Thursday, October 3, 2013

Writing 2 Class Notes -- Week 6 (October 3)

Greetings!

Can you believe that it is October already.  I had a beautiful drive to school this morning, seeing the dried stalks of corn and some pumpkin patches.  I don't know about you, but I love Fall.

After praying for our class, we had our Quick Write.  Our family has a favorite game, Man Bites Dog, in which the players are dealt cards with nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and a few prepositions.  The object of the game is to come up with a newspaper headline and to get the highest score by adding up the numbers on the cards.  For the Quick Write, I had the students not only come up with the headline, but write a story to go with it.  By virtue of the random collection of cards, we had some funny headlines.

Our Words of the Day, chosen by 3 class members:
oublieete -- French -- A dungeon with a trapdoor in the ceiling as its only means of entrance or exit.
heimweh -- German "home' & "woe" -- more specifically, homesickness
Noli me tangere -- Latin -- "touch me not"  (also attributed to the words Jesus spoke to Mary Magdeline after He'd risen.)

I handed back to the students some graded assignments, including their Rough Drafts of their Process Essay.  As with all rough drafts, students should expect to see a number marks on their papers since rough drafts are learning experiences.  I had them engage in a cooperative learning experience.  In other words, they did a group exercise.  Looking at their papers and a list errors common to rough drafts, they were to work as a group to determine which ones they thought would be important for the class to discuss.  With 2 suggestions from each group, we had a good discussion.

The Final Drafts of their Process Essays are due next week.  Along with the finished paper, I would like them to include a list of 5 changes/corrections/improvements that they have made and their reasons for the changes.

We took some time at the end of the class to discuss My Antonia.  As part of their homework for next week, they are to write a brief answer (1 - 2 paragraphs) to the following questions:  Where is Jim in the social structures of Black Hawk?  We discussed what is meant by "social structures" and what aspects of a person's life contribute to their social standing in a community.

Next week, we will have a Grammar Quiz .... more on that later.

Assignments for Next Week:
-- Read p. 119 - 140 in My Antonia.
-- Answer in 1 - 2 paragraphs the question mentioned above
-- Write the Final Draft of the Process Essay
-- List 5 changes made along with reasons for making them.

This week's blog post
Class Notes
Common Errors in Rough Drafts

Have a great weekend,
Mrs. Prichard

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