Writing 2 Class Notes -- Week 5 (September 22)

Greetings!

Another great day in class!  

In recognition that Thursday is the autumnal equinox (the first day of fall when we have as many hours of daylight as we do night), I asked student to write in their Quick Writes about what they like about fall.  In addition to the changing leaves and "sweater weather," yummy foods like pumpkin and apple cider were mentioned.  Of course, some weren't so happy about the coming cold winter season.

Our Words of the Day from A Connecticut Yankee:

Pandemonium -- fr. Milton's capital of hell in Paradise Lost -- a wild uproar or unrestrained chaos

Lubber -- fr. Middle English lob, a clumsy person -- a big, clumsy, stupid person

Squabble -- fr. Swedish sqvabbel, to quarrel or gossip -- to verbally engage in a petty quarrel

Limpid -- fr. Latin limpidus, clear -- clear, transparent, calm, especially with water

I handed back the graded Final Drafts of the Personal Essays.  I enjoyed this set of essays and look forward to a full year of work from them.  They handed in the rough drafts of their Process Essays, which I will hand back next week.

We took more time with our literature selection.  Dividing the class into small groups, I asked them to discuss one of the themes found in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court:

Education & Training

Religion & the Church

Magic & Superstition

Slavery

Following their  small group discussions, each group shared with the class the key points and thoughts for their themes.

Our Grammar discussion focused on one of the common errors that I find in student writing -- Subject/Verb Agreement.  In sentences, if you have a singular subject, you need a singular verb.  For most sentences, this is obvious, but often in complex sentences the subject and verb are not close to one another.  Students are to do both sides of the worksheet.

Finally, a couple students mentioned that they had not been able to log on to My GradeBook, so here are the code and instructions:

Go to My GradeBook

Initial log in: Classword: JH2J6Z9JN

Initial password:  student's first name and last initial

After you have logged in the first time, you can change the log in information.

Assignments for This Week:

-- Read A Connecticut Yankee:  Ch. 24 - 27

-- Answer 4 Study Guide questions

-- Fill in 8 Vocabulary words

-- Grammar Worksheets

Links for This week:

Class Notes

Washington Post Article on Twain and ACY

Have a great weekend!

Blessings, 

Mrs. Prichard

Signing in to My GradeBook

Greetings Students and Parents!
Below are instructions for signing up for the online grade book that I will be using this year.  In past years, I've used Engrade, but that site is no longer available to individual teachers.  After lots of research and trials, I've settled on My Gradebook.  As we progress through the year, I'd appreciate any feedback.

First, a quick note about your use of this resource.  I'm using this online resource to help me compute grades and to divide the grades into categories.  Parents and students can use it to see scores and to check for missing assignments.  But a word of warning -- some weeks the homework scores will make it to my 3-ring binder but not immediately to My Gradebook.  I will send out mid-term reports and a "grades update" a few weeks before the end of the term.

Directions for Signing Up:1.  Go to www.mygradebook.com
2.  In the username box, give the class code, which you will find below.
3.  Your password is the student's first name and the first letter of the last name, all lower case.  For example.  Bobby Smith's password would be "bobbys."
4.  Click on "My Account," and on that page click on Create Primary Login.
5.  Set the Primary Login (username) and Primary Login Password that you want to use for this class.  (Note:  This username and password will be the same for the student's account, so communicate the choices with one another.)
6.  If any of the e-mail information needs updating, click on "update email."
7.  When all information is updated, click on "save."

When you have finished these steps, you can go to the assignments page, the calendar page, etc. for the class.  I'm hoping this website will not be difficult for all of us to navigate.

Blessings,
Tammy Prichard

Writing 2 Class Notes -- Week 8 (March 17)

Greetings!

This week in class we started with a Quick Write that asked about family heritage since it was St. Patrick's Day.  While my kids are "mutts," a blend of 8 or 9 nationalities, we have incorporated some Scandinavian traditions into our family celebrations.  As I write this, I'm thinking that it would be fun to incorporate some those British, German, and Scotch-Irish elements into our family, too.

