Thursday, September 11, 2014

Writing 2 Class Notes -- Week 3 (Sept. 11)

Greetings!
Today was a good day in class.  Since it is 9/11, I had the students write a short Quick Write titled "Patriot Day."  In 2009, September 11 was named Patriot Day as a means of memorial and as an encouragement to Americans to offer volunteer service to others.  I asked the students to write about some way they give service or would like to give service to others.  I appreciated the comments that they shared.
Our Words of the Day were volunteered up by students from their vocabulary lists from our book, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.  The words today were:
-- Blatherskite-- (fr. a 1650 Scottish song) a person given talking too much nonsense and empty talk
-- Objurgate -- (fr. L, objugare, to reproach)  to denounce or scold harshly
-- Swag -- (fr. Norwegian , svagga to sway, rock)  a large number, amount, or variety
-- Anecdote -- (fr. Greek, anekdota, to give out, publish)  a short story or account of an event
Remember:  These words from the novel will be part of an end of the semester test.
We took most of the class to discuss their rough drafts.  One of my strategies is to go over these and to discuss the most common errors.  I feel that students can learn more about grammar and writing as they write and make mistakes than they can from worksheets.  We talked about commas, compound sentences, pronoun/noun agreement, formatting, "There is/are" sentence structures, and avoiding the word "things."  For next week, they are to revise/edit/correct their rough drafts and make them final drafts.  I gave them a half-sheet on which they are to list their first 5 errors and then the area that they would like to work on for their next paper.
Although we spent most of the time talking about the rough drafts, we were able to take the last few minutes to talk about A Connecticut Yankee.  The hero, Hank, is on a quest with the most talkative female on the face of the earth.  He scares other knights with pipe smoke coming out his his armor helmet.
Assignments for Next Week:
-- Read Ch. 15 - 19
-- Choose 4 Study Questions & 8 Vocabulary Words
-- Correct and revise rough drafts.
This Week's Blog
Have a great weekend!
Mrs. Prichard

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