Writing 2 Class Notes -- Week 13 (April 27)

Greetings!

I guess I should not have been surprised to see snow showers on my way to CHAT this week.  After all, it is Minnesota.  However, it does make it hard to believe that spring is really here and that we only have two more weeks of CHAT classes.

We had a fun Quick Write this week.  I have a game called "Man Bits Dog."  According to the makers of the game, it's a game of "hilarious headlines."  This game has cards with words that are to be used as headlines, and I incorporated this into our Quick Write by having them write a story to go with the headline.  They were very creative, both in their word combinations and their stories.

Words of the Day:

scio -- Latin, "to know" -- science, scientific, conscience, conscious, omniscient

scrib -- Lain, "to write" -- describe, scripture, script, scribe, scribble, inscribe, subscribe

sens -- Latin, "to feel" -- sensitive, senses, sensible, consensus, sentiment, insensitive, sensory,

spect -- Latin, "to watch" -- spectator, spectacle, spectate, inspector, respect, specimen, introspective

sub -- Latin, "below" -- subway, submarine, suburbs, subzero, sublime, subliminal, sublingual

I didn't have a lot to hand back to students, but they had their final drafts to hand in to me.  I know that some students have been gone due to trips, sports, and illnesses, so any homework that wasn't handed in this week can be handed in the next.  I will have My Gradebook updated this week so that students can check to see if they are missing any assignments.  With only two weeks left in the semester, it's important to get on top of any late homework.

Our final essay for the year is a "Re-Write."  Students rarely have the opportunity to go back to previous assignments in order to revise and improve them.  These are important skills for successful writers to have.  Students are to choose one of their previous essays from this year.  I've encouraged them to choose either their "worst" or lowest scoring essay or to choose one that is about a topic that they are especially interested in.  They should consider the final drafts of their previous essays as the "rough drafts" for this assignment.  Next week, I would like them to hand in their re-write and the final draft of the previous essay.

In addition to reading poetry, we are doing a "Poetry Jam," a competitive poetry reading experience. Each student is to bring two poems next week and to be ready to recite them with a team.  The rest of the class will score the presentations, and the top two teams will read the following week.  (In class we went over the scoring rubric and the competition details.)  Below are the teams:

Team 1

William

Ashley

Jean-Marc

Abby

Team 2

Maggie

Isabel

Brady

Team 3

Jack

Daniel

Joe

Team 4

Grace

Gavin

Samuel

Leah

We finished class with a continued look at punctuation, especially the semicolon and commas.  Students have a Mastering the Comma Review worksheet to do for next week.  The following week, I will be giving students a final test on commas to do as a take home test.

Assignments for Next Week:

-- Essay Re-Write

-- Comma Review Worksheet

-- Prepare 2 poems for the Poetry Jam

Links for this Week

Class Notes

Poetry Out Loud 

     -- Jabberwocky

     -- Pied Beauty

     -- My Mistress' Eyes

Have a beautiful Sunday!

Mrs. Prichard

Writing 2 Class Notes -- Week 12 (April 20)

Greetings!

We had a good, productive day in class today.  I gave the students two options for the Quick Write.  Firstly, this day in 1841 marks the day that the first detective short story was printed.  This story, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," by Edgar Allen Poe introduces Monsieur C. Auguste Dupin to solve a series of murders in Paris.  The second option was to respond to the fact that today is National High Five Day.  We had a couple options for additional ways to great or congratulate someone.

Our Words (Latin roots) of the Day:

omni -- Latin, all -- omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, omnivore, Omni Theater

pac -- Latin, peace -- pacify, pacifist, pacifier, Pacific, pact, impact

pater -- Latin, father -- paternal, paternal, Padre, compadre, patriotic, patriot, patron, patronize, patronage

ped -- Latin, foot -- pedometer, centipede, pedestrian, pedal, expedient, pedicure, podiatrist

pedo -- Greek, child -- pediatric, pediatrician, pedagogy

I handed back homework, and we took some time to talk about the Rough Drafts of the Evaluation Essays.  Usually when I hand back rough drafts I have a list of common corrections that we go through.  For this set of essays, I asked students to look through their own papers and offer up areas for corrections.  This was helpful in that we could discuss issues specific to their papers.  I also encouraged them to pay close attention to their corrections because this is one way that they can take charge of their own growth as writers.  When they do their Final Drafts, they have a half sheet to fill out for documenting the first five corrections on their papers.  They also have the rubric to do a self-evaluation on their papers.