The Words of the Day were short words or words for very small items:

aglet -- fr. OF aiguillette, a small needle -- the plastic or metal end of a shoelace

chad -- origin unknown -- a small round or square bit of paper formed when a hole is punched

grommet -- fr, OF gromette, curb of a bridle -- a metal or plastic ring encasing and reinforcing a hole

vim -- fr. an Americanism; fr. Latin vis, energy, force -- a lively and enthusiastic spirit

mauw -- fr. German, maul, muzzle -- the mouth, throat, or gullet of an animal

I handed back the Rough Drafts of the Cause/Effect or Problem/Solution Essays.  The class did a wonderful job with this assignment.  When I hand back rough drafts, I like to use that as an opportunity to go over common errors.  Students can learn points of grammar with worksheets, but it makes the most sense in the context of their own writing.  Our list included such items as not using contractions, avoiding "there is/are" sentences, avoiding the word "things," subject-verb agreement, noun-pronoun agreement, etc.

For the past few weeks, during the Grammar portion of class we've been learning about various types of phrases.  This week we concluded this unit by reviewing infinitive phrases.  Students shouldn't be surprised if they are confused.  These are really advanced grammar topics and are not as simple as picking out the subject or verb of a sentence.  When verbs (action words) morph into adjectives (participles) or nouns (gerunds) or nouns/adjectives/adverbs (infinitives), it gets pretty complicated.  We're now leaving phrases, and will be exploring types of sentences and elements in a sentence.

The class had read 4 Short Stories for this week; to close out the class we watched a Lego version of Twain's "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaverous County.

Assignments for this Week:

Read the following stories:  Chopin (p. 30), London (p. 122), Mansfield (p. 130), Gilman (p. 50)

Write 3 Discussion Questions per story

Final Drafts of Problem/Solution or Cause/Effect Essays

Grammar Worksheets -- 9.2

Links for this Week:

Class Notes

A Pair of Silk Stockings (audiobook)

The White Silence (audiobook)

If I were a Man (audiobook)

Direct and Indirect Objects video

Have a beautiful week!

Mrs. Prichard

Adjective Videos

As part of the Adjectives presentation this week, Nicole, Luke, and Andrew put together a great video "News Program."  I've included their video and the video that Writing 1 used.

Links & Videos for a Process Essay

Writing a thesis statement for a Process Essay can be challenging.  It is often hard to come up with an opinion on a process or to figure out what kind of stand to take?  Below are some helpful resources:

From Miami Dade College


From Synonym.com




From Literary Education Online

A Connecticut Yankee Audiobook

Some students are strong auditory learners, and it helps to have an audio version of a piece of literature. Below are some options for students who would be helped by listening to the book.

LibriVox (whole book and iTunes)

Youtube (Parts 1 & 2)

Writing 2 Class Notes -- Week 6 (February 19)

Greetings

It was a great day at CHAT today.  Students were were attentive and engaged with our discussion.  I'm always impressed with how they can stay focused for the 90 minute classes.

We just celebrated President's Day and February 22 is George Washington's birthday.  According to General Henry Lee, Washington was "first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen."  I used these details for our Quick Write and had the students write to any of our country's past presidents and ask 5 questions. 

I shared with the class about a speaker, Bob Goff, whom I heard share about his children who wrote letters to world leaders.  (You can read a review of this section of his book in this review or see an excerpt on the blog.)  As a follow up assignment, I asked the class to write a letter with three questions to some world or business leader, not a sports or Hollywood personality.

Note:  Please read this review of Bob Goff's book and his letter writing adventure with his children.

Our Latin Roots of the Day:

equi -- L. same, equal -- English derivatives:  equal, equality, equilibrium, equitable, equity

equus -- L.  horse -- English derivatives:  equine, equestrian

ex -- out; out of -- English derivatives:  exit, excavate, exclude, extract

exter/extra -- L. out; outermost -- English derivatives:  extraterrestrial, exterior, extremity, external

I handed back their mystery stories. They wrote such wonderful stories, and I had a great time reading them.  I think it was good to have a change from the regular essays.  I have some on the class website; if a student has not sent  a copy of his/her story to include, there's still time.  My plan is to have the printed copy by Spring Break. 

