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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