We had a great class this week. The students engaged well with the discussion today.
Our Quick Write this week acknowledged the birthday on April 2 of Hans Christian Anderson, the Danish children's author. I had the students write about their favorite children's book. If they weren't inspired about that topic, they could write about the Winder Misery Index
The Words of the Day came from my book of foreign words and phrases. They were chosen at random by students who closed their eyes and pointed to a word on the page.
harem -- [Turkish - sanctuary; Arabic - something forbidden]; the multiple wives and female servants of a man in the Middle East, esp. during ancient times
hajji -- [Arabic, pilgrim]; a Muslim who has successfully complete a pilgrimage to Mecca
halcyon-- [Greek, kingfisher bird]; adjective: peaceful, calm, prosperous
The students were to hand in the rough drafts of their for Evaluation Essays today. I always look forward to reading their essays and will read and correct these so that I can give them back next week. If anyone did not hand it in, the essays can be e-mailed to me. I had planned on discussing the citations, but we spent more time on the literature selections. I will have a special blog post with more information. Many of the students were already familiar with the MLA format.
We finished our Short Story unit with some lengthier discussions of our final three stories by Sherwood Anderson, Nella Larsen, and Thomas Hardy. Following the class discussion, I divided the class into small groups for more discussion and evaluations of the stories. Since they have been writing evaluation essays and have that format in mind, I asked them to think about what criteria makes a good short story and then to use that criteria to determine which stories illustrated those points the best. They are a marvelous group of students, and they fully engaged in their small group discussion.
We are done with our short stories and have moved on to Poetry. Some students claim to like poetry while others really don't like it at all. I am usually able to coincide our poetry reading with the month of April, which is National Poetry Month.
Bradstreet (p. 1); Wheatley (p. 1); Holmes (p. 21); Emerson (p. 4, 5); Longfellow (p. 6 – 10); Whitman (p. 22 – 26); Dickinson (p. 29 – 32)
Assignments for next week:
-- Read poems by the following poets: Anne Bradstreet (p. 1); Phyllis Wheatley (p. 1); Oliver Wendell Holmes (p. 21); Ralph Waldo Emerson (p. 4, 5); Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (p. 6 - 10); Walt Whitman (p. 22 - 26); Emily Dickinson (p. 29 - 32)
-- Fill out the poetry worksheets:
-- Choose 4 poems and answer the questions on one side of the worksheet for that poem. You only need to answer 4 out of the 9 questions.
This week's blogs:
Class Notes
See you next week!
Mrs. Prichard
