Writing 2 Class Notes -- Week 13 (April 24)

Greetings!

We had a great class yesterday.  Beginning our class with a Quick Write, we celebrated William Shakespeare's birthday (a day late) with our own stories about "star crossed overs."  I asked them to be creative about pairing 2 unlikely candidates.  Of the stories, we had a clever, pun-filled account of a relationship between a stone wall and a window.

Our Words of the Day came from a book of common sayings and their origins.  The phrases we looked at this week were:

"Great Scott!" -- an exclamation taken from Winfield Scott, a general of the Mexican War and an arrogant, pompous presidential candidate opposing Franklin Pierce.

"Hat in the ring" -- a phrase that means to join a political race, taken from Ringstrasse, a city center in Vienna that was a gathering place for those politically involved in the city.  Gentlemen would be visible because of their hats.

"Hobnob" -- to socially mix with those of a higher class taken from the old English word that means "to give and receive."  People would gather at pubs and offer toasts to one another.

"Kit and Caboodle" -- the whole collection of things, taken from a set of tools/objects (kit) and personal items (fr. Dutch boodle)

Students handed in their Evaluation Final Drafts today, along with their self-evaluations.  I had asked the students to use the same rubric that I use to grade/score the papers.  Our next essay is a Re-Write of one of the essays that they've written for this class this year.  They might want to choose a paper that they feel needs improving or a favorite essay that they would like to work more on.

We had a a good amount of time to talk through some of our Poetry selections.  Those who had taken Writing 1, remember our class discussion about William Carlos Williams's short poem, "The Red Wheelbarrow."  While it may seem an insignificant poem, I've always enjoyed unpacking it with students.  We also looked at Carl Sandburg's poem, "Chicago," and Robert Frost's poem, "The Road Less Traveled."  We had a wonderful discussion about the ways we take the unconventional paths in life.

We're winding down our semester of classes, and part of our next two classes will be our "Poetry Jam."  Combining the ideas of a poetry slam (a competition featuring original poems) and Poetry Out Loud (a competition featuring pre-selected poems) students will read or recite poems for the class. James Stephenson, a Writing 1 student, set up a bracket for us to use.  I've divided the students into teams (please remember your number!).  They are to bring 1 - 2 poems next week.  We will take time for some team collaboration before starting.

We ran out of time to discuss the Reflection Paper that I would like them to write.  Next week, as the class's Quick Write, I will be asking them to take a longer time to write about what they've learned about writing and about themselves as writers this year.  I would like each student to take some time before class time to brainstorm their ideas about this topic.  If they would like, they can write some notes or compose a kind of prewrite that they can use to answer this.  I'm attaching a link to a scholarly article about the value of reflection as part of the learning process.

Assignments for Next Week:

-- Essay Re-write

-- Select 1 - 2 poems

-- Reflection paper brainstorming

This week's links:

Class Notes

Improving Learning through Reflection

William Carlos Williams information

The Red Wheelbarrow

Carl Sandburg

Robert Frost

Poetry Out Loud

Poetry Slams

Have a beautiful weekend!

Mrs. Prichard

Langston Hughes Poems

Below is the list of poems by Langston Hughes assigned fore reading this week:

Dream Deferred (Harlem)
I, Too
Little Old Letter
Mother to Son
The Negro Speaks of Rivers
Still Here

Robert Frost Poems

Below are the Links to the poems by Robert Frost that you are assigned to read:

Acquainted with the Night
After Apple-Picking
Birches
Design
Fire and Ice
Mending Wall
Nothing Gold can Stay
The Road Not Taken
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Two Tramps in Mud Time

Writing 2 Class Notes -- Week 12 (April 10)

Greetings!

Our Writing 2 Class went well this week, and I'm sure that most of the students are looking forward to having another break from CHAT classes for our Easter break.  We'll resume classes again the week following Easter/Resurrection Sunday.

The Quick Write for this week recognized Washington Irving, an early American writer whose birthday was this month.  Though most of the students were unfamiliar with his writings, I'm sure parents are familiar with his two well-known stories, "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow."  Since Rip Van Winkle was a lazy man whose plan to get out of work cost him 20 years of his life, I asked the students to think about and write about their favorite getting-out-of-work strategies. I heard some very interesting ideas from this creative group of students.

