Thursday, February 10, 2022

Writing 1 Class Notes -- Week 5 (February 10)

Greetings!


We had a delightful class today.  Our class time was quite full.

We started with a Quick Write, and these were our prompts:  
  • Ask me (Mrs. Prichard) 3 questions, and I will answer at least one of them.
  • Tell me something you've not told anyone.
  • Write about keeping a secret or planning a surprise.
  • Tell about something mysterious that has happened to you
  • Whatever . . . 
Our Words of the Day came from Ike, Megan, and Grace.  
kalopsia -- fr. Greek; the state in which everyone and everything seems beautiful
supercalifragilisticexpialidocious -- extraordinarily good
peladophobia -- fear of bald people

We are now in Week 5, so students need to check in on their homework. I give students three weeks to get assigned work in (actually, they have 4 weeks from the assigned date until I will no longer take it.)  After that extended time, assignments will be given zeros.  According to my late homework policy, any assignments due on Week 2 is now overdue.  You will be getting a Grades Report sometime over the weekend.  

Students handed in the final drafts of their Narrative Essays.  I'm really looking forward to reading these because their rough drafts were so good!  As a reminder, they should hand in their rough drafts with my marks/corrections when they hand in the final drafts.  The final drafts should be handed in to the Google Classroom assignment. 

When we finish one paper, we start another.  For the next round of essays,  students can choose to write an Examples Essay or an Analogy Essay.  For both of these types of essays, the students should be thinking explaining one thing with one or more other things.  Students have the next two weeks to do their brainstorming and research.  The pre-writes and rough drafts should be handed in on March 3.

Our discussion about our book, The Thirty-Nine Steps included some creative brainstorming.  Using a game called Storymaster, which had cards with random characters and situations, the students were to create an ending for our spy novel.  I love it when a book elicits creative thinking from readers.  We will finish the book by next week.

At the end of class, I talked through our Grammar worksheet, practicing identifying and classifying prepositional phrases.  Prepositional phrases function either as adjective phrases or adverb phrases, and it can be tricky to tell what kind of phrase it is.

Next week my son Ryan Prichard will be subbing for me.  I will Zoom in for part of the class and he will take charge of the rest.  

Assignments for March 4

Links for This Week
Writing 1 Class Notes -- Week 5 (February 10)

Have a good weekend!
Blessings,
Mrs. Prichard

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Thursday, February 3, 2022

Writing 1 Class Notes -- Week 4 (February 3)

Greetings!

We had an fun class today -- as usual, we covered a lot of material.  We started with our Quick Write.  Here are the prompts for the day:

  • February 2 –  World Read Aloud Day.  Do you have a favorite story that was read aloud to you when you were young?  Write about it.

  • February 4, 2004 –  the day that Facebook was launched.  Do you use Facebook?  What are your thoughts about social media?

  • February 4, 1789 – the day that George Washington was elected our first president by a unanimous vote of the first electoral college.  Do you have any opinions about the electoral college?  Do you have opinions about what makes for a good elected leader?


Our Words of the Day came from Megan, Grace, and Ike:
hoopla-- fr. American English, earlier houp-la, exclamation accompanying quick movement (1870), perhaps borrowed from French houp-là "upsy-daisy," also a cry to dogs, horses, etc. 
poppycock--  fr. American English -- trivial talk; nonsense
xertz-- fr. unknown origin; to gulp something down quickly and/or in a greedy fashion 
Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis -- a term for a lung disease caused by inhaling silica dust, 

I handed back the rough drafts of the Narrative Essays.  These were very enjoyable essays to read.  Many students wrote more than they usually did, and they told interesting stories in the contexts of their essays.  As per my practice, I go over common mistakes and use these for grammar instruction.  This week I had them go to the white board and write their top three mistakes.  The most common errors I found in their write had to do with punctuating dialogue, paragraph formation, comma splice sentences, and compound sentences with commas.  Students are to revise their rough drafts into final drafts for next week.  I forgot to mention in class, but there's a form on Google Classroom for them to list their first 5 mistakes.  NOTE:  Remember to bring your corrected rough draft to class next week to hand in with the final draft.

We had a short discussion about Richard Hannay and The Thirty-Nine Steps.  We talked about what we liked and didn't like about the book.  The students had some profound statements about the plot and the writing style.  We watched a clip from the 2008 adaption of the book and then discussed if the Hannay in the movie was like the one we imagined.  In the chapters that they will read for next week, the spy aspect of the story will evolve, so that by the end, there is a solution to the whole mysterious situation.  For next week, they will read Chapters 7 & 8 and take a quiz.  If they want, they can do the study guide questions for extra credit.

Our Grammar instruction included a sentence review and prepositional phrases review.  We worked on it for a bit in class, and students should correct their work before handing it in.  

Assignments for next week
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