, Alison (10/24)
Adverbs -- Maddy, Ashley, Faith (10/31)
Pronouns -- Tyler, Ingrid, Philip (11/7)
Prepositions -- Leighton, Levi, Logan (11/14)
Assignments for Next Week
-- Read Ch. 3 & 4
-- 3 Reader Responses (either study guide questions or ala carte)
-- 3 Vocabulary Words
-- Start researching your part of speech
-- Final Draft of Descriptive Essay
Links for This Week
Class Notes
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