Writing 1 Class Notes -- Week 11 (March 31)

  Greetings!

We had a lovely class this week.  One aspect that I especially enjoy with this Writing 1 class is that they all get along well and participate in a harmonious way.  We have good, productive conversations.

For our Quick Writes, here were their options:

• Wednesday (3/30) was National I am in Control Day.  What areas of your life do you feel like you are in control of?  What would you like to be more in control of?  What would you like to NOT be in control of?

• Thursday (3/31) is National Taters Day.  What is your favorite way to eat potatoes?  Or you could list all of the ways that you can think of to fix potatoes.

• Friday (4/1) is April Fool’s Day.  What is the best prank that you have ever done or heard of?  Or what prank would you like to pull?

• Sunday (4/3) is World Party Day.  If you didn’t have to worry about the expense, what kind of party would you like to throw?  Describe it in detail.

We had some unusual Words of the Day:

jentacular -- fr. Latin ientaculum "breakfast" -- of or pertaining to breakfast

everywhen -- always and at all times

They have handed in the rough drafts of their News Stories.  I'm looking forward to reading them; a number of students said that that they had added more creative and imaginative elements to their writing, and some chose to write about some "fantastical" events.  As table groups, I asked students to talk with one another about their topics and why they chose them.  

We are now reading poetry for our Literature portion of the class. Some students like poetry, but many aren't that crazy about it.  For our first poetry discussion, I did Jigsaw groups again.  The students were first in groups that discussed one of the assignment poems.  Then I remixed the groups so that a group had a representative for each of the poems.  From both groups I heard some thoughtful comments about both the surface and deeper meanings of the poetry.  Well done, class!

The class has their new poetry books, and they should read the poems of the poets listed below.  For their homework, they need to respond to 2 poems, and the have some options:  

1.  Fill out a Poetry Worksheet for one or both

2.  Write a paragraph about the poem(s) that analyzes the poem; discuss what you think it means and why you like or don't like it.

3.  Instead of writing a paragraph, record a video commentary about the poem.  Youtube LiveStream or some other app on a device is OK as long as it can be seen by me.

4.  Do a piece of art that connects with the content and meaning of the poem.  

5.  Make a video of your recitation of the poem.

6.  Do some kind of movement (creative dance or acting out) that relates to the poem.

For our Grammar section of the class, we had a special lesson on the semicolon.  Most people (students and adults alike) are confused about the bit of punctuation; they use it as a comma or as a colon.  I use the Reese's peanut butter cups as an object lesson.  Ask your students about how the semicolon is like this candy.

we worked on 2 worksheets for the students to practice putting commas in compound sentences.

Have a beautiful weekend!

Blessings,

Mrs. Prichard

Assignments for Next Week:

• News Story Pre-Write

• News Story Rough Draft

• Why this News Topic?

• Poetry:  Wordsworth (p. 12); Keats (p. 17), Browning (p. 19); Carroll (p. 29); Hopkins (p. 31), Henley (p. 33)

• Week 12 Poetry (pdfs on Google Classroom)

• 2 Poetry Responses

• Grammar – Wk11:  Compound FANBOYS

• Grammar – Wk11:  Compound Sentences & Commas

• Note:  Students were not given the KEY in class (I had printer problems), so the KEY is attached to this assignment.  If they finished the work in class, I will correct it.  If not, they are to use the KEY on Google Classroom.

Links for this Week

Writing 1 Class Notes -- Week 11 (March 31)

Writing 1 Class Notes -- Week 10 (March 31)

Greetings!

Another great day!!

Here are our prompts for the Quick Writes:

Prompt #1
On March 24, 1603, Elizabeth I died and King James I was crowned the King of England, and on March 25, 1306, Robert the Bruce was crowned King of Scotland.  How much do you know about the history and rule of other countries?  Is this important knowledge for us to have?  Why?

Prompt #2
On March 26, 1874, American poet Robert Frost, much admired for his depictions of rural New England life and his realistic verse portraying ordinary people, was born in San Francisco.  What are your thoughts about poetry?  Do you like to read it and do you think it’s an important part of our culture?

Prompt #3
Next Week is National Cleaning Week.  How would you describe your cleaning style?  Do you do fall or spring cleaning at your house?  Write about anything cleaning-related.

  

Our Words of the Day from Grace, Megan, Chase, and Ike

anatadaephobia--  the fear that somehow, somewhere, a duck is watching you

cachinnate-- to laugh loudly

venustraphobia-- the fear of beautiful women

boanthropy -- a type of insanity in which people think they are cows

We had a brief check in on their News Stories; the rough drafts are due on March 31.  Some students have given this some thought, and others have waited until next week to work on it.  I reminded them that they could do a news article on a current event, a past event, or even a fictional event.  They could also do a review of some kind.

We had a discussion about our short story "The Ransom of Red Chief" this week.  We agreed that the story was both funny (a boy so bad and mischievous that his family didn't want him back from the kidnappers) and sad (for the same reason).

