Writing 2: Writing 2 Class Notes -- Week 11 (March 31)

Greetings!

We had a lovely class this week. One aspect that I especially enjoy with this Writing 1 class is that they all get along well and participate in a harmonious way. We have good, productive conversations.

For our Quick Writes, here were their options:

Wednesday (3/30) was National I am in Control Day. What areas of your life do you feel like you are in control of? What would you like to be more in control of? What would you like to NOT be in control of?
Thursday (3/31) is National Taters Day. What is your favorite way to eat potatoes? Or you could list all of the ways that you can think of to fix potatoes.
Friday (4/1) is April Fool’s Day. What is the best prank that you have ever done or heard of? Or what prank would you like to pull?
Sunday (4/3) is World Party Day. If you didn’t have to worry about the expense, what kind of party would you like to throw? Describe it in detail.

We had some unusual Words of the Day:

polychromatic-- fr. Greek, polys, "much" and khroma, "color" -- showing a variety or change in colors, e.g. Joseph and his polychromatic coat.

taciturn -- fr. Latin tacere, "to be silent" -- disinclined to participate in a conversation

Before we proceeded to the next part of our class, I introduced Amanda Gonsalves, my replacement for teaching Writing 2 next year. For the past 10 years I've been teaching part time at CHAT and at Arcadia Charter School in Northfield where I live. I've been offered a full-time position at Arcadia, and I feel I'm to focus more time in my community. I have ABSOLUTELY LOVED teaching at CHAT, so this has been a very hard decision. In Writing 1 and Writing 2 we build a good community of learners & writers, and I've come to know and appreciate each one of the students. Saying good-bye to students I've gotten to know so well these past 2 years will not be easy. Kim Witthuhn will be teaching the Writing 3: Research and Writing class next year. Many students are familiar with her middle school writing and social studies classes. Now onto the rest of the class stuff before I get teary again ......

They have handed in the rough drafts of their Evaluation Essays. This is one of the hardest essays of the year. Students must first establish and explain criteria used to evaluate a product, event, person, etc., and then they need to apply that criteria to their topic. All of the students have grown as writers over the year, and I look forward to reading their essays.

We are now reading Poetry for our Literature portion of the class. Some students like poetry, but many aren't that crazy about it. For our first poetry discussion, I did Jigsaw groups again. The students were first in groups that discussed one of the assignment poems. Then I remixed the groups so that a group had a representative for each of the poems. From both groups I heard some thoughtful comments about both the surface and deeper meanings of the poetry. Well done, class!

The class has their new poetry books, and they should read the poems of the poets listed below. For their homework, they need to respond to 2 poems, and the have some 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.

6. Do some kind of movement (creative dance or acting out) that relates to the poem.

For our Grammar section of the class, we had a special lesson on the semicolon. Most people (students and adults alike) are confused about the bit of punctuation; they use it as a comma or as a colon. I use the Reese's peanut butter cups as an object lesson. Ask your students about how the semicolon is like this candy. They also have 2 worksheets to practice putting semicolons and colons in the right place. [Note: I did not print a KEY for these worksheets, so if they handed them in during class I will correct them. If they do them over the week, they should use the KEY attached to the Google Classroom assignment.]

Have a beautiful weekend!

Blessings,

Mrs. Prichard

Assignments for Next Week: