Greetings!
We had a very good day in class. I started the class time with a "public service announcement" about getting to class in time. For the most part, this has been a very punctual class, especially since then know that they will lose the Quick Write points if they are not in class on time. However, in a conversation with the directors of CHAT, I heard that a number of other tutors have been having difficulties with high school and middle school students coming in up to 10 minutes late. My appeal to this group of great students was to remind them how important it is to be on time and to encourage them to continue to be good role models.
We had three options for the Quick Write today. Wednesday was National Siblings Day, so they could write about their siblings. Another prompt was to write about what makes them or their families unique. (A recent article that I read about appreciating diversity stated that understanding and enjoying your own personal uniqueness is a good step towards doing the same for others.) And finally, students could try to write from an opposite perspective regarding something that they value or believe. For example, if I were to be very "pro" some new legislation, I would try to write as if I were very "con." The students did some great thinking and writing!
Our Words of the Day were "E" words:
El Dorado -- fr. Spanish, "the gilded place" -- a mythical city that is made of gold
ellipses -- fr. Greek elliepsis, "to leave out" -- the omission of words in a quote signified by three periods or asterisks with spaces in between
El Nino -- fr. Spanish, literally "the Christ child" -- a warm ocean current that develops in late December that can cause catastrophic weather conditions
The rough drafts of the Evaluation Essay were due this week. This is the most complicated essay that the students will have written because it requires them to develop criteria and then to use that criteria to evaluate their subjects. I will return the rough drafts next week, and the final drafts are due April 26. This is their last original essay. The final writing assignment is a rewrite of an earlier essay.
For the literature discussion, we focused on two of our stories: Nella Larsen's "Sanctuary" and Sherwood Anderson's "The Egg." Larsen's story about a woman hiding the man who had shot her son is a great story of forgiveness. Anderson's story had mixed reactions from the students. Some thought it quirky and funny, and others felt it was sad and discouraging. We had a number of great comments from the students.
We are into our next unit -- POETRY! April is National Poetry Month, so I save this part of our literature for this time of year. They are to read all of the poems by the authors listed below.
Because we took more time on the literature, we didn't have a long grammar discussion this week. We're continuing to work on run-on and comma splice sentences. They had time in class to get started on the assigned worksheets.
Assignments for Next Week
-- Read the poetry by the following authors: Holmes (p. 21); Emerson (p. 4, 5); Longfellow (p. 6 – 10); Whitman (p. 22 – 26); Dickinson (p. 29 – 32)
-- Two Grammar Worksheets
Links for This Week
Class Notes
Mrs. Prichard
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