We had a good week in class again. Since this weekend we are celebrating Valentine's Day, I asked the students to write a Literary Love Letter as their Quick Writes. We had comments of affection and appreciation for authors, punctuation marks, and even the spaces between words. I plan to type them into the blog later this week.
Our Words of the Day were "Reduplicatives." These expressions are pairs of words that can repeat (bonbon), be similar (ping pong) or rhyme (higgeldy-piggeldy). Our words:
shilly-shally -- to procrastinate, hesitate, or vacillate
tussie-mussie -- a bunch of flowers, a bouquet, nosegay
herky-jerky -- moving in a sudden, spasmodic, irregular way
wishy-washy -- lacking in decisiveness, determination, or purpose
I handed back the rough drafts for their Mystery Stories in class. Well, I handed back most of them. They were exceptionally prolific writers for this assignment; some of the stories were almost 10 pages long. This has been, by far, the most fun I've had correcting rough drafts. Unfortunately, I didn't budget enough time to get through all of them. The remainders were sent out Thursday evening.
In class today we discussed some of the common errors that were found in the rough drafts of their Mystery Stories. The primary difficulties were punctuating dialogue and being consistent with verb tenses. Using their own writing is one of the best ways to teach grammar and writing principles. This is one case when learning from mistakes is a great strategy.
We have finished the Sherlock Holmes stories and took time to discuss their definitions of heroism and their opinions about Sherlock as a hero. As has happened in years past, the class was fairly evenly split in their opinions. I look forward to reading their essays.
Assignments for Next Week
-- Final Drafts of Mystery Stories
-- No Literature assignment
-- No Grammar Worksheets
Links for this Week:
Class Notes
Happy Valentine's Day!
Have a great weekend!
Mrs. Prichard
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