We had another full day in class. The Quick Write is always our first task, following prayer, of course. Last semester I had the students give me some ideas for quick writes, and I will be using those throughout this semester. The prompts are numbered, and I call on various students to choose a number. This week's prompts were #245 -- What would happen if a car going the speed of light turned its lights on? and #168 - Write about colors/your favorite color. As always, when students don't feel inspired by the prompts, they can write about anything else that is one their minds.
Our Words of the Day for this week were also chosen by the students. For most of the class times, I will have a couple students choose words from my book Foreign Words and Phrases. Some times we will try to guess what a word means, and some times we'll discuss how the original Latin or Greek word arrived at it's current meaning. To illustrate this point, I chose lasagna as one of this week's words. Lasagna comes from the Latin word lasanum, which means "chamber pot." This layered one-dish meal was probably cooked in a pot similar in shape to the chamber pot that early Romans used.
Our words:
coup-- fr. Greek kolaphos, "a blow, buffet, slap, punch," -- a sudden, decisive act
licit-- fr. Latin licitus, "permitted, lawful" -- Something that is allowed by the law; usually used more often in its opposite, "illicit"
lasagna -- fr. Latin lasanum, "chamber pot" -- a baked Italian dish consisting of wide strips of pasta cooked and layered with meat or vegetables, cheese, and tomato sauce.
Students are to be working on their Rough Drafts of their Mystery Stories. For inspiration, they can go to the class blog and read some of the stories listed on the right side of the page. Some of the students have warned me that their stories are getting quite long. I am looking forward to reading their papers.
We have started reading our stories from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. For discussion of the first two stories, I divided the class into small groups and assigned the following roles: discussion leader, a synopsis giver for each story, clue finder, Sherlock describer, and quote explainer. Because the class is large, whole class discussions do not always give everyone an opportunity to engage, making small group discussions a greater necessity. As I circulated and joined in the discussions, I was pleased with how focused and thoughtful the comments were. After the small groups, we talked about what made for a good small group discussion. We discussed how to make the most of a discussion if you came unprepared, how to respectfully disagree, and how to add meaningful comments. For next week, they are to read "Five Orange Pips" and "The Speckled Band." They do NOT have to do discussion questions for these, but they will need to be ready to discuss them. One student asked if questions could be done for extra credit, and that would be OK.
We were able to spend more time with our Grammar portion of the class. We're working on commas with compound and complex sentences. We started one in class. For the stapled worksheets on Complex sentences, the students only need to do Practice 1 & 2.
Have a great weekend. Stay safe on the roads!
Blessings,
Mrs. Prichard
Assignments for Next Week
-- Signed Spring Class Policies
-- Read "Five Orange Pips" and "The Speckled Band" (no study guide questions)
-- Mystery Rough Draft
-- Grammar Worksheets:
-- Commas & Complex Sentences
-- Complex Sentence Practice
Links for This Week
Class Notes
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