Saturday, January 29, 2022

Writing 2 Class Notes -- Week 3 (January 27)

Greetings!

This week's Quick Write prompts were taken from the list that the students in Writing 1 and Writing 2 contributed to last fall.  Here are the prompts for today’s Quick Write:

  • What is a favorite childhood memory?

  • What is one of the best days of your life?

  • What was a highlight of your week?

  • Whatever …..


Our Words of the Day came from Michael, Nina, and Annelise
virile-- fr. Latin vir, "man" -- strong, manly
corvine-- fr. Latin corvus, "raven"  -- resembling a crow  
feriation-- fr. Latin, feriatus, "to rest from work" --  to take a vacation or holiday
misanthrope -- fr. Greek, mis, "hate" and anthropos, "man" -- to hate mankind

Students have handed in the Pre-Writes and Rough Drafts of their Mystery Stories.  Many of them enjoyed writing these and felt that they wrote more than they usually wrote.  Others felt that this writing assignment was a bit harder since it's not easy to be creative.  This kind of writing required some different planning and a different kind of thinking.  I am looking forward to curling up with a cup of coffee and reading my pile of Mystery Rough Drafts.  

We are 4 stories into our book of Sherlock Holmes mysteries, and the consensus this week was that the "Speckled Band" was more interesting than "The Engineer's Thumb."  Most agree that there was something satisfying about following clues and deducing solutions.  Someone mentioned the "red herrings" in the story about the speckled band.   These false clues and distractions add another layer of interest.

For the Grammar portion of class, we worked again on complex sentences.  In our unit on Commas, we also need to learn about sentence structures.  You won't understand where the comma goes with regards to dependent clauses in complex sentences if you don't know what a complex sentence is.  You won't know the difference between an independent and dependent/subordinate clause if you don't understand what the essential elements of a sentence are.  All of grammar is interconnected, and the students are doing a great job at working to understand these intricacies.  

Assignments for Next Week:
 
Links for This Week
Writing 2 Class Notes -- Week 3 (January 27)

Have a great weekend!
Mrs. Prichard
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Thursday, January 20, 2022

Writing 2 Class Notes -- Week 2 (January 20)

 Greetings!

We started today with a Quick Write using prompt options that they had written:
  1. What are some of your pet peeves?
  2. What do you do that annoys others, either accidentally or intentionally?
  3. What is the grossest thing you've ever eaten?
  4. What is the best/worst part of your hous?
  5. Whatever????
Our Words of the Day were from Michael, Nina, and Annelise
cantillate--  from Latin cantillare, "to sing low" -- to chant or intone
onychophagy-- from Greek onux, "nail;" phago, "to eat" -- nail-biting 
apathy -- from Greek a, not, without; pathos, feeling/emotion -- lack of feeling or interest; indifference
empathy -- from Greek em, "in;" pathos, feeling/emotion -- the ability to identify with feeling the suffering of others.

The usual Agenda for the class time is to do these beginning of class activities and then most of the time we cover these topics in this order:  Writing assignments/instruction, Literature discussion, and Grammar instruction/work.  My plan is to give the last 10 - 15 minutes of every class to working on Grammar assignments so that if students have questions, they can ask them right in class. 

For our Writing discussion, I checked in with them about the progress of their Mystery Stories.    The Pre-Writes and Rough Drafts are due next week. We discussed for a bit how writing this story will take a different kind of planning.  Students are thinking about putting in clues and even red herrings.  I am really looking forward to reading their stories next week!  By the way, if students want to read some student-written stories, they can go to the Writing 2 blog, and the stories are listed on right hand margin.  

The class has read the first 2 stories from our book, Six Great Sherlock Holmes Stories. I read sections from the first pages of the story and we discussed the character and abilities of Sherlock Holmes.  Then I divided the class into 2 groups, and they played the game "Enter the Mystery Mansion."  Students were given cards with pictures, and as a group, they were to compose a mystery and/or spy story.  When they were done, they retold their stories for the Zoom portion of the class.  They were quite creative!

The last part of class was for Grammar instruction.  Today, I did a short lesson on simple and compound subjects and predicates along with compound sentences.  I often use fairly simple sentences to illustrate the concepts, but then we take these concepts and apply them to the students' own writing.  T

Have a great weekend!
Blessings,
Mrs. Prichard

Homework for Next Week:
Is it a Compound Sentence? -- Note: This one's extra credit because I left the worksheet at home


Links for this Week
Writing 2 Class Notes


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Friday, January 14, 2022

Writing 2 Class Notes -- Week 1 (January 13)

 Greetings!

It was good to be back in the classroom and to see everyone's smiling faces.  

For our Quick Write today, students had 3 options:  1) On January 12, it was National Hot Tea Day, and students could write about their experiences with tea; 2) Yesterday, January 13, is National Stickers Day, and students could write about sticker collections or uses for stickers; and 3) Today, January 14, is National Take a Missionary out to Lunch Day, and students could write about a missionary they know.   

We did not have any Words of the Day, but students can bring them to class for us to enjoy.  (And get some extra credit, too.)  For the rest of the semester, students can bring in interesting words for our weekly Words of the Day part of our discussion.  For these words, they also need to include the etymology and a definition.  

The first topic we covered was our first Writing assignment -- a Mystery Story.  This is one of my favorite assignments of the whole year.  Every year students come up with such creative and clever stories.  We talked at length about what made for a good mystery, and one student offered some good advice, which is to start the mystery from the end.  In other words, know how it will resolve and work backwards.  If you go to the CHAT Writing 2 blog, you will find on the right side-bar some stories from previous years.  The Pre-Write and Rough Draft are due in 2 weeks on January 27.

Next on the agenda was our first book for the semester.  This semester we will be reading 6 Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  Many are familiar with the BBC show Sherlock, which takes some of the original stories and gives them a 21st century interpretation.  In our pre-reading discussion we discussed the elements for a detective novel.  I'm looking forward to hearing their impressions of the original stories.  [NOTE:  Most of these stories can be found as audioversions on Youtube or Librivox. Feel free to listen to the stories.]

Last semester in the Grammar portion of the class we covered types of phrases, including verbal phrases.  This semester, we will be all about the comma (and a few other bits of punctuation.  I find that to fully understand comma rules, a writer must understand basics about other facets of sentence writing.  In other words, I'm using the comma as an avenue to teach other aspects of grammar.  As with last semester, students must correct their own worksheets and hand them in with corrections.  I must see clear evidence of that, or the assignment will get a zero.  

Glad to be back in the classroom with these great students!  See you all next week!

Have a great weekend!
Blessings,
Mrs. Prichard

Assignments for Next Week
-- Read "The Scandal in Bohemia" and "The Redheaded League"
-- Start working on the Mystery Story
-- Mystery Story PreWrite & Rough Draft
-- Grammar -- Compound & FANBOYS
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