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:

• Holmes:  Read “The Final Problem” & “The Adventure of the Empty House"
  

• Characterization of Sherlock Holmes

• Grammar:  Wk3 - Complex Sentences & Commas

• Grammar:  Wk3 - The Complex Sentence (3 pages)

 

Links for This Week

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

Video, audio, and pdf versions of "The Final Problem"

Video, audio, and pdf versions of "The Empty House"

Have a great weekend!

Mrs. Prichard

Video for Gerund Phrases

Please watch this video to review gerunds.  Take notes if it will help!

Videos for Infinitive and Appositive Phrases

Watch and take notes if it would help. Infinitive Phrases



 Appositive Phrases

Sarah Kay's "Hands"

Our Quick Write began with a discussion about figures of speech and cliches related to "hands."  We compiled quite a list: 

I gotta hand it to you; in the palm of my hand; being fingered for a crime; wrapped around my finger; 5-finger discount; back of my hand; a slap in the face; thumbs up/down; give me five; lend a hand; hand it over, etc. 

 After this little brainstorming, I asked the students to write something about hands.  They could use some of our cliches or they could write about the use of their hands.  When they were done, I had them watch a short video about hands by spoken word artist, Sarah Kay.

Quick Write Instructional Video

Below is the video I had for the students with instructions for the Quick Write.