Our Words of the Day were words that sound the same, spelled the same, but have different meanings:

principle (a basic belief or primary idea) & principal (the leader of a school)

capitol (the building that houses a state's or nation's legislature) & capital (the primary seat of government)  

council (an assembly of persons with a focus/goal) & counsel (wise advice)

Embedded in this discussion were some other terms related the relationships between certain types of words.  Below are some helpful definitions:

homograph -- words with the same spelling, different sound, different meaning.  E.g. The wind blows/ Wind the clock.  Lead the people to safety./ Avoid using paint with lead in it. The desert has sand./ Don't desert your friends.

homonym -- words with the same sound, same/different spelling and different meaning.  E.g. Spruce up the house./I have a spruce tree.  I will pay a fair price./ Will you go to the fair?

homophone -- words with the same sound, different spelling,and different meanings,  E.g. to/two/too.  their/they're/there

synonym -- words that mean the same.  E.g. big/large/huge/immense/colossal/sizable/massive

antonym -- words that are opposites.  E.g. hot/cold; huge/tiny; wealthy/poor

We spent quite a bit of time discussing citations and formatting both in-text citations and Works Cited entries.  In other words, we had a "MLA style lite" lesson.  For more help, the blog post from last week has both websites and videos.

I handed back to them the Rough Drafts of the most recent essay, an Evaluation Essay.  In class we discussed some of the common errors and mistakes that I found as I read them.  In addition to revising and editing their rough drafts, I also want them to fill out a self-evaluation for their essay.  These self-evaluations give them time to reflect on their own writing.  I've handed out the rubric that I use when grading the essays.  On the back side of the self-evaluation sheet, I would like them to list 5 corrections they made on their essays and explain their reason for the correction.

We're continuing to read from our Poetry book. This week we discussed some poetry from the earliest period of American literature.  The poem we spent time on was Longfellow's "The Arrow and the Song."  For next week we will be discussing poetry from the mid-1800s to the mid-1900s.  

About the Poetry Presentations:  I have scheduled Presentations for the last 2 classes of the semester.  At the other school where I teach, they hold annual Poetry Out Loud competitions and have hosted a Poetry Slam.  In a Poetry Out Loud competition, students recite poetry from a pre-selected list.  Poetry Slams, on the other hand, feature original poetry.  In past years, we've done at the end of the school year what I have called a "Poetry Slam Out Loud."  Students can choose to either recited poetry from our book or recited something they have written.

Assignments for April 24:

-- Read poems by the following poets: 

     Wilcox:  Solitude

     Thayer:  Casey at the Bat

     Dunbar:  The Lesson, Sympathy, We Wear the Mask

     Frost:  (all poems on pages 44 - 50)
     Sandburg:  Chicago, Fog, I am the People, the Mob

     Williams:  The Great Figure,, The Red Wheelbarrow, This is Just to Say, The Widow's Lament in Springtime

     Hughes:  (all poems on pages 75 - 78)

-- Finish Final Draft of Evaluation Essay

     -- Complete Self-Evaluation and 5 Corrections

-- Be thinking about your poetry selection for our Poetry Presentations.

This week's links:

Class Notes

National Poetry Month

Poetry Out Loud

Poetry Slams

Homonyms, Homophones, Homographs

Have a great week and very blessed Easter!

Mrs. Prichard

Writing 2 Class Notes -- Week 11 (April 3)

Greetings!

We had a great class this week.  The students engaged well with the discussion today.

Our Quick Write this week acknowledged the birthday on April 2 of Hans Christian Anderson, the Danish children's author. I had the students write about their favorite children's book.  If they weren't inspired about that topic, they could write about the Winder Misery Index

The Words of the Day came from my book of foreign words and phrases.  They were chosen at random by students who closed their eyes and pointed to a word on the page. 

harem -- [Turkish - sanctuary; Arabic - something forbidden]; the multiple wives and female servants of a man in the Middle East, esp. during ancient times

hajji -- [Arabic, pilgrim]; a Muslim who has successfully complete a pilgrimage to Mecca

halcyon-- [Greek, kingfisher bird];  adjective:  peaceful, calm, prosperous

The students were to hand in the rough drafts of their for Evaluation Essays today.  I always look forward to reading their essays and will read and correct these so that I can give them back next week.  If anyone did not hand it in, the essays can be e-mailed to me.  I had planned on discussing the citations, but we spent more time on the literature selections.  I will have a special blog post with more information.  Many of the students were already familiar with the MLA format.