Our next writing assignment is either a Problem/Solution or Cause/Effect Essay. We didn't take time to discuss it; the Pre-Writes were to be done today and the Rough Drafts are due at the next class. 

We spent some talking about our Short Story selections.  The Kipling story, "Wee Willie Winkie" was liked by most, while we had mixed responses to the Dickens story, "Nobody's Story."  We discussed what makes up a writer's style:  word choice, mood, dialogue, descriptions, etc.  We all agreed that Munro's story, "The Open Window" was clever and enjoyable.

We covered more comma exercises at the end of the class.  The students have a worksheet that deals with compound sentences, interrupters, and introductory elements.  We did some of the sentences in class.  The rest of the worksheet can be done as homework.

Assignments for Next Week:

-- Write a letter to a world leader that includes 3 questions

-- Read the following authors:  Hawthorne (p. 73), Bierce (p. 101), Poe (p. 156)

-- Fill out the Short Story worksheet for one of the stories

-- Finish the Grammar Worksheet (13-4 and 13-5)

-- Rough Draft of the Problem/Solution or Cause/Effect Essay

This Week's Links

Class Notes

Be Secretly Incredible (about Bob Goff's letter writing adventure)

Literary Love Letters (from last week's Quick Writes)

Dr. Heidigger's Experiment audio version

The Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge audio version

The Cask of Amontillado audio version with text

The Cask of Amontillado Librivox version

NOTE:  We do not have class next week on February 26.  We will meet again on March 5.

Have a great two weeks!

Mrs. Prichard

Audio Recordings for Week 6 Stories

Class,

Below are links to audio recordings of the short stories assigned for this week.

The Sphinx without a Secret (Wilde)

     Librivox recording

Nobody's Story (Dickens)

Wee Willie Winkie (Kipling)

The Open Window (Munro)

Mrs. Prichard

Links to Introductions/Conclusions Resources

Class,
Below are some helpful links to other resources about the value of introductions and conclusions:

The Writing Center
Writing at U of Toronto
Taft College Online Writing Lab

Langston Hughes Poems

Below is the list of poems by Langston Hughes assigned fore reading this week:

Dream Deferred (Harlem)
I, Too
Little Old Letter
Mother to Son
The Negro Speaks of Rivers
Still Here

Robert Frost Poems

Below are the Links to the poems by Robert Frost that you are assigned to read:

Acquainted with the Night
After Apple-Picking
Birches
Design
Fire and Ice
Mending Wall
Nothing Gold can Stay
The Road Not Taken
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Two Tramps in Mud Time

Writing 2 Class Notes -- Week 12 (April 10)

Greetings!

Our Writing 2 Class went well this week, and I'm sure that most of the students are looking forward to having another break from CHAT classes for our Easter break.  We'll resume classes again the week following Easter/Resurrection Sunday.

The Quick Write for this week recognized Washington Irving, an early American writer whose birthday was this month.  Though most of the students were unfamiliar with his writings, I'm sure parents are familiar with his two well-known stories, "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow."  Since Rip Van Winkle was a lazy man whose plan to get out of work cost him 20 years of his life, I asked the students to think about and write about their favorite getting-out-of-work strategies. I heard some very interesting ideas from this creative group of students.

Our Words of the Day were words that sound the same, spelled the same, but have different meanings:

principle (a basic belief or primary idea) & principal (the leader of a school)

capitol (the building that houses a state's or nation's legislature) & capital (the primary seat of government)  

council (an assembly of persons with a focus/goal) & counsel (wise advice)

Embedded in this discussion were some other terms related the relationships between certain types of words.  Below are some helpful definitions:

homograph -- words with the same spelling, different sound, different meaning.  E.g. The wind blows/ Wind the clock.  Lead the people to safety./ Avoid using paint with lead in it. The desert has sand./ Don't desert your friends.

homonym -- words with the same sound, same/different spelling and different meaning.  E.g. Spruce up the house./I have a spruce tree.  I will pay a fair price./ Will you go to the fair?

homophone -- words with the same sound, different spelling,and different meanings,  E.g. to/two/too.  their/they're/there

synonym -- words that mean the same.  E.g. big/large/huge/immense/colossal/sizable/massive

antonym -- words that are opposites.  E.g. hot/cold; huge/tiny; wealthy/poor

We spent quite a bit of time discussing citations and formatting both in-text citations and Works Cited entries.  In other words, we had a "MLA style lite" lesson.  For more help, the blog post from last week has both websites and videos.

