Writing 1 Class Notes -- Week 9 (March 25)

Greetings!

It was a beautiful day outside and a fun learning day inside.  

Our Quick Write this week included prompts from the students themselves:

• If you could start a business or company, what would it be?

• What kinds of hairstyles do you like or not like?

• If you could change your name, what would it be?

• What were the highs and lows of this past week?

For our Words of the Day were feline and canine inspired. One of my favorite books, The Play of Words by Richard Lederer, has fun lists of words, including words that start with "cat" and "dog." Our words included catastrophe, category, catacombs, doggerel, dogma, dog-tired, dog-fight, and dog-tags.

Students have handed in the Final Drafts of their Examples/Analogy Essays. We're now ready to start our final "from scratch" essay. (Following this essay, students will complete a re-write of an earlier written essay and a short reflection paper.) This next writing assignment is a News Story. We talked about the differences between an essay and a news story. For a news story, writers give out the broad, general information and progress to more details. Journalists are aware that readers could stop reading at any point (or not be interested enough to turn the page and finish the story.) Students can write a factual news story, a news story about some historical event, a fictional news story, a movie/theater review, or a review of something else that would be news-worthy. The rough draft and pre-write are due April 15.

Following the writing discussion, we briefly covered our two O. Henry stories: "Retrieved Reformation" and "The Pimienta Pancake." The students had some good insights and comments on the humor of these stories. Next week we will read "The Ransom of Red Chief." In the links section below are some videos and an audio version of the story. (And there's a chance we'll have a quiz next week. Just FYI.)

We continue to work on sentence patterns and sentence elements for our Grammar instruction. Last week and this week we practiced identifying direct objects and indirect objects. We worked on the worksheets during class in case there were any questions. If not finished, they are due next week.

Assignments for Next Week

• News Story Pre-Write

• Short Story:  Read The Ransom of Red Chief

• 2 Short Story Worksheets

• Grammar – Wk9:  Nouns as Direct Objects

• Grammar – Wk9:  Compound Direct Objects

• Grammar – Wk9:  Finding Indirect Object

Links for This Week

Class Notes

About the News Story

The Ransom of Red Chief (1998 version)

The Ransom of Red Chief (high school play)

The Ransom of Red Chief (audiobook)

Tamera M. Prichard

Writing Instructor at CHAT

Writing 1, Writing 2, Writing 3

ACT Prep, British Literature

Writing 1A Class Notes -- Week 9 (Oct. 24)

Greetings!

As with every week, we fill every minute of our class period.  We started with a Quick Write, which was inspired by the fact that Oct. 24 is the 158th anniversary of the 1st transcontinental telegraph from Justice Stephen Field in California to President Lincoln in Washington, D. C.  I asked the students to list as many ways of communicating that they could think of, and we filled the board with our responses.

Our Words of the Day were again unusual words.  Some could be decoded because they had familiar word stems, but for the others the students came up with creative definitions:

biblioklept -- fr. Greek, biblio, book; kleptes, thief -- someone who steals books

acnestis -- fr. Greek, knestis, spine -- the part of an animal's skin between the shoulder blades that it usually cannot reach.

octothorpe -- the symbol (#).  Note:  The origin of the word is disputed.  Some say it was a practical joke, and others say that it was named by Bell Laboratories to be used in telephone computing language and was named for the 8 legs of the symbol and for James Thorpe whom the originator admired.  

augend & addend -- fr. Latin augendum. to augment; addendus, to be added -- these numbers refer to numbers in an addition equation.  The first is the augend, and the second is the addend.

Students received their final drafts of the Personal Essays and handed in their pre-writes and rough drafts of their Biography Essays.  I will go over these and hand them back next week for them to revise.

We are starting a new book:  Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol.  This is a lovely little book and a good introduction to the writings of Charles Dickens.  While not everyone has read or is even familiar with the story, most had heard of Scrooge and his "bah humbug!"  In my opinion, this book has one of the best opening lines in all of literature:  "Marley was dead, to begin with."  The students already had their books, and this week I gave them a paper copy of the introduction, study guide questions, and vocabulary words.  Unlike our reading of the Animal Farm, I do not have ala carte reader responses, and I have chosen a list of words from the book from which they can choose their vocabulary words.  We also discussed Dickens's use of the words Stave instead of chapter.  Stave is a musical term, and since he uses "carol" in the title, it makes sense.  (See here for more information.)

We closed out the class with the Conjunctions presentation from Gabi, Alison, and Maria.  They had made a video with explanations that included a cartoon video.  They had a game for the students (that included candy!) and homework.  Next week -- Adverbs from Maddy, Ashley, and Faith.

Assignments for Next Week

-- Read Stave One of A Christmas Carol

-- Answer 3 Study Guide Questions

-- Define and give the word origins for 4 Vocabulary Words

-- Conjunctions Homework

Links for This Week

Class Notes

Week 9 Student Notes

A Christmas Carol Study Guide

A Christmas Carol Vocabulary Words

A Christmas Carol -- audio version on Librivox

A Christmas Carol -- audio book on YouTube

Staves in A Christmas Carol
Conjunctions Video

Have a great weekend!  Enjoy the outdoors before the snow flies!

