Writing 2: Writing 2 Class Notes -- Week 3 (Sept. 17)

Greetings!

We had a great class yesterday. This is a good, conscientious group of students.

We started with a Quick Write. For today's prompt, I offered them 2 options. September 15 was Agatha Christie's birthday, and she is known as the "queen of mysteries" with over 80 books to her name. She also wrote the world's longest running play, The Mousetrap. Students could write their opinions about mysteries, a mysterious event, or an original mystery. The other option was related to National Apple Dumpling Day (Sept. 17). Baked apple goods seem to be the quintessential fall food. Students could write about apples or some other favorite fall food. (And, as always, they can always choose the third, "Whatever" option and write on something completely different.)

Following our Quick Write, I went over some Google Classroom "Protocols," hopefully clarifying questions that students have had.

99.9% of your assignments are on Google Classroom (GC)

You can hand in work on GC or in class but NOT BOTH

If you do the assignment on Google Classroom, remember to "Turn In" (button in the upper right corner of the window.)
If you have handed in an assignment during class (the paper version), please the Google Classroom assignment alone. I will assign a grade and return in.
Some assignments can ONLY be done on Google Classroom. When that is the case, those homework assignments will be designated (GC)
For the Final Drafts of your essays, follow these steps IN ORDER:

Open your Rough Draft document, select/highlight all of the content (Ctrl-A) and copy it (Ctrl-C)
Open the Google Classroom assignment for the Final Draft and then open the document/template.
Paste the contents of the Rough Draft onto this document.
Make corrections and revisions. (DO NOT MAKE CORRECTIONS WHILE IT IS STILL IN THE ROUGH DRAFT DOCUMENT!)
Turn it in!

This week, students were to take notes of class, and these notes are due in class next week. Sometimes when we are covering a significant amount of content, I will have students take notes and then turn in copies of those notes. Students can hand in the paper copies of their notes next week OR upload copies to the Google Classroom assignment.

I handed back their Rough Drafts of their Personal Essays. I believe that students learn grammar best in the context of their own writing, so I like to take a generous amount of time to go over common mistakes and for them to ask questions from their own mistakes. I had the students write on post it notes either the error most-corrected on their rough drafts or a grammar issue that they didn't understand. After they brought these up to the white board, I covered those areas that seemed to need the most attention. This week, those areas included contractions, the use of numbers, sentence fragments, and commas with compound sentences.

For the Final Drafts of these essays, students should submit them via Google Classroom (see the notes about the protocols.) They should also bring to class on Sept. 24 their rough drafts with my corrections.

This week we didn't talk a lot about our book, My Antonia, but we took time to set up our literature circles for next week. Literature Circles are a way for students to have academic conversations for which they each have specific roles and responsibilities. The students gathered in their groups and chose their roles: discussion leader, illustrator, luminary, word nerd, connector, summarizer.

Discussion leader -- be ready to lead the discussion by reading the assigned portion; be thinking about the major events and themes of that portion;
Illustrator -- draw a picture of one of the scenes or an interpretation of one of the themes
Luminary -- find quotes that seem to sum up the main points of the section; choose quotes that seem particularly thoughtful, funny, or serious
Word Nerd -- select words that are especially unusual and look up their roots
Connector -- be ready to connect events, themes, character types, etc. with real world examples
Summarizer -- at the end of the discussion, summarize and connect

When they gather next week, they should come prepared. The two topics that should guide their preparations and discussions are: 1) The conflicting worldviews between the immigrants and the other Black Hawk residents; and 2) The connections between the landscape and the people. In addition to the Literature Circle preparation, students should complete 3 Reader Responses for pages. 24 - 47.

Because we have more literature to do this week, the grammar assignments are postponed a week.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Blessings,

Mrs. Prichard

Assignments for Next Week

-- Final Draft of Personal Essay (GC)

-- Remember to bring the rough draft to class on 9/24

-- Read Cp. 24 - 47 in My Antonia

-- 3 Reader Responses

-- Literature Circle Preparation

-- No Grammar this week (If students have already done them, they won't have to do them next week.)

Links for This Week