Writing 1 -- Grades are Ready!

 Dear Parents & Students,

I've just finished calculating the grades for the first semester.  Please remember that I am a “tutor,” and these are suggested grades for you as homeschooling families to consider.

Before I send the grades, let me share my thoughts about them.  As I homeschooled, I didn't give my children grades because I felt that grades were far too subjective.  Learning to write well is a process, and I am more concerned that my students stay engaged in the process than I am in the final products.

Letter grades are a funny thing.  For some students, it becomes the only motivation for doing well.  For some, it becomes a measure of their worth as a person or as an academic learner.  I personally don't like these "side effects" of the grading system.  On the other hand, grades can be a valid reward for working hard, being diligent, and understanding the materials.  Incentives and consequences are a part of life; God uses them, too.

When teaching students to be good writers, I give a lot of consideration for growth and improvement. Each student has a starting place; over time I look for him or her to learn the mechanics of grammar, good writing techniques, and analytical thinking skills; they then move on from that original starting place.

For this class, I gave points for attendance, participation, short assignments and longer papers.   I tend to be an "easy grader" and like to see my students encouraged to do their best.  Becoming a good writer is hard work, and too often students are discouraged before they’ve given themselves a chance to succeed.

To find your student’s grade for the semester, go to your GradeSheets and then to the last tab labelled “Reports.”  You will see percentages and grades for each category; the categories are weighted in the following way: 15% for Quick Writes & Misc; 30% for Writing; 28% for Literature; and 27% for Grammar.  After the grades for categories is a weighted percentage and a cumulative percentage (compiled apart from the weighted percentages) and a Suggested Final Grade.

Please contact me if you have any questions.

Blessings,

Tammy Prichard

Writing 1 Class Notes -- Week 15 (December 17)

Greetings!

We celebrated our final class with a "Christmas party" that included an "Ugly Christmas Sweater Design" contest and a Jeopardy game.  They were pretty intent on their designing and coloring.  When they were finished, they voted on the best/worst sweater design.  

After our drawing and coloring, we had a Final Exam for A Christmas Carol in the form for a game.  In order to form teams, students were given names of songs that they had to hum in order for them to find their teammates.  Watching them walk around the classroom while humming was delightful! There were 20 questions which they answered or tried to answer; when they got the wrong answer, they lost points.  It was a fairly competitive game/test.  (By the way, research also indicates that using game-based learning strategies increases recall, retention, and cognitive growth.  So while we were having fun, we were still intellectually engaged in our topics.) 

We closed out our time together playing a Mad Libs game using the Night Before Christmas.  This was a good game to follow our Parts of Speech unit.

Students handed in their final drafts of their History Essays.  I will go over the essays and any other homework that was handed; my goal is to have final grades out soon.  I mentioned to the class that I will take any homework today (until 11:59 p.m.) for full points value; I will also take work until Saturday, but for 1/2 point values.  As I told students, I've carefully gone through all of the Google Classroom assignments, so students need to contact me if they finish any assignments in Google Classroom.

Links for this week:

Class Notes (with pictures)

Ugly Christmas Sweater

Learning and Reflection article

A Christmas Carol Final Exam slides

Night Before Christmas Mad Lib

Game-Based Learning

I've enjoyed this group of students.  Each one is uniquely gifted for the plans that God has for him/her.  Have a blessed Christmas!!

Blessings, 

Mrs. Prichard

Writing 1 Class Notes -- Week 14 (December 10)

 Greetings!

Every Thursday this semester it's been delightful to see the smiling faces of this class.  I love this place in the school year when we've gotten to know one another and have a productive learning community.

We started class with a Quick Write, using these prompts that came from their list of suggestions:

Option 1: What is your favorite restaurant? Why? What do you like to order there? Option 2: What is your least favorite kind of music? Why don’t you like it? Option 3: What is the most generous thing you’ve done? Would you do it again? Why?  

Our Words of the Day were winter-related words:

solstice -- from Latin solstitium, from sol, "sun" and sistere, "stopped, stationary" --  the time or date at which the sun reaches its maximum or minimum declination, marked by the longest (June 21) and shortest (Dec. 22) days.

hibernate -- from Latin hibernare, from hiberna ‘winter quarters’, from hibernus ‘wintry’ -- when a plant or animal spends the winter in a dormant state.

apricity -- from Latin apricus, "having lots of sunshine" or "warmed by the sun" -- the warmth of the sun (We talked about how cats are especially good at finding that one sunny spot in the house.)

subnivean -- from Latin sub, "under" and nives, "snow" -- the area between the surface of the ground and the bottom of the snowpack.

