We had a good class yesterday. Our Quick Write for the morning came from a book entitled Story Starters. From this book, you can randomly put together writing prompts as third at a time. Our prompt for today was "This is just awful!," said the kangaroo as he/she jumped out of the way." They put a lot of thought into their writing, and we had some creative responses.
Following our Quick Write, we worked on some Sentence Building. I had the students start with a simple Subject-Verb sentence and then had them add a prepositional phrase, an adjective, and an adverb. After that, they were to make it a compound sentence with the same elements. Then, they were to incorporate a subordinate clause into the sentence. This exercise gave us a great opportunity to talk about the different parts of speech and to put that knowledge to work. For our Grammar Discussion, we also briefly reviewed our discussion from last week about phrases: prepositional phrases, participial phrases, and gerund phrases. Little by little we're becoming proficient in these finer points of grammar.
The students had handed in their rough drafts of their Extended Definition/ Classification Essays. I usually compile a list of common errors which I found while reading through these first drafts. The best way to learn about writing is to simply do it. From there we can discuss strategies and techniques. I'm seeing a lot of improvement in their writing. The final drafts are due next week. Along with correcting and editing their papers, they are to write "5 Things I Learned from the Corrections on My Rough Draft." For example, if I circled a contraction and corrected it, they could put "no contractions in essays" as one of the things. Or if I inserted a comma, they could mention "use commas with introductory phrases." It's good to correct mistakes: it's even better to know what was wrong and why it needs changing.
Our poet for this week was Emily Dickinson. At first look, her poems may seem dark and somewhat depressing. However, a closer look reveals bits of hope. I've put together a blog post about Dickinson with information from Sparks Notes; the second paragraph is especially enlightening. We read aloud "Because I could not stop for Death," and I've also included a post with the text of this poem.
Assignments for Next Week:
-- Bring to class a Christmas or Winter poem. This can be an original.
-- Final Drafts of Extended Definition or Classification Essays
-- Write 5 Things I Learned from the Corrections on My Rough Draft"
-- Optional -- bring treats --- We'll be celebrating our last class of the semester.
Have a great week!
Mrs. Prichard
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