Continuing with our focus on Punctuation, students were given a worksheet dealing with parentheses and dashes, and we worked through a number of sentences together.

Finally, we turned to our Poetry books.  April is National Poetry Month, and I talked about the poetry presentations that we will be doing at the end of the semester.  For the final two weeks, the students are divided into teams and "compete" by reciting poems from their books or originals.  I have some poetry-related blog posts listed below.  We read a number of Emily Dickinson poems.

Assignments for Next Week:

-- Read Wilcox (p. 33); Thayer (p. 34); Dunbar (p. 41 – 43); Frost (p. 44 – 50); Sandburg (p.53 – 54); Williams (p. 60 – 61); Hughes  (p. 75 – 78)

     -- Read all of the poems by the authors listed.

-- No poetry worksheets

-- Final Draft of Evaluation essay

     -- 5 First Errors worksheet

     -- Self-Evaluation Rubric

-- Worksheet 15-4

Links for this Week

Class Notes

Worksheet 15-4

Poetry Jam Rubric from 2016

Poetry Jam Playoffs, 2015

National Poetry Month

Have a beautiful weekend!

Mrs. Prichard

Writing 2 Class Notes -- Week 11 (April 13)

Greetings!

Another great day in class!  We had an unusual Quick Write today.  Before giving the students the actual writing prompt, I asked them to write on the board their favorite letters.  Today's writing was in honor of National Scrabble Day.  Alfred Mosher Butts, the inventor of the game, was born on April 13, 1899.  Scrabble entered in to the Toy Hall of Fame in 2004.  I asked the students to take the letters they had written and see how many words they could come up with.  The top word count for the class was 64 words.

Our Words of the Day (aka Latin Roots)

nihil -- Latin, nothing -- nihilism, nihilistic, annihilate

non -- Latin, not -- none, nonsense, nonexistent, noninvasive, nonprofit, nonfat

nova -- Latin, new -- novel, novelty, nova, super nova, Nova Scotia, innovate, renovate, novice

noct -- Latin, night -- nocturnal, equinox, noctambulist, pernoctate, noctiphobia

I handed back homework and fielded any questions that students might have about any missing work. Any old homework can be handed in; check folders for any missing work.

We discussed our last short story in class today.  This story, "Sanctuary," by Nella Larsen has strong themes of racial inequality and mercy.  In this story, a black woman shields a man from the police only to learn that the man he killed was her son.  This story triggered some good discussion about the value of mercy.

Note:  It seemed that some of the students hadn't read the story, and this was also the case with the previous assignment.  With this in mind, there might be a pop quiz next week, So make sure all of the assigned reading is done.  

Our next book is a book of poetry.  Some students love poetry, but some don't.  I've chosen this specific book because it has well-known shorter poems.  Students should read all of the poems by the assigned authors.

I offered the students the opportunity for some extra credit.  I know that a lot of students love to draw and/or paint, so for extra credit they can illustrate any short story or poem.  In addition, in a couple of weeks we will have a "The Red Wheelbarrow" drawing contest for William Carlos William's poem.

For our Grammar portion of the class, I gave the students 2 worksheets and a handout for using hyphens.  

Assignments for Next Week

-- Read poems Holmes (p. 21), Emerson (p. 4, 5), Longfellow (p. 6 - 10), Whitman (p. 22 - 26), Dickinson (p. 29 - 32)

-- 1 Poetry Analysis worksheet (front and back); choose 4 questions to answer

-- Punctuation Worksheets 14-2 and 15-3

-- Extra Credit:  illustrations for any short story or poem

-- Extra Credit:  "The Red Wheelbarrow" illustration contest

Links this Week

Class Notes

National Scrabble Day

Worksheet 14-2

Worksheet 15-3

Have a great week!

Mrs. Prichard