We finished our Short Story unit with some lengthier discussions of our final three stories by Sherwood Anderson, Nella Larsen, and Thomas Hardy.  Following the class discussion, I divided the class into small groups for more discussion and evaluations of the stories. Since they have been writing evaluation essays and have that format in mind, I asked them to think about what criteria makes a good short story and then to use that criteria to determine which stories illustrated those points the best.  They are a marvelous group of students, and they fully engaged in their small group discussion.

We are done with our short stories and have moved on to Poetry.  Some students claim to like poetry while others really don't like it at all.  I am usually able to coincide our poetry reading with the month of April, which is National Poetry Month.  

Bradstreet (p. 1); Wheatley (p. 1); Holmes (p. 21); Emerson (p. 4, 5); Longfellow (p. 6 – 10); Whitman (p. 22 – 26); Dickinson (p. 29 – 32)

Assignments for next week:

-- Read poems by the following poets:  Anne Bradstreet (p. 1); Phyllis Wheatley (p. 1); Oliver Wendell Holmes (p. 21); Ralph Waldo Emerson (p. 4, 5); Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (p. 6 - 10); Walt Whitman (p. 22 - 26); Emily Dickinson (p. 29 - 32)

-- Fill out the poetry worksheets:

     -- Choose 4 poems and answer the questions on one side of the worksheet for that poem.  You only need to answer 4 out of the 9 questions.

This week's blogs:

Class Notes

Poetry Worksheet

Helpful MLA Citation Links

See you next week!

Mrs. Prichard

Poetry Worksheet

Title of Poem:  _____________________________                    Author:  _________________________________

1. What is the dramatic situation of the poem? (What is taking place literally?)

2. Who is the speaker in the poem? (Or, at least, what do we know about him/her?)

3. To whom is he or she speaking? Who is the audience of the poem?

4. Where is the setting of the poem? Where is the speaker? When does it take place?

5. What is a possible theme of the poem?

6. Why does the speaker feel compelled to speak out?

7. What kinds of patterns are there in the poem? Does the poem rhyme? Does it have a particular rhythm?

8. How does the poet use language? Is it elevated or fancier language? Is it more vernacular, colloquial, or casual? Does the poet use a particular dialect or accent?

9. What is the tone (mood) of the poem at the beginning, at the end, and overall?

Helpful MLA Citation Links

Research papers are challenging.  Not only are you required to come up with an original, thought-provoking thesis, but you have to research primary and secondary sources for enough information to back up your position.  And on top of that, you need to use your sources with integrity and give credit to those who are experts on your topic.  And if that's not enough, you need to follow specific guidelines for letting your reader know where you found this information.  Whew!!

Below is a list of helpful websites that will help with the MLA format.

Son of Citation Machine:  This website does the formating for you.  Type in the essential information, click on "Make Citation" and it gives you the entry that you can copy and paste into your paper.  Some college professors encourage their students to use this so that they have the correct format.  Others consider it cheating and the lazy student's way out.  I don't mind if students use it because I feel it's part of the learning process.

Easy Bib:  This site is similar to Son of Citation.  Like the above site, I think these are especially helpful with non-traditional sources.  Citing books with one author is not difficult.  Other print and non-print forms are challenging.

Purdue OWL:  One of my favorite writing resources is the Purdue Online Writing Lab.  If you go to the homepage, you will find just about any topic related to writing essays.

MLA formating videocast:  This Youtube video helps students format their papers.  It refers to Microsoft Word 2007. Some students already know a lot about using Word; others have parents who can help.  This is a helpful video if this information is needed.

MLA Works Cited videocast:  Another Purdue OWL video specific to the Works Cited page.

Durham College MLA style:  This is a longer video, but it's very complete!  In fact, I'd really like everyone to take the 30 minutes and give this video a careful "listen."

These are only a few websites.  If you need more help, google "MLA citation," and you will find a plethora of options.