Saturday, November 16, 2013

Writing 2 Class Notes -- Week 11 (November 14)

Greetings,

We had a good class this week.  For our Quick Write, I had the students make up an adventure, in celebration of the birthday of Astrid Lindgren, the author of the Pippi Longstocking books.  We had real and imaginary persons in a number of adventures.

Our Words for the Day were chosen by two classmates.
macabre -- French; gruesome, ghastly, grim
matinee -- fr. Latin matins morning; a daytime musical or dramatic performance
hic et ubique -- Latin; literally, here and everywhere  (We discussed the word "ubiquitious" which comes from ubique)
hoc tempore -- Latin; literally, this time

This week we did an all-class writing exercise.  In writing, students are often not sure what details to include or in what order to write those details.  I had been doing some research about my family heritage and had some details about my great, great, great grandfather, Morten Olsen.  I filled the white board with those details and then set the students to the task of writing a paragraph or two about them.  When finished, we discussed what information they felt was essential and what they felt could be omitted.  I then divided the class into four small groups so that they could compare their paragraphs with one another.  I enjoyed listening to their conversations as they read aloud their writing.

I handed back the tests from My Antonia and their Final Drafts of their Extended Definition or Classification Essays.  We discussed the rubric for the essays.  Since we had talked about Introductions and Conclusions, I payed special attention to those.  We will focus on various points of the rubric with the papers so that they students can consider what aspects of their writing they want to improve.

They were to have worked on their Pre-writes for their Comparison/Contrast Essays.  The Rough Drafts are due next week.  

We haven't gotten to the excerpts for the Grapes of Wrath yet.  That will come next week.  

Assignments for Next Week:
-- Re-write the paragraph about Morten Olsen, paying special attention to sentence constructions.  Make it an excellent paragraph.
-- Write the rough draft of the Comparison/Contrast Essay.

This week's blogs
Class Notes


Have a great weekend.  It should be a tad warmer, before it turns cold again.
Mrs. Prichard

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