Writing 2 Class Notes -- November 8

Greetings!

What a great group of students!  I especially enjoy the measure of cohesiveness and collegiality to which they've come.  We have good, insightful discussions.  Occasionally they interrupt because they have something important they can't wait to contribute to the class or chat too much between themselves.  If you ever walk by my room and hear single, double, or triple claps, it's because I'm doing something I learned from a director of a grade school.  When the students were gathered for all-school gatherings, she would quietly stand at the front and say, "If you can hear my voice clap once ... if you can hear my voice clap twice ... clap three times."  Without raising her voice, she got their attention and then quieted 180 kids.

For some reason, the some students found the Quick Write a bit difficult.  Entitled "Mama's Soup Surprise," they were required to write 12 sentences about food -- 4 facts, 4 opinions, 4 lies.  Here's a link to the Nancy Cassidy song:  Mama's Soup Surprise

No Vocabulary Words this week.  I have a fun activity for next week, though!

We were briefly interrupted by some wild turkeys outside our door.  I allowed a couple students to go after them.

The students handed in their Final Copies of their Extended Definition/ Classification Essays. I l look forward to reading them.  They're doing a great job editing and revising their papers.  Our next paper assignment is a Comparison/Contrast Essay.  We took a long time to go over the difference between a report and an essay.  In an essay like this, students are not to only list similarities and differences but are do it in a manner as to promote a position or stand.  We worked through a couple of examples and especially went over how to develop a thesis statement.  Here's the "equation" that I gave them:

    main topic/subject
+  position/stand/opinion
    thesis statement

We spent the last part of our class discussing Gulliver's Travels.  We discussed Gulliver's discussion of wars, the English legal system, health care, and lawyers.  In the book, he's trying to explain such things to the virtuous race of horses who never lie, steal or express any unkindness.  We tried an experiment:  I pretended to be "Aunt Bea" from the Andy Griffith series and asked them to try to explain the internet to me.  They found putting common, everyday terms in language that someone from the 1950's would understand.  We will finish the book next week.

Assignments for Next Week:
-- Read Part IV, Chapters 9 - 12 of Gulliver's Travels
-- Bring in any final Baseball questions
-- Pre-Writing for Comparison/ Contrast Essay.  Bring something you can hand in!

Have a great week!
Mrs. Prichard