Thursday, March 24, 2022

Writing 2 Class Notes -- Week 10 (March 31)

Greetings!

Another great day!!

Here are our prompts for the Quick Writes:

Prompt #1
On March 24, 1603, Elizabeth I died and King James I was crowned the King of England, and on March 25, 1306, Robert the Bruce was crowned King of Scotland.  How much do you know about the history and rule of other countries?  Is this important knowledge for us to have?  Why?

Prompt #2
On March 26, 1874, American poet Robert Frost, much admired for his depictions of rural New England life and his realistic verse portraying ordinary people, was born in San Francisco.  What are your thoughts about poetry?  Do you like to read it and do you think it’s an important part of our culture?

Prompt #3
Next Week is National Cleaning Week.  How would you describe your cleaning style?  Do you do fall or spring cleaning at your house?  Write about anything cleaning-related.

Our Words of the Day were from Annelise and Michelle
hippophile -- a lover of horses
peristeronic -- of or relating to pigeons

We had a brief check in on their Evaluation Essay; the rough drafts are due on March 31.  Some students have given this some thought, and others have waited until this next week to work on it.  Establishing criteria and evaluating something with that criteria is an important academic skill.

We finished up with our Short Stories unit with a discussion of Nella Larsen's story "Sanctuary."  This is an early 1930s.  She was part of the Harlem Renaissance, a blossoming of black American cultural and artistic voices of the early part of the twentieth century.  I also recommended a short book, Passing, by Larsen that deals with being in and out of the black culture as a mixed race person.

We are finished with our Short Stories and are now onto Poetry. Our poems come from a book titled 101 Great American Poems, and they will be reading a chronological collection of poems, starting with poetry from the early 1800s to that of the mid-1900s.  Students have the books, but I will also post the poems on Google Classroom.  

After the students read all of the poems, they are to choose 2 poems to respond to; here are their options:
1.  Fill out a Poetry Worksheet for one or both
2.  Write a paragraph about the poem(s) that analyzes the poem; discuss what you think it means and why you like or don't like it.
3.  Instead of writing a paragraph, record a video commentary about the poem.  Youtube LiveStream or some other app on a device is OK as long as it can be seen by me.
4.  Do a piece of art that connects with the content and meaning of the poem.  
5.  Make a video of your recitation of the poem.

Finally, for our Grammar portion of the class, we continued our discussion of punctuation.  This week we went over how parentheses and dashes are used and how they differ from  commas.

Have a blessed weekend!  
Blessing,
Mrs. Prichard

Assignments for Week 11 (April 15)
Links for this Week:  
Writing 2 Class Notes -- Week 10 (March 31)


Tamera M. Prichard
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Saturday, March 19, 2022

Writing 2 Class Notes -- Week 9 (March 17)

Greetings!

We are definitely heading into spring.  I saw some students in shorts and lighter-weight jackets as opposed to the heavier winter apparel.  

Here were the prompts for today’s Quick Write:

  • How do you define success?  What would success look like to you in your future?

  • What qualities do you see in yourself that you also see in other family members?  How are you alike or not like someone you’re related to?

  • Who is someone you admire? Why do you admire this person?  What qualities does this person have that you would like to have?

  • What fictional character would you like to meet?  Why? What would you do or talk about?


Our Words of the Day came from our students:
inimical-- fr. Latin in, "not" & amicus, "friendly" -- not friendly; hostile
cordiform-- fr. Latin cor, "heart" & formia "shaped" -- something that is heart-shaped
heterochromatic-- fr. Greek, hetero, "different" & chromos, "colors" -- to have eyes that are 2 different colors
bibliophile -- fr. Greek biblio, "books" and philo, "love" -- a lover of books

Students have handed in the Final Drafts of their Problem/Solution or Cause/Effect Essays. We're now ready to start our final "from scratch" essay. (Following this essay, students will complete a re-write of an earlier written essay and a short reflection paper.) This next writing assignment is an Evaluation Essay. This writing assignment is one of the more complicated essays that they will write. Firstly, they need to decide what they want to evaluate. We brainstormed some possible topics: cars, movies, teachers, restaurants, books, food items, etc. After they've chosen the topic, they need to decide what qualities of that their topic they will evaluate; in other words, they need to establish criteria. After they've developed their criteria, they need to decide what good likes and what bad looks like. The rough draft and pre-write are due March 31 but it will be helpful for them to start early choosing a topic and doing any need research.

