Greetings!
We had an fun class today -- we covered a lot of material, We started with our Quick Write. As I told them last week, the plan was to write letters of encouragement and gratitude to someone. I also gave them 2 other options. They could write a "literary love letter" to some aspect of writing or literature, or they could write a "love letter" to a person or some thing that they love. Because I think it is really important to write real letters and send them in the mail, I'm offering extra credit to those who do that. For those who wanted the extra credit, they wrote their letters, put them in sealed envelopes, and handed them in. If need be, they can bring the addresses next week if they forgot to bring them today. I will mail them.
We didn't have any Words of the Day because I wanted to make sure that we had enough time for other activities.
I handed back the rough drafts of the Mystery Stories. These were amazing! I found myself thinking of the plots and characters long after reading and correcting them. Many students wrote more than they usually did, and they were pretty creative. As per my practice, I go over common mistakes as part of our rough draft discussions and use these for grammar instruction. The most common errors I found in their write had to do with punctuating dialogue, paragraph formation, comma splice sentences, and compound sentences with commas. Students are to revise their rough drafts into final drafts for next week. Ask you student to share his/her story with you.
We've now finished our 6 short stories of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. To round out this literature unit, students are to write an essay exam in which they address the question, "Is Sherlock Holmes a Hero?" They must first define what a hero is and then apply their definition to Sherlock Holmes. We had NO discussion on these points because I want students to give me their own original ideas. Usually we had a debate-like discussion after this assignment, so I look forward to that next week.
We discussed how, as any detective is solving crimes, it is important to be able to tell if someone is lying or not. To that end, I handed out playing cards to each of the students, and 4 of them received an Ace, indicating that they were the Liar. They were all to mingle and tell one another about something that they had done this year during the pandemic. Everyone was to tell the truth except for the 4 "Liars." At the end of this activity, student shared whom they thought were the liars. Oddly enough 2 of the actual liars did not even make it on the list. I wonder if this would have turned out differently if the students had not been wearing masks.
I gave them their next book, Great Short, Short Stories, but we will hold off on reading any of the stories until after the Essay Exam.
Our Grammar instruction centered again on dependent and independent clauses. In our focus on commas, we are also learning a lot about sentence structures. We took time to work on the homework for next week so that students could work together and ask questions. Students have 2 sides of one worksheet to do for next week.
A note on homework: last week with 46 rough drafts from Writing 1 and Writing 2, I only corrected student papers. The other grammar and literature homework will be graded and entered into Track My Grades this week. Again, if you are not able to get into Track My Grades, let me know. We discovered today that I had the wrong email entered for one student, and I was able to correct it.
Assignments for next week
Mystery Story Final Draft
Sherlock Holmes Final Exam
Spring Writing Survey
Grammar: Wk4 - Identifying Independent/Subordinate Clauses
Grammar: Wk4 - Writing Independent/Subordinate Clauses
Links for This Week
Class Notes
Have a great weekend!
Blessings,
Mrs. Prichard
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