We are finished with our Short Stories and are now onto Poetry.  To kick off our poetry unit, we played the game Poetry for Neanderthals.  In this game, students give one-word, one-syllable  clues to get their teammates to guess a word.  If they use multi-syllabic words, they get bonked on the head with an inflated club.  (We hit the table instead of one another.)

Class -- please note this next information -- it was not discussed in class

After the students read all of the poems, they are to choose 2 poems to respond to.  They need to respond to 2 poems, and here are their options:

1.  Fill out a Poetry Worksheet for one or both

2.  Write a paragraph about the poem(s) that analyzes the poem; discuss what you think it means and why you like or don't like it.

3.  Instead of writing a paragraph, record a video commentary about the poem.  Youtube LiveStream or some other app on a device is OK as long as it can be seen by me.

4.  Do a piece of art that connects with the content and meaning of the poem.  

5.  Make a video of your recitation of the poem.

Finally, for our Grammar portion of the class, I gave some worksheets for continued practice in identifying sentence elements for the various sentence patterns that have been covered this semester.  

Assignments for Week 11 (April 15)

-- News Story Pre-Write

-- News Story Rough Draft

-- Answer the Question:  Why this Topic?

-- Read Week 11 Poetry 

-- Poetry Response (2 Poems)

-- Complements Worksheet (John Updike)

-- Sentence Patterns (Mr. Jackson)

-- Sentence Patterns Practice (Four bakers)

Links for this Week:  

Writing 1 Class Notes -- Week 10 (March 24)

Zoom Recording (3/24/2022)

Poetry for Neanderthals

Week 11 Poetry Readings

Tamera M. Prichard

Writing Instructor at CHAT

Writing 1, Writing 2, Writing 3

ACT Prep, British Literature

Writing 1 Class Notes -- Week 9 (March

Greetings!

We are definitely heading into spring.  I saw some students in shorts and lighter-weight jackets as opposed to the heavier winter apparel.  

Here were the prompts for today’s Quick Write:

• How do you define success?  What would success look like to you in your future?

• What qualities do you see in yourself that you also see in other family members?  How are you alike or not like someone you’re related to?

• Who is someone you admire? Why do you admire this person?  What qualities does this person have that you would like to have?

• What fictional character would you like to meet?  Why? What would you do or talk about?

For our Words of the Day came from our students:

salubrious -- fr. Latin salubris, "promoting health; healthful" -- favorable to health & well-being

androphobia -- fr. Greek andros, "man/men" and phobia "fear" -- a morbid fear of men

snollygoster -- origin attributed to H.W.J. Ham, a member of the 1893 Georgia Legislature -- a shrewd, unprincipled person, especially a politician

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 in 2 weeks on March 31.

After I introduced the next writing assignment, we took some time for a "Jigsaw" activity. In this type of small group work, students are grouped and each group has it's own discussion topic. After they've fully discussed that topic, they are regrouped so that the new groups have someone from each of the specific topics. The overall focus of these small groups was to come up with ideas for overcoming obstacles when writing.

We did not take time to discuss O. Henry's stories, "Retrieved Reformation" and "The Pimienta Pancake." Next week we will read "The Ransom of Red Chief" and discuss all three stories. Instead of a short story worksheet, I've assigned a quiz. I had planned to do this in class, but have posted it in Google Classroom as a form. (Note: this is a closed book quiz.) In the links section below are some videos and an audio version of the story.

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. Their worksheets for this week are again on direct and indirect objects.

Have a great weekend!

Blessings,

Mrs. Prichard

Assignments for Next Week

• News Story Pre-Write (due 3/31) (Note: this assignment has the chart that was handed out in class.)

• Short Story:  Read The Ransom of Red Chief

• The Ransom of Red Chief Quiz

• Grammar – Wk9:  Nouns as Direct Objects

• Grammar – Wk9:  Compound Direct Objects

• Grammar – Wk9:  Finding Indirect Object

Links for This Week

Writing 1 Class Notes -- Week 9 (March 17)

About the News Story

The Ransom of Red Chief (audiobook & pdf)

Writing 1 Class Notes -- Week 8 (March 10)

Greetings!

We are officially over half way through the Spring semester.  I don't know about you, but once we hit daylight savings time and the days get longer, the days also seem to fly by more quickly!

For the Quick Write this week students had 3 options: 

• March 10 is National Pack a lunch Day. Write about your favorite lunches.
• Where is the one place you never want to go to again?
• List 20 of your favorite foods
• And, as always, the "Whatever" option

We had two Words of the Day

apathetic-- fr. Greek, a, "without" and pathos, emotion, feeling -- strabizo, "to squint" -- lack of interest, enthusiasm, concern 

floccinaucinihilipilification -- the action or habit of estimating something as worthless (the link for this 29 letter word is for the pronunciation)

I handed back the rough drafts of the Examples or Analogy Essays that the students had written.  As part of our writing/grammar instruction, I covered common errors in the papers.  For this round of essays, these were the topics: the word "things," comma placement, comma splice sentences, and page format.  The final drafts are due next week.  In addition to the final draft, students are to fill out a form for their first 5 and last 5 mistakes on their rough drafts.

