Friday, February 19, 2016

Writing 2 Class Notes -- Week 5 (February 18)

Greetings!

Another great class!  We began our class with our usual Quick Write.  This week, I had the students about their favorite childhood toys or games.  The prompt for this was a February 13, 1988 event -- the first International Building Competition sponsored by the LEGO Company.  We heard about board games, made-up games, little miniatures, and other toys.

Our Words of the Day were words of Latin origin:
quorum -- the minimum number of persons required for a business or board to make decisions
quid pro quo -- "something for something" or "this for that" -- an exchange of goods or services, where one transfer is contingent upon the other
cave canem -- Beware the Dog
Fac ut vivas -- "Get a life"
And our final phrase is one that often gets brought up when people are joking about knowing Latin.  
Semper ubi sub ubi  -- translates as "Always where under where"

Students handed in the final copies of their Mystery Stories.  I am really looking forward to reading these.  I've asked the students for permission to post their stories on the blog.  I did this with last year's group.  If any students really don't want their stories posted, they are not required to.  

We are now ready for our next essay: either a Cause/Effect Essay or a Problem/Solution Essay.  I gave them handouts for each, and they may choose one of the essays.  If they would like, they can write both kinds of essays; one would be for extra credit.

I handed out our next book, Great Short, Short Stories.  This book has a selection of European and American short stories.  For our next time together, they are to read 4 British stories.  Instead of worksheets or study guide questions, I would like the students to come up with 2 Discussion Questions for each story.  These questions should be those that are more than who, what, where, or when questions.  They should be how and why questions.

Finally, during our Grammar portion of the class, we had some more instruction and practice on the following phrases:  prepositional, participle, and gerund.  We had time to do a few from each section.

We do not have class next week.  The next time we meet is March 3.

Assignments for March 3:
-- Cause/Effect or Problem/Solution Pre-Write
-- Read Dickens, Wilde, Kipling, and Munro Short Stories
-- Write 2 Discussion Questions for each story
-- Grammar Worksheet

Links for this week:
Class Notes 
Note:  If you are curious, you can read last year's stories.  They are on the side bar of the blog.

Have a great weekend and a good break!
Mrs. Prichard

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