Greetings!
We had a good class this week. For our Quick Write, I asked the students to come up with a unique name for a school that they created. Again, they were very creative. We had a spy/espionage school and the "ZZZ School" where people go to sleep.
I handed back their rough drafts of their Argument essays. These have been challenging essays to write and to explain. Sometimes meeting only once a week is a disadvantage because we have a limited time to ask and answer questions. That being said, the students have written a good set of essays. I enjoyed reading their rough drafts and look forward to the final drafts.
Even though we've been writing thesis-driven essays all year, we discussed again the difference between a topic and a thesis. We also discussed that the body of the essay is used support and back up the thesis.
Our final writing assignment is a re-write. I want the students to select one of their previous papers to improve. They might choose one that they enjoyed writing, one that they feel needs the most improving, or one they would like to expand into a longer paper.
We have switched from short stories to poetry. We are using 101 Great American Poems in which the poems are listed in chronological order. We started this week with a poem by Anne Bradstreet, who is considered New England's first poet and Phylis Wheately, the first African-American female poet. We read a poem that they remembered from last year, "The Arrow and the Song," by Longfellow. We ended the class with a full reading of "Paul Revere's Ride." Students aren't always really excited about poetry, but reading it forces them to think.
Assignments for Next Week:
-- Finish final copies of Argument essays.
-- Whitman poems (p. 22 - 26); Dickinson poem (p. 29 - 32); Thayer poems (p. 34); Dunbar poems (p. 41 - 43)
-- Choose the paper you want to re-write.
Have a great week!
Mrs. Prichard
No comments:
Post a Comment