I handed back to them the Rough Drafts of the most recent essay, an Evaluation Essay.  In class we discussed some of the common errors and mistakes that I found as I read them.  In addition to revising and editing their rough drafts, I also want them to fill out a self-evaluation for their essay.  These self-evaluations give them time to reflect on their own writing.  I've handed out the rubric that I use when grading the essays.  On the back side of the self-evaluation sheet, I would like them to list 5 corrections they made on their essays and explain their reason for the correction.

We're continuing to read from our Poetry book. This week we discussed some poetry from the earliest period of American literature.  The poem we spent time on was Longfellow's "The Arrow and the Song."  For next week we will be discussing poetry from the mid-1800s to the mid-1900s.  

About the Poetry Presentations:  I have scheduled Presentations for the last 2 classes of the semester.  At the other school where I teach, they hold annual Poetry Out Loud competitions and have hosted a Poetry Slam.  In a Poetry Out Loud competition, students recite poetry from a pre-selected list.  Poetry Slams, on the other hand, feature original poetry.  In past years, we've done at the end of the school year what I have called a "Poetry Slam Out Loud."  Students can choose to either recited poetry from our book or recited something they have written.

Assignments for April 24:

-- Read poems by the following poets: 

     Wilcox:  Solitude

     Thayer:  Casey at the Bat

     Dunbar:  The Lesson, Sympathy, We Wear the Mask

     Frost:  (all poems on pages 44 - 50)
     Sandburg:  Chicago, Fog, I am the People, the Mob

     Williams:  The Great Figure,, The Red Wheelbarrow, This is Just to Say, The Widow's Lament in Springtime

     Hughes:  (all poems on pages 75 - 78)

-- Finish Final Draft of Evaluation Essay

     -- Complete Self-Evaluation and 5 Corrections

-- Be thinking about your poetry selection for our Poetry Presentations.

This week's links:

Class Notes

National Poetry Month

Poetry Out Loud

Poetry Slams

Homonyms, Homophones, Homographs

Have a great week and very blessed Easter!

Mrs. Prichard

Helpful MLA Citation Links

Research papers are challenging.  Not only are you required to come up with an original, thought-provoking thesis, but you have to research primary and secondary sources for enough information to back up your position.  And on top of that, you need to use your sources with integrity and give credit to those who are experts on your topic.  And if that's not enough, you need to follow specific guidelines for letting your reader know where you found this information.  Whew!!

Below is a list of helpful websites that will help with the MLA format.

Son of Citation Machine:  This website does the formating for you.  Type in the essential information, click on "Make Citation" and it gives you the entry that you can copy and paste into your paper.  Some college professors encourage their students to use this so that they have the correct format.  Others consider it cheating and the lazy student's way out.  I don't mind if students use it because I feel it's part of the learning process.

Easy Bib:  This site is similar to Son of Citation.  Like the above site, I think these are especially helpful with non-traditional sources.  Citing books with one author is not difficult.  Other print and non-print forms are challenging.

Purdue OWL:  One of my favorite writing resources is the Purdue Online Writing Lab.  If you go to the homepage, you will find just about any topic related to writing essays.

MLA formating videocast:  This Youtube video helps students format their papers.  It refers to Microsoft Word 2007. Some students already know a lot about using Word; others have parents who can help.  This is a helpful video if this information is needed.

MLA Works Cited videocast:  Another Purdue OWL video specific to the Works Cited page.

Durham College MLA style:  This is a longer video, but it's very complete!  In fact, I'd really like everyone to take the 30 minutes and give this video a careful "listen."

These are only a few websites.  If you need more help, google "MLA citation," and you will find a plethora of options.

Week 6 Grammar Lessons

Greetings Class!

