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
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