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)