The weather people say that Thursday was, most likely, our last really cold day. It's March and we're half way through the second semester at CHAT -- it could be that Spring is really on its way!
Our Quick Write this week celebrated two events: March 4 was National Grammar Day and March 5 was the day the Hula Hoop was invented. Students could write about either topic or about a favorite toy from their childhoods.
Our Latin Roots of the Day were:
finis -- L. end -- English derivatives: finish, finite, final, finality, infinitive, infinity, infinite, define, definition
fort -- L. strong -- English derivatives: fort, fortress, fortitude, fortify, force
fug/fugi -- L. to flee, flight -- English derivatives: fugitive, refuge, refugee
We had a lot of homework to hand in this week: Quick Writes, Comma worksheet, rough draft, pre-write, letters to world leaders, and short story worksheets. We shared in class about our letters to world leaders and each student shared about the person to whom his/her letter had been written. A few students forgot this part of the homework, but they can hand them in next week. The letters they handed in are the rough drafts. I'll go over them to check for mechanics and possible content suggestions. I'll hand them back next week and the following week I will bring envelopes for them to address.
We discussed our short stories for this week: Hawthorne's "Dr. Heidigger's Experiment," Bierce's "An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge," and Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado." The class seemed pretty evenly divided about which stories they preferred. We agreed that good short stories must have good characters, an engaging plot, and efficient descriptions. I also took a quick survey of their opinions of the various short story homework assignments. In previous years, I've found that doing the same kind of exercises for the short stories gets a bit boring for the students. For this week, they are to come up with 2 discussion questions for each story. A good discussion question needs more than a "yes" or "no" answer. They are "how?" and "why? types of questions.
The Rough Drafts of the Cause/Effect or Problem/Solution essays were handed in this week. Once a good topic was chosen, these essays were not too hard to write. I will have the corrected ones ready for them next week.
Our final activity of the day was another comma-related grammar worksheet. This week we looked at commas used in dates and addresses. We did most of the worksheet as a group, and they finished it before leaving class.
Assignments for Next Week:
-- Read the following stories: Harte (p. 64); Twain (p. 175); Jewett (p. 87); Crane (p. 34)
-- For each story, write 2 discussion questions
-- No grammar worksheets (worksheet attached if you were absent)
-- No essay assignments
Links for this week:
Class Notes
Enjoy the weekend!
Mrs. Prichard
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