Today's class was good. We covered a lot and had some thoughtful conversations about writing.
The Quick Write for the day came from a creative writing story starters book. They were to incorporate the following sentence into a short story: "How could you do this to me?" said the lion tamer as he/she tumbled over the waterfall.
The Words of the Day were from a dictionary since I'd forgotten my book on foreign phrases at home:
tachycardia -- excessive rapid heart beat
tableau -- a representation of a picture, statue, or scene by one o rmore persons suitably costumed
tabloid -- a newspaper or magazine filled with sensational news
taciturn -- inclined to silence
As part of our vocabulary work, we made a scale from taciturn to loquacious, including other words that are synonyms for talking a lot.
I collected from them their rough drafts of their Comparison/Contrast Essays and the paragraphs they wrote about the information about Morten Olsen. I will hand their rough drafts back to them at the next class.
We've not had much time to discuss the excerpt of Grapes of Wrath that I had given them. So, we took more time this week to look closely at Steinbeck's writing style. Breaking the class into small groups, they worked through on e of the paragraphs to identify certain groups of words: verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and prepositional phrases. We discussed the images that stuck in our memories and the "feeling" of the literature. His verbs and modifiers were described by the class as creative, unique, and lifeless.
After those small groups, I rearranged the class into different groups to do some editing practice. Giving them some Bad Writing Samples, they worked together to fix the mistakes. We then put those corrections on the board. They're becoming more careful writers with each exercise.
They probably don't need reminding, but we don't have class next week. They can spend Thursday eating turkey and hanging out with the family, instead.
Assignments for Dec. 5
-- Edit Bad Writing Samples #2 & #3
-- Rewrite 2 paragraphs from the Grapes of Wrath excerpt, writing it in a different tone.
This week's blog posts:
Class Notes
Bad Writing Samples
Grapes of Wrath excerpt
Happy Thanksgiving! Be blessed!
Mrs. Prichard
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