Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Writing 2 Class Notes -- September 20

Greetings!

The class handed in their first final copies of an assigned essay. I'm looking forward to reading them. You can tell students all day long how long to be good writers, but they don't really learn until they do their own writing.


Our Quick Write this morning was to imagine what 5 items they would take if they were to be banished to an igloo for the rest of their lives. They were quite creative and awfully unrealistic, but that's what these exercises are for.
 
We followed this writing with our Mystery Words. This week's words were animal-related words: crabwise, testudinate, gadfly, kangaroo court, and waspish. We also encountered the word "cancrine," which means crab-lik, or palindromic. For extra credit, the students can bring to class some information about J. S. Bach's Crab Canon which is the same forwards, backwords, and upside down.
 
Another optional extra credit activity involves writing a paragraph explaining the meaning of the following quote by Kahil Gibran:
"Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary."
 
Our Grammar lesson covered a quick review of the basic sentence structures: S-V (intransitive), S-LV-Subj. Complement, S-V-DO,, S-V-IO-DO, S-V-DO-DO Complement.
 
The second writing assignment for this term is a Process Essay. In a handout passed out at class, I explained the scope of the paper and the guidelines. You can find this handout on Dropbox and as a blog entry. The rough draft is due next week.
 
I divided the class into groups to discuss some of the questions from the study guide for Gulliver's Travels.. Small group work is helpful in that it allows students to interact together with the material.
 
Assignments for Next Week:
-- Read Part II, Chapters 1 - 4
-- Answer one question from the Sudy Guide.
-- Process Essay rough draft
-- Extra Credit options:
-- Write a paragraph telling the meaning of the Kahill Gibran quote.
-- Bring information about J. S. Bach's Crab Canon
Have a great week!
Tammy Prichard

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