Again, my apologies for the very late e-mail last week. This week, the class notes are first on my list instead of my pile of rough drafts from the class.
Our Quick Write this week was prompted by the fact that November 3 is National Sandwich Day. I asked students to write about their favorite sandwiches; they could write a description, an advertisement, or an explanation about the importance of sandwiches. We had a discussion about whether wraps or hamburgers qualified as sandwiches.
Our Words of the Day were ghost words. In 1886, a lexicographer named Walter Skeat first used the phrase "ghost words" to describe words that he said had "no real existence." Ghost words are words that weren't real to begin with -- they came about because of an error or misunderstanding -- but they made it into the dictionary anyway.
gravy -- from the French, "graine" -- became a word when a 14th century misread a French cookbook and substituted a "v" for an "n"
tweed -- from the Scottish word "tweel," which is a type of wool and from which we got the word "twill." Some think the word was misheard as the Tweed River.
Dord -- the original dictionary was supposed to be "D or d" (capital "d" or lowercase "d") as an abbreviation for density in physics or chemistry. Whoever worked for the dictionary misread it as a word spelled d-o-r-d. It entered the dictionary in 1934 and was taken out in 1947.
esquivalience -- This is not a real words at all but was invented by an editor at the New Oxford American Dictionary and was included in the 2001 edition to help the company track copyright violators who were lifting entries from the dictionary.
We went over the returned rough drafts of the Classification or Extended Definition Essays. The students have started a page in their notebooks titled "Watch Out For." When I write notes on their rough drafts, I often have a section with that heading and list common errors or patterns that I see in their rough drafts. I would like them to keep track of these and to use them to guide their writing throughout the year. We discussed at length the writing of introductions and conclusions. The final drafts are due next week.
Following our writing discussion, we read sections from the chapter from O. E. Rolvaag's first chapter of Giants in the Earth. Authors of prairie literature delighted writing about the vastness and open spaces of the landscape as part of telling their stories. Our next bit of literature is a collection of rural poems. Students should read all of them and then choose one to re-write in prose.
At the end of class, they signed up for a time to present their My Antonia projects. Some projects have a strong visual or audio component, and students will have a chance to talk about these and show off their handiwork. For those students who wrote something for their project, I will simply have the students share a couple of sentences about their works.
November 16 (next week)
Katelyn
Julia
Madi
Noah
November 30 (after Thanksgiving)
Sofia
Daniel
Caitlin
Christianna
Audrie
Bryce
Kai Rose
Isabella
David
Carter
Just a little note about classroom dynamics. I've switched up the table arrangement so that instead of a "U" shape, the tables are in rows, and I've also given the students assigned seats. This is an experiment to see if it increases overall student engagement while diminishing extraneous distractions. As I mentioned before fall break, students have been coming in late to class, and this has a negative effect on the flow of the class. I start the class with a Quick Write, and students who are present to start this activity with the rest of the class will get scores for their Quick Writes, but those who come in late will have zeros.
Assignments for Next Week:
-- Read Poetry selections
-- Re-write one poem into prose
-- Take Home My Antonia Final Test
-- Final Drafts of Extended Definition/Classification Essays
-- Finish My Antonia projects
Links for This Week
Have a great weekend!
Mrs. Prichard
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