The Rough Drafts of their History Essays were handed back, and I commented on how much I enjoy teaching writing because I get to learn about so many topics from their essays.  I covered some common writing issues/errors, including writing dates and numbers and correcting comma splice sentences.  The Final Drafts are due next week.

We've finished A Christmas Carol and had a very productive and insightful conversation comparing Animal Farm and A Christmas Carol.  The focus of the conversation was how satisfying or unsatisfying the endings of the books were; this led us to talk about the author's intent.  This is a smart bunch!  We ended our class with mini-book project activities.  The class divided into 4 groups for the following activities:  comic strip panel creation, found poetry writing, scene creating, and dialogue writing.  We'll continue that work in class next week as part of our Christmas "party" fun.

Speaking of next week, I like to spend that last week before Christmas doing fun stuff.  We can't have food in the classroom, but we can set up a table in the hallway for treats and eat out there.  Students are invited to bring goodies.  

Since we're almost at the end of the semester, students should finish up any work they have not done.  In the assignments list, I've included a couple past assignments in case students have forgotten to do them.  All assignments are on Google Classroom in case students no longer have the paper version.

Have a great weekend!

Mrs. Prichard

Assignments for Next Week:

History Final Draft

Top 10 Movies Question  (Extra Credit)

Parts of Speech Post Test

Presentation Self-Evaluation

This Week's Links

Writing 1 Class Notes -- Week 14 (December 10) 

Writing 1 Class Notes -- Week 13 (December 3)

 Greetings!

It's hard to believe that we're in December already and that there are only 2 weeks left.  I feel like I'm just getting to know the students, so I'm already looking forward to working with them again next semester!

For our Quick Write, I chose from the long list of ideas that the students put together.  Here are the prompts for this week:

• Option 1: What do you play as a sport? Why do you play it and how does it impact your life?
• Option 2: What instrument do you play? Why do you play it and how does it impact your life?
• Option 3: If you could go back and re-do something, what would it be?

After the Quick Writes we enjoyed some more obscure, Christmas-related words for our Words of the Day:

natal -- fr. Latin natus, "pertaining to one's birth" -- often this word is used to describe the star that appeared over Bethlehem, i.e. Jesus' natal star  [Note:  nativity also comes from the same root.]

epiphany -- fr. Greek epiphainein, "to reveal" -- a festival, manifestation, or commemoration; traditionally, Epiphany is on January 6 and is a celebration of the the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles as represented by the Magi (Matthew 2:1–12).

poinsettia -- fr. John Poinsett, an ambassador to Mexico who brought this plant to the attention of botanists -- a plant of large green leaves and large red blossoms that is used to decorate at Christmas.

wassail -- fr. Old Norse, ves heill, "be well/healthy" -- a greeting of good cheer; also hot mulled cider, drunk traditionally as an integral part of wassailing, a Medieval Christmastide English  ritual intended to ensure a good cider apple harvest the following year.

swaddling -- fr. Middle English, swathlen, to bind with clothes -- longs strips of cloth used to wrap or bind.  Jesus was "laid in swaddling clothes."

Note:  For the Spring semester, I've encouraged students to bring in unusual or interesting words that they find.

Following our beginning of class activity, we had a thoughtful discussion about the role of grammar instruction.  I had read a study about teaching grammar in 3 different ways:  through direct instruction, in the context of student writing, and in the context of reading quality material.  In this study, students in the writing-only and reading-only groups scored higher on a post-test.  For that reason, I like to incorporate as much of my grammar instruction with the students' own papers and with the literature we read.  Since we have been focusing on the parts of speech, we combined that knowledge with our current reading, A Christmas Carol.  In small groups, students took the first 3 sentences of Stave Four and identified what part of speech each word in the sentence was.  Next week when I hand back their rough drafts, we'll have another chance to have a grammar discussion.

Assignments for Next Week:

-- Quick Write (if absent on 12/3)

-- Read Stave 5 of A Christmas Carol

-- Stave 5 -- 3 Study Guide Questions

-- EXTRA CREDIT QUESTION -- Watch Christmas clips & respond (GC)

-- Parts of Speech Post Test  (students have this in their packet, but there's also a copy on Google Classroom)

-- Parts of Speech Presentation Self Evaluation 

-- Discussion Question (History Essay) GC

-- Discussion Question (Biography Essay) GC (if not done)

Links for This Week

Class Notes Blog Post 12/3

Have a wonderful weekend!

Blessings,

Mrs. Prichard

Tamera M. Prichard

Writing Instructor at CHAT

Writing 1, Writing 2, Writing 3

ACT Prep, British Literature