Following the writing discussion, we briefly covered one of our Short Stories, which was Kate Chopin's "A Pair of Silk Stockings." For this discussion, I use the Jigsaw small group activity. In this type of small group work, students are grouped, and each group has it's own discussion topic. After they've fully discussed that topic, they are regrouped so that the new groups have someone from each of the specific topics. The first small groups discussed the characters, plot, setting, and themes of the story. Then I re-grouped them, and they were tasked with using the information that came up in their first conversations to answer this question: What is your opinion about Mrs. Sommers' choices for how she spent her day and her money. Every year when I assign this story, I get a wide range of responses; some say she was foolish and selfish and others completely sympathize. (Note: If you're curious about the story, here's a link to my personal blog that has the text of the story.)

To cover the other 2 stories, I've included a short stories quiz on Google Classroom.

We continue to work on punctuation for our Grammar instruction. We've been working on commas, and this week we're working on commas with dates and addresses.

Have a blessed weekend!
Mrs. Prichard

Assignments for Next Week

Links for This Week
Writing 2 Class Notes -- Week 9 (March 17)



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Thursday, March 10, 2022

Writing 2 Class Notes -- Week 8 (March 10)

 Greetings!

We are officially over half way through the Spring semester.  I don't know about you, but once we hit daylight savings time and the days get longer, the days also seem to fly by more quickly!

For the Quick Write this week students had 3 options: 
  • March 10 is National Pack a lunch Day. Write about your favorite lunches.
  • Where is the one place you never want to go to again?
  • List 20 of your favorite foods
  • And, as always, the "Whatever" option

We had three Words of the Day
lunette-- fr. French, lunette, "little moon" -- a small window, often crescent shaped in a dome
telluric -- fr. Latin, terra, "earth" -- of or pertaining to the earth
ozostomia -- fr. Greek, ozein, "to smell' and stoma, "mouth" -- having bad breath

I handed back the rough drafts of the Cause/Effect and Problem/Solution Essays that the students had written.  As part of our writing/grammar instruction, I covered common errors in the papers.  For this round of essays, these were the topics:  paper format, the word "things," there is/are sentences, comma splice sentences.  The final drafts are due next week.  In addition to the final draft, students are to fill out a form for their first 5 and last 5 mistakes on their rough drafts.

We have read more Short Stories by Twain, Jewett, Crane, and Gilman.  As promised, we had a short quiz.  I asked students to write a 1-minute version of the stories they had recently read.    

Then for the rest of our Grammar portion of our class, we are continuing our work with commas.  This time, we are practicing putting commas in the correct places for dates and addresses.  We had time in class to work on our worksheets.

Have a great weekend!
Blessings,
Mrs. Prichard

Assignments for Next Week:
Links for This Week
Writing 2 Class Notes -- Week 8 (March 10)




Tamera M. Prichard
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Thursday, March 3, 2022

Writing 2 Class Notes -- Week 7 (March 3)

 Greetings!

It was so good to see the students; including our week off and the week my son subbed for me, it's been 3 weeks since I've seen their smiling faces. ðŸ˜€

Below are our Quick Write prompts for the day.  

  • Tuesday, March 1, is National Minnesota Day!!  What do you like the most about Minnesota?  What might you say to convince someone to move to or at least visit Minnesota?  If you were to have visitors from a far away place come to Minnesota, what sights would you like them to see?
  • Wednesday, March 2, is World Teen Mental Health Day.  What does it mean to be mentally healthy?  What do you do to be mentally healthy?  How do you help others who might be struggling with their own mental health?
  • Friday, March 4, is National Grammar Day  (It’s “imperative” that we “march forth” on this day!)  Write either a rant or a praise about what you think of this system for understanding language and communicating with one another.


We usually do a quick Homework Check between our beginning of class activities and instruction.  Students can hand in their work for this week when they come to class next week.  With the exception of their rough drafts.  Those should be finished and put on the Google Classroom assignment for the Problem/Solution or Cause/Effect Rough Draft. 

Speaking of the  Problem/Solution or Cause/Effect Rough Draft, we took some time for each student to share about their topics.  The framework for this essay is fairly straightforward.  As we went around the class sharing topics, I was impressed with wide variety of topics and their good ideas.  I look forward to reading their rough drafts this week.

We turned our attentions to our short stories.  We watched a short Lego animation of a story that is assigned for next week, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras Country."   After that we broke into small groups to share funny stories that had happened in their lives.  It seemed that a number of the students had not read all of the stories assigned for this week.  When that happens, I often find a good "pop quiz" is in order.  

For our Grammar lesson, we're still learning about commas.  We've looked at commas with compound sentences, commas with complex sentences, and commas with introductory phrases/clauses.  This week, we are adding commas to sentences with appositives and phrases that "interrupt" a sentence.  We did almost half of the assigned work during class, so that students could ask questions.  

Have a great weekend.  
Blessing,
Mrs. Prichard

Assignments for Next Week
Links for This Week
Writing 2 Class Notes -- Week 7 (March 3)

Have a great weekend!
Blessings,
Mrs. Prichard

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