Blessings,

Mrs. Prichard

Writing 1B Class Notes -- Week 4 (Sept. 12)

Greetings!

Again, another great class.  This group of students brings a lot of positive energy and attitudes to the class.  The prompts for our Quick Write today were taken from the National Days Calendar:  National Video Game Day, National Day of Encouragement, and National Milkshake Day.  As always, if none of those options triggered any productive thinking or writing, students could write about something else.  We had good discussions about all three topics.

We did not have any Words of the Day from the students because Stephan was providing words for the Literature Circle, so the rest of the class did not need to do any.  

During the Writing portion of today's class I collected the final draft of their Descriptive Essays.  For all of the essays that they will write they are required to hand in the rough drafts with the final drafts so that I can see the specific changes.  Those who didn't do that in class this week can send me a picture or scanned version of their rough drafts with my corrections.  A couple of students mentioned that they had thrown away their rough drafts, so I will correct their papers without them.  I also reminded them that they SHOULD NOT throw away any work from this class until the end of the semester; they should also save all of their essays until the end of the year.

In Writing 1, as soon as students finish one paper we start another.  Their new assignment is a Personal Essay.  We discussed a number of topics and thesis statements. I introduced my equation for a thesis statement and a template for thesis statements that include a plan for development.  

Equation:

     Topic/Subject

  +  Opinion/Stand

Thesis Statement

Template:

     (topic/stand)     is/are      (opinion/stand)     because      (reason #1)      ,      (reason #2)     , and       (reason #3)     .

We also  took time to discuss the elements of an introduction and conclusion.  The introduction should include a hook, a thesis statement, and a "road map."  The conclusion mirrors the introduction and should restate the thesis, summarize the main points, and leave parting thoughts with the reader.  

A significant portion of the class was given to the Literature Circle for Animal Farm.  Each student had prepared for his/her role in the group, and I intentionally stepped away so that they themselves had to propel the discussion.  They each made insightful comments and I was pleased with what I heard.  We will continue to do Literature Circles throughout the year, especially considering how well they did.  For next week, we will continue with the study guide/ala carte assignments and vocabulary in addition to taking a Take Home Quiz for chapters 1 - 4.  Note:  There has been some confusion about the assignments for the book.  When I give the assignment for "Reader Responses," that means their answers to the study guide questions or the ala carte responses.  Their vocabulary worksheets do not need to be handed in until the end of the book.

Our first Parts of Speech presentation, Interjections, will be next week.  When students present their part of speech, they should either bring copies of the homework (8 students and 1 teacher) OR email the homework to me by the Tuesday before class so that I can make copies.  If they are showing a video or slide presentation, they can use their own computers or email them to me.  I have links listed below of videos that students have done in the past for the parts of speech unit.  For further inspiration, students can also scroll for older blog entries (Sept. - Nov) for links to other student projects.  

Assignments for Next Week

-- Read Ch. 5 & 6 of Animal Farm

-- 3 Reader Responses

-- 3 Vocabulary Words

-- Personal Essay Rough Draft

-- Preparation for your parts of speech presentation

     -- Interjections (Aliena) next week

Links for This Week

Class Notes

Blog with Presentation Schedule

Adverbs Video

Nouns Video

Verbs Video

Personal Essay

Take Home Animal Farm Quiz (Ch. 1 - 4)

Have a great weekend!

Blessings,

Mrs. Prichard

Verbs Video

Adverbs Video -- Adverb, Inc.

Below is the video presented by the Adverbs group for our Parts of Speech presentations.  Good work!

Animal Farm -- 1954 Video

Animal Farm is a 1955 British animated film by Halas and Batchelor, based on the book Animal Farm by George Orwell. It was the first British animated feature to be released. The C.I.A. paid for the filming, part of the U.S. cultural offensive during the Cold War, and influenced how Orwell's ideas were to be presented. 

The "financial backers" impacted on the development of the film - the altered ending, and that the message should be that, "Stalin's regime is not only as bad as Jones's, but worse and more cynical", and Napoleon "not only as bad as JONES but vastly worse ". And the "investors" were greatly concerned that Snowball (the Trotsky figure) was presented too sympathetically in early script treatments and that Batchelor's script implied Snowball was "intelligent, dynamic, courageous". This implication could not be permitted. A memo declared that Snowball must be presented as a "fanatic intellectual whose plans if carried through would have led to disaster no less complete than under Napoleon." de Rochemont accepted this suggestion.

In Orwell's original book, the animals simply look on in dismay as they come to realise that the pigs have become nothing better than the human masters of old.

In a stark departure from Orwell's book, the film ends immediately after this iconic image with the animals revolting against the pigs.

Sarah Kay's "Hands"

Our Quick Write began with a discussion about figures of speech and cliches related to "hands."  We compiled quite a list: 

I gotta hand it to you; in the palm of my hand; being fingered for a crime; wrapped around my finger; 5-finger discount; back of my hand; a slap in the face; thumbs up/down; give me five; lend a hand; hand it over, etc. 

 After this little brainstorming, I asked the students to write something about hands.  They could use some of our cliches or they could write about the use of their hands.  When they were done, I had them watch a short video about hands by spoken word artist, Sarah Kay.

March 13 Quick Write Video

Below is the video that I used to start class. I gave the students instructions for their Quick Writes.