Greetings!
We had a good, productive day yesterday. We started with a Quick Write. For today's prompts, I used the facts that October 1, 1908 was the day that Ford manufacturing rolled the Model T off its production line and that October 2, 1950 was the day that the first Peanuts comic was published. Some students also mentioned that Tuesday was National Coffee Day. Many students wrote about car-related stories. Some haven't seen any of the Charlie Brown specials, so here's a link to the Christmas Special.
Following our Quick Write, I usually do a Homework Check (I use the time while they're doing the Quick Write to pass back work.) Today I took time to go over the Final Drafts of their essays. The rubric that I use for evaluating their essays consider 5 categories: Focus, Content, Organization, Sentence Structures, and Mechanics. This allows me to give more holistic grades for the papers they write. As I noted with the students, the Focus section that includes the thesis statement, introduction, and conclusion is often the category that has the lowest scores. I'm especially "picky" on that section because the quality of the introduction and conclusion can determine the overall quality of a paper.
Students have handed in the rough drafts of their Process Essays, and I will hand them back next week. These papers can be turned in via the Google Classroom assignment. We discussed forming strong thesis statements for essays such as these.
We spent more time talking about some of the literary elements in My Antonia that included setting, theme, characters, and plot. The students seem to have formed some specific opinions about the characters of Jim Burden and Antonia which means 2 things: Willa Cather has done some good writing and the students have done some careful reading. We also discussed the importance of the setting to the overall characters and plot. As discussion progressed, we used some Accountable Talk practices in which students responded to comments made by their classmates with such comments as "I agree, and ..." or "I agree, but ..." or I disagree because ..." Learning to have good, academic discussions is an important part of academic growth.
Finally, we spent some brief minutes on the next Grammar topic, which includes dangling and misplaced modifiers. I must confess that instead of more time explaining these grammatical faux pas, I yielded to a request to play a quick game of "Dead Fish." In this game, the players are supposed to be a still as possible. Any movement and they're out. This is a favorite of the under 5 group, so it was especially funny to see high school students on the floor doing their best to not move.
Have a great weekend. Enjoy the beautiful fall colors (before that all need to be raked up!)
Blessings,
Mrs. Prichard
Assignments for Next Week
-- Read p. 70 - 94 of My Antonia
-- 3 Reader Responses
-- Correcting Misplaced Modifiers
-- Misplaced and Dangling Modifiers
-- Misplaced Modifiers 1 & 2
Note: Students can do this homework on the paper version or on Google Classroom. Sometimes students forget what the homework looked like, so these links can help them should they forget.
Links for this Week
Process Essay Rough Draft assignment
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