Writing 2 Class Notes -- Week 10 (March 27)

Greetings!

We had a good, productive week after our “Spring Break.”  The Quick Write this week was “What did you NOT do during Spring Break?”  Some students wrote their quick writes in double negatives.  For example, “I didn’t not watch a movie.” 

Our Words of the Day were all “Janus words.”  Named after the Roman god who had two faces, these are words that have meanings that are almost opposites.  Below is the list of words that we looked at:

–   To weather can mean "to endure" or "to erode."

–   Sanction can mean "to allow" or "to prohibit."

–   Fix can mean "a solution" (as in "find a quick fix") or "a problem" ("left us in a fix").

–   Clip can mean "to separate" (as in "clip the coupon from the paper") or "to join" (as in "clip the answer sheets together").

–   Left as a verb in the past tense means "to have gone"; as an adjective, it means "remaining."

–   Wear can mean "to last under use" or "to erode under use."

–   Buckle can mean "to fasten" or "to bend and then break."

–   The verb bolt can mean "to secure, lock" or "to start suddenly and run away."

–   Fast can mean "moving quickly" (as in "running fast") or "not moving" (as in "stuck fast").

We discussed our next essay, which is an Evaluation Essay.  Since the pre-write was due today, they have chosen their topics and have begun some preliminary research.  For this essay, we will do some work citing sources and using in-text citations with the MLA style.  As they work on their rough drafts this week, they should keep track of where they find information and where they insert this information in their papers.  We will look next week at their particular papers for practice with the citations.

Continuing with our Short Stories, we read two stories for this week by European writers, Luigi Pirandello (“With Other Eyes”), and Guy de Maupassant (“The Piece of String”).  Neither stories were particularly cheerful, but both were insightful regarding human interactions with each other.  To finish our literature portion of the day, I read aloud a short story, “Thank you Ma’am” by Langston Hughes.  Next week, I will hand out the poetry books.

Assignments for Next Week:

-- Read the following stories:  Larsen (p. 110); Anderson (p. 1); Hardy (p. 56)

-- No short story worksheets or discussion questions

-- Rough Draft of Evaluation Essay

-- There is/are Practice worksheet

This week's blog post

Class Notes

Have a great weekend,

Mrs. Prichard