Writing 2: Writing 2 Class Notes -- Week 9 (March 24)

Greetings!

On Thursday when I drove up to CHAT, the back roads were ice-covered and a little treacherous. By the time classes were done, the snow had almost all melted. That's Spring in Minnesota for you!

I used two dates and two men as the prompts for this week's Quick Write. The first was March 23, 1776 when Patrick Henry proclaimed to the citizens of Richmond, Virginia, "I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty of give me death!" The second date was March 25, 2228, the supposed birth date of Captain James T. Kirk, born somewhere in Iowa. This man's mission was "to boldly go where no man has gone before." I asked the students to write either about passions they would give their all to or about a life's adventure or dream.

For our Words of the Day, we had words that contained all of the vowels (a, e, i, o, and u):

armigerous -- entitled to bear heraldic arms; an armour-bearer

epuration -- purification; removing officials or politicians considered to be disloyal

inquorate -- unable to proceed due to an insufficient number of members

ossuaries -- a container or room in which the bones of dead people are placed

uvarovite -- an emerald green variety of a garnet

sequioia -- a redwood tree

Students handed in the Final Drafts of their Problem/Solution or Cause/Effect Essays. They worked hard on these and should pat themselves on the backs. Their writing improves with each essay!

I introduced our next writing assignment: an Evaluation Essay. In an essay of this type, students can take a current issue, a product, a place, a business, or a performance and evaluate it using criteria explained in the essay and supporting their opinions with specific facts and data. I choose this essay to be the last one for Writing 2 because it uses bits of the other types of essays that we've written this year and in Writing 1 (description, process, comparison, etc.). In class we specifically discussed forming good thesis statements and developing criteria with which to assess the quality or value of their subjects. The Pre-Writes for these essays are due when we get back from break.

In the Grammar section of class we reviewed direct objects and indirect objects. Students gave some sample sentences, and we dissected the sentences, labeling the parts of speech. Since we are on the topic of Sentence Patterns, we proceeded on to Predicate Nouns and Predicate Adjectives. The four patterns we've discussed so far are:

N - V - DO (noun - verb - direct object)

N - V - IO - DO (noun - verb - indirect object - direct object)

N - LV - N (noun - linking verb - noun)

N - LV - Adj (noun - linking verb - adjective)

We took a little longer with the Writing and Grammar portion of the class and only had time to discuss one of the short stories, "A Pair of Silk Stockings." This has always been one of my favorites because the interpretations that students have vary so greatly. Some read the story and claim the mother is selfish and foolish; others feel compassion for the mother. Follow the link to the 007Mom post and read the story for yourselves. Let me know what you think.

For our next class period, students will need to read the short stories for April 7 along with the stories for February 18. The are listed below.

Assignments for April 7:

-- News Story Pre-Write

-- Predicate Nominative and Predicate Adjective Worksheets

-- Indirect Object Worksheet for extra credit

-- Read the following short stories:

-- February 18: Pushkin (p. 162); Tolstoy (p. 169); Chekhov (p. 26)

-- April 7: Pirandello (p. 149); de Maupassant (p. 134)

-- Write 3 Discussion Questions for 3 of the short stories

Links for This Week:

Class Notes

Evaluation Essay