Writing 2 Class Notes -- Week 12 (November 13)

Greetings!

We had a good class yesterday.  This is a hard-working class and are developing into a cohesive group.

Our Quick Write was inspired by Robert Louis Stevenson whose birthday was November 12, 1850.  He wrote some great classics:  Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and The Strange Adventures of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  I had the students write about what it would be like if there were two of them?

Our Words of the Day were:

Hoc loco -- Latin, "in this place"

Hoi polloi -- Greek, "the many" -- the general populace  

Hollandaise -- French, "Dutch sauce" -- a rich sauce of butter, eggs, lemon sauce, and vinegar/wine

Hombre -- Spanish, hombre, man; Latin homo-, man -- man, fellow, guy

I handed back their most  recent essays.  They had done well on this round of essays.  I'm enjoying seeing them improve with each paper that is written.  I graded them using my essay Rubric. The value in a rubric is that a paper can be evaluated in a number of areas:  focus, content, organization, and mechanics.  

We discussed the next writing assignment which is a Comparison/Contrast Essay. I've always liked the Comparison/Contrast Essay. The writer gets to select either similar items or very different items and make connections.  The Pre-Write was due this week, and the rough draft is due next week.  This is the last essay of this semester.

For a combined Grammar and Writing exercise, I had the students write a series of sentences with the following guidelines:

1.  There is/there are sentences

2.  A sentence using "things"

3.  Pronoun & antecedent don't agree

4.  Subject & Verb don't agree

5.  Combine 2 subordinate clauses as a "sentence." 

Once they finished their sentences, I had them share them with their "high five" partners so that they could correct them.  With each of these incorrect sentences, we had a mini-grammar lesson.  

Following that activity, we wrote some more sentences "from scratch."  First, they wrote a simple sentence with a subject and a verb.  Then they added an adjective and an adverb.  To this they added a prepositional phrases.  Finally, after a discussion about transitive and intransitive verbs, they were to add a direct object.

 

We've finished our book about Hank and Camelot, but we're not done with Twain, yet.  I read aloud a speech given by Mark Twain at a dinner honoring General U. S Grant; the main topic of this speech given to a room full of soldiers as "Babies."  As I read, I had them underline or highlight any comments, words, or phrases that they thought were humorous.

Assignments for Next Week:

-- Rough Draft of .Comparison/Contrast Essay

This week's links:

Class Notes

Speech on the Babies  (and on the blog)

About Comparison/Contrast Essays

Writing a Comparison/Contrast Essay

Have a great weekend! Stay warm!

Mrs. Prichard