Due to the shortness of this week's class, we didn't have time to discuss the material that you need to know for the worksheets.  Below are some links for video lessons that might prove helpful.

Appositives:
Grammar Lesson 20.2 -- Appositives
How to Use Appositives
Appositives -- SAT Boot Camp
School House Rock -- The Tale of Mr. Morton
Commas & Appositive

Subordinating Clauses
Subordinating Clauses -- SAT Boot Camp 
Subordinate Clauses
Subordinated Conjunctions Classroom song
Grammar Lesson 21.4 -- Subordinating Clause 

Helpful Links about Subordinating Conjunctions

Most of the students in class tracked with the discussion comparing prepositions and subordinating conjunctions.  For those who would like to read more (or for parents who've forgotten their high school grammar) below are some links that also explain subordinating conjunctions:

Grammar Clubs page on Subordinating Conjunctions and Dependent Clauses

A Yahoo Answers page

The Tongue Untied page

Zane Education page

The ChompChomp site (which also has a lot of worksheets)

My Antonia Resources

Below are some links to some helpful resources for the students as they put together their presentations for October 31.

Sparks Notes:  My Antonia Character Traits

Sparks Notes:  My Antonia Themes

Shmoop Study Guides:  My Antonia

Novel Explorer Study Guides:  My Antonia


Just a note -- I've read through these and am familiar with the information from each study guide.  I'll notice if any copying & pasting is going on.

Missing Assignments and Links

As I'm going over my record book, I'm finding that a few are missing assignments.  In order to help, I've got a list of some of the assignments with links to the blog posts with the specifics of the assignments.

Week 2  Questions for RedHeaded League

Week 2 Rest/Nonrestr Worksheet

Week 3 Prob/Solution RD

Week 3 Quest Speckled Band & Engineer’s Thumb

      Study Guide

Week 3 8 Dfn from Sherlock Holmes

Week 4 Sentence Rewrite

Week 4 Good2Bad Sentences

Week 4 Sherlock Holmes Final

Week 5 Problem/Solution Final

Week 5 Thesis statement

Week 5 5 Corrections

Week 5 Short Story Worksheets

Week 7 Cause/Effect RD

Week 7 Series Comma worksheet

Week 8 Short Story Worksheets

Week 9 Cause/Effect Final

Week 9 Short Story Worksheets

Week 10 College Essay

Week 11 College Essay

Week 11 Master the Comma

Week 13 Evaluation Finalvv

Week 13 Evaluation Thesis & 5 Corrections

Week 13 Reverse Outline

Week 13 Writing Test

Week 13 Grammar Test

Week 13 Thesis Statement & 5 Corrections

Week 14 Rewrite

Week 14 Rewrite Thesis Statement

Week 14 What I’ve learned

Week 15 Final Reflection

Links for the Short Story Worksheets:

Characters

The Short Story

Themes

Setting

Why Latin?

This semester I'm including Latin phrases into our beginning-of-class activities.  My reasons for doing this are varied:

1.  I love words, and Latin vocabulary expands our personal word banks, qualitatively and quantitatively.
2.  Writing is the art of using words well. (see #1).
3.  While some may complain that the Latin phrases used are archaic and therefore not useful, I disagree.  Neither are they little bits that might help you in a trivia contest.  Most of the phrases we discuss have connections to culture, history, the legal world, art, science, etc.  While we don't go into any great depth with these topics, I hope I'm salting their curiosity.
4.  Students are beginning to make connections with other topics they've studied and are communicating their knowledge with the rest of the class.  For example, when we looked at the phrase ars moriendi (the art of dying), one student shared what he had learned about the Roman military culture.
5.  Though I'm teaching writing, one of my primary goals is to encourage critical, creative, and analytical thinking.  When students learn to think broadly and diversely, they also grow as writers.  I feel that these Latin expressions help to generally expand their thinking skills.

Some interesting articles:
Teaching Latin in Primary schools in the UK
10 Reasons to NOT teach Latin  (for those who don't like Latin)
Latin Makes a Comeback
Why Teach Latin

As with any of the content of my classes, feel free to contact me.