We have read two more Short Stories:  "Makes the Whole World Kin" and "The Furnished Room."  The first story is about a burglar who makes an uncommon connection with the man he's robbing, and that is the one that we talked about.  O. Henry's stories are full of unexpected twists and endings.  We had an in-class quiz about the first story.  

For the Grammar portion of our class, we are continuing to review sentence patterns.  This week, we are "building" sentences that follow the N-V-N (S-V-DO) and N-V-N-N (S-V-IO-DO) patterns, so we discussed transitive verbs, direct objects, and indirect objects.  We had time in class to work on our worksheets.

Have a great weekend!

Blessings,

Mrs. Prichard

Assignments for Next Week:

• Examples/Analogy  Final Draft

• First Five/Last Five Mistakes

• Short Stories:  Read Retrieved Reformation & The Pimienta Pancake worksheets

• Grammar – Wk8:  Sentence Patterns N-V-N

• Grammar – Wk8: Sentence Patterns N-V-N-N

Links for This Week

Writing 1 Class Notes -- Week 8 (March 10)

Short Stories: Audio and Pdf versions of Retrieved Reformation & The Pimienta Pancakes

Tamera M. Prichard

Writing Instructor at CHAT

Writing 1, Writing 2, Writing 3

ACT Prep, British Literature

Writing 1 Class Notes -- Week 7 (March 3)

Greetings!

It was so good to see the students; including our week off and the week my son subbed for me, it's been 3 weeks since I've seen their smiling faces. 

Below are our Quick Write prompts for the day.  

• Tuesday, March 1, is National Minnesota Day!!  What do you like the most about Minnesota?  What might you say to convince someone to move to or at least visit Minnesota?  If you were to have visitors from a far away place come to Minnesota, what sights would you like them to see?
• Wednesday, March 2, is World Teen Mental Health Day.  What does it mean to be mentally healthy?  What do you do to be mentally healthy?  How do you help others who might be struggling with their own mental health?
• Friday, March 4, is National Grammar Day  (It’s “imperative” that we “march forth” on this day!)  Write either a rant or a praise about what you think of this system for understanding language and communicating with one another.

We usually do a quick Homework Check between our beginning of class activities and instruction.  Students can hand in their work for this week when they come to class next week.  With the exception of their rough drafts.  Those should be finished and put on the Google Classroom assignment for the Examples/Analogy Rough Draft. 

Speaking of the Examples/Analogy Rough Draft, we took some time for each student to share about their topics.  This in one of the harder essays that the students will write this year.  Students feel challenged to come up with topics that fit the Examples or Analogy framework.

We talked about two of our O. Henry Short Stories this morning.  O. Henry is a lovely writer -- he has a crisp, clear writing story, throws in some unusual words to spice things up, and often includes surprise twists at the end.  It seemed, however, that a number of the students had not read the stories.  When that happens, I often find a good "pop quiz" is in order.  

Our Grammar lesson was a review of linking verbs and predicate complements.  Students have two worksheets on Google Classroom to practice identifying those sentence elements.  

Have a great weekend.  

Blessing,

Mrs. Prichard

Assignments for Next Week

• Short Stories:  Read Makes the Whole World Kin & The Furnished Room

• 2 Short Story Worksheets

• Grammar – Wk7:  Predicate Adjectives

• Grammar – Wk7:  Predicate Complements

Links for This Week

Writing 1 Class Notes -- Week 7 (March 3)

Quick Write (3/12)

"Makes the Whole World Kin" & "The Furnished Room" audio

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

-- Examples/Analogy  Pre-Write

-- Examples/Analogy Rough Draft
-- Read Ch. 9 & 10 of The 39 Steps
-- Week 6 – 3 Study Guide Questions 
-- Classifying Prep Phrases

-- Prepositional Phrases -- Adj or Adv

Links for This Week

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

About Examples/Analogy Essays

Have a good weekend!

Blessings,

Mrs. Prichard

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

• Narrative Essay Final Draft

• First Five Mistakes (on Google Classroom)

• Read Ch. 7 & 8 of The 39 Steps
  

• Quiz:  Ch. 5 – 8 (GC)

• Ch. 7 & 8 Study Guide Questions (Extra Credit)

• Grammar – Wk4:  Simple Sentence Review

• Grammar -- Wk4: Finding Prepositional Phrases

Links for This Week

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

The 39 Steps (Scene 1)

The Thirty-Nine Steps (Librivox)

The Thirty-Nine Steps (YouTube)

Have a great weekend!

Blessings,

Mrs. Prichard