Another great week at CHAT. What can I say? These are great kids who work hard and engage well in the class. Our Quick Write for this week was titled "Harvest Time." As I drive to school in the morning from Northfield, I see those corn and bean fields being harvested one row at a time. I'm a small-town Iowa girl, so I've always loved farms and gardening. I asked the students if they could plant any kind of seed that would grow anything they wanted, what would it be? We had gold and money trees, and even a book tree.
Our Words for the Day were 2 that I chose:
lollygag -- to loiter aimlessly;
dillydally -- to waste time, especially by indecision
(Note: These words were not given as subtle hints about their work ethics. They came up in another setting, and I thought they were fun words.)
The students handed in the rough drafts of their Extended Definitions or Classification Essays. I had asked them to pay special attention to their introductions and conclusions. I'm looking forward to reading them.
We've finished our book, My Antonia by Willa Cather. I could tell that some students enjoyed the book, and others found it less interesting. The book is an episodic novel and doesn't have much of a driving plot with some great conflict that needs resolving. We talked at length about Jim's relationship with Antonia, his marriage, Antonia's marriage, and the ending of the book. For part of the class we broke into small groups for discussions. Next week: Presentations and Final Exam
I ended the last few minutes with some Grammar discussion. We looked at the differences between prepositions/prepositional phrases and subordinating conjunctions/ dependent clauses. Some words that we might quickly pick out as prepositions are really functioning in the sentence to introduce a dependent clause. For their homework, they are to write a sentence for each of the subordinating conjunctions below (14 sentences):
while, whether, until, once, although, because, even if, if, since, so that, unless, whenever, before, after.
Assignments for Next Week:
-- Presentations on My Antonia
-- 14 sentences with subordinating conjunctions and dependent clause
This Week's Blogs
-- Class Notes
Have a great weekend!
Mrs. Prichard
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