Writing 2 Class Notes -- October 18

Greetings!

This morning we engaged in a lot of discussion.  We did our best to keep the noise down because the wall separating our room from Mrs. Nelson's math class wasn't properly put together.

For our Quick Write, the students wrote a first person account of themselves as either a 1-year old or a 100-year old.  One student entertained us with a great "baby" voice.  Our Vocabulary Words study was an exercise in thinking of derivatives of the following Latin words:  amo (to love), delecto (to delight or please), dignitas (importance, honor, prestige), familaris (friend, relative), fugio (to run away).  We encountered an interesting word, "subterfuge," which we decoded using Latin roots.  Sub = under; ter = ground; fuge = runaway.  (subter also means secret)  Subterfuge means "deception by artifice or strategem in order to conceal, escape, or evade."
I handed back most of the final copies of their Process Essays.  I'm afraid that a couple were still on my computer and a couple were left at home.  (Our family had to make a quick, unexpected trip to Iowa for a family funeral.  I was a little unorganized with my paperwork.)  This week's writing assignment was pre-writing for their Extended Definition or Classification Essays.  We briefly discussed the parameters of each kind of essay.  The students didn't seem to have any questions about this assignment.  Please have them contact me if they are running into trouble.

We have finished reading the second half of the third adventure in Gulliver's Travels.  Gulliver finds himself in a Grand Academy full of "projectors" coming up with all kinds of innovative inventions.  I read aloud through most of chapter 5.  We discussed the proposal to get sunshine from cucumbers, the plan to build houses from the roof downwards, and the blind men making paints.  We did not read the section on reverse manufacturing food. 

Last year in Writing 1 we played a game of "baseball" using questions from the book A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.  We're going to do a similar activity.  The students will come up with the questions that we'll ask.

Next Week's Assignments:
--  Rough Draft of Extended Definition or Classification Essays.
--  Read Part IV, Chapters 1 - 4
--  Write 3 questions for each part/adventure

It seems like the warm fall weather may be leaving.  Make sure you "bundle up."
Mrs. Prichard