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/
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:
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
Have a great week and very blessed Easter!
Mrs. Prichard
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