We had a good, productive day in class today. Even though this is the first class of the day, the students come in ready to work.
I used the Pope's visit to the country for the prompt for our Quick Write. This morning the Pope addressed the joint houses of Congress, our Representatives and Senators. I asked the students to think about what they might want to say if they were to stand before Congress. They could have 3 bullet points for their presentations. Three topics, issues, concerns, encouragements, or even jokes.
Our Words of the Day, compliments of class members:
prophylactic-- fr. Greek -- adj. describing something used to protect from disease
immutable-- fr. Latin, immutabile (unchanging) -- unchanging, unchangeable over time
unprofane-- fr. profanus (outside the temple) -- devoted to religious purposes
I handed back a number of items which we discussed in class. Firstly, we talked about the pre-test for the Parts of Speech unit that they had taken. While they weren't excited about the scores, I explained that this was a test to see how much they knew BEFORE the instruction. For this test, the students will all receive the same participation score.
Another piece of homework that they got back were their final drafts of the Personal Commentary Essays. I evaluate these in 4 areas: Focus, Content, Organization, and Mechanics. I'm not a very hard grader because I want to encourage them and to see them enjoy writing.
Some students also received a piece of paper that listed any missing assignments. My plan is to give these out 2 - 3 times a semester so that students can keep on top of their homework. I also told the students that they should keep all of their homework for this class until the end of the semester. Sometimes an assignment gets graded but missed when I enter them in my gradebook.
Today we had our first Parts of Presentation -- Shay, Ian, and Hannay gave us a good lesson on Nouns, complete with a video, activity, and worksheet. They did a great job! Next week: Pronouns (Christopher, Savannah, and Megan)
Following the nouns presentation, I discussed thesis statements. As I've mentioned to them, many of the papers that they probably wrote when they were younger were reports. Writing essays requires that they form a thesis -- that they take a stand or form an opinion about their topics. I gave them a template that can be helpful when writing essays:
________________ is/are _______________________
because 1) ___________________, 2) ___________________,
and 3) ___________________________.
A well-formed thesis statement gives an essay direction.
Quickly, before I dismissed for the day, we pulled out our books, Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. I read aloud the section when Hank fixes the fountain in the Valley of Holiness, pretending that he's working magic. Even though Twain's language is at times difficult, and he uses a lot of figures of speech that make it hard to fully understand what Twain means, if students take their time in reading, a lot more will sink in. Listening to audiobooks will also help.
Assignments for Next Week:
-- Read Chapters 24 - 27
-- Answer 4 Study Guide questions
-- Fill in 8 Vocabulary Words
-- Nouns homework: short writing assignment with nouns
Links for this week:
Class Notes
Have a great weekend!
Mrs. Prichard
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