Writing 2: Writing 2 Class Notes -- Week 8 (October 22)

Greetings!

We had a good time in class this week. This is a good group of students, and I always enjoy the time I have with them in class.

As many of you know, the church has expressed that students must wear masks in the hallways, common areas, and classrooms. If students are exempt, parents must communicate with Laura Johnson, who will communicate with tutors. Some teachers allow students to snack and/or drink in their classrooms, but the church doesn't allow food in the clubhouse, which is the room where my writing classes take place. (They can have water.) This week a few students were snacking, and I let it go. Next week, only water. I know that some students are not happy with having to wear masks in class, but they all had great attitudes and seemed willing to bless the church and its leadership.

Our Quick Write today had 3 options. First, October is German-American Heritage Month, so I gave students the option to write about their family heritages. Secondly, on October 22, 1938, Chester Carlson invented the first photocopier. He presented it to IBM, RCA, and Kodak, but they rejected it because they didn't see the value in a machine that only made copies. I asked the students to write about their favorite gadget/inventions or about something that they felt needed inventing. And, as always, students could write about anything else that was on their minds.

We had 2 Words of the Day:

preposition -- fr. Latin, prae, "before" and positus, "put or placed" -- the word placed before a noun or pronoun to establish a connection to another noun or a verb.

conjunction -- fr. Latin con, "with," and juncto, "to join together" -- the word used to join other words, phrases, or clauses.

Before we talked about our writing, I showed a short video that I had intended to show the previous week when students were writing their Process Essays. This video is of 2 children writing detailed instructions for their father about making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. (link below)

For our Writing portion of the class, we discussed various ways topics that might work for an Extended Definition or Classification Essay. For the Extended Definition, abstract topics seem to do well because the writer can use examples or analogies to explain the topic. For Classification Essays, students should think of topics that are composed of various categories. Below are links to websites with examples and further explanations. The Pre-Write and Rough Draft should be handed into Google Classroom next week.

We spent time going over some of the verbal phrases that are part of our Grammar unit for this fall. Verbal phrases are challenging because we're trained to look at the verbs as the second part of the sentence and as the action that the subject does. Students are fairly familiar and adept with prepositional phrases, but gerund, infinitive, and participial phrases can be confusing. Especially if the verbal takes a direct object or includes a prepositional phrase. We'll continue practicing identifying these phrases throughout the year. (See the link below, "About Phrases" for some more information)

For the Literature portion of the class, I went around the room and collected descriptions of the primary characters. With the exception of a couple half-hearted, non-serious responses, I could tell that the students are getting to know these characters. They're aware of strengths, weaknesses, and even inconsistencies in Jim, Antonia, Lena, etc. That means they've done some careful reading and that Willa Cather has done a good job writing.

Have a great weekend. Peace to your homes!

Mrs Prichard

Assignments for Next Week

-- Read p. 141 - 153 of My Antonia

-- Project Proposal (due 10/29)

-- 3 Reader Responses

-- Extended Dfn/Classification Pre-Write

-- Extended Dfn/ Classification Rough Draft (GC)

-- Discussion Question (GC)

-- Identifying Participles

Links for This Week

Class Notes