Writing 2 Class Notes -- Week 15 (December 17)

 Greetings!

We celebrated our final class with a "Christmas party" that included an "Ugly Christmas Sweater Design" contest and a Jeopardy game.  They were pretty intent on their designing and coloring.  When they were finished, they voted on the best/worst sweater design.  We enjoyed a nice, calming Christmas "vibe" with a YouTube video of a fire and relaxing Christmas music.

After our drawing and coloring, we had the final presentations for our My Antonia book projects.  We had a quiz, a Jeopardy game, some baked molasses cookies, artwork, a travel picture, and original music.  I am so proud of the work that the students have done; many of them have put a lot of their own creative selves into their work.  After our My Antonia projects, Bennett, Josh, and Jesse shared some memes made especially for our Writing 2 class. (see the link below)

Students handed in their final drafts of their Comparison/Contrast Essays.  I will go over the essays and any other homework that was handed; my goal is to have final grades out soon.  I mentioned to the class that I will take any homework today (until 11:59 p.m.) for full points value; I will also take work until Saturday, but for 1/2 point values.  As I told students, I've carefully gone through all of the Google Classroom assignments, so students need to contact me if they finish any assignments in Google Classroom.

Links for this week:

Writing 2 Class Notes 12/17 (with pictures)

Ugly Christmas Sweater

Learning and Reflection article

A Christmas Carol Final Exam slides

Night Before Christmas Mad Lib

Game-Based Learning

Best Relaxing Christmas Music w/Fireplace

Writing 2 Memes

I've enjoyed this group of students.  Each one is uniquely gifted for the plans that God has for him/her.  Have a blessed Christmas!!

Blessings, 

Mrs. Prichard

Writing 2 Class Notes -- Week 13 (December 3)

 Greetings!

It's hard to believe that we're in December already and that there are only 2 weeks left.  I feel like I'm just getting to know the students, so I'm already looking forward to working with them again next semester!

For our Quick Write, I chose from the long list of ideas that the students put together.  Here are the prompts for this week:

• Option 1: Do you like to take pictures or be in them? Why?
• Option 2: Do you re-watch TV shows or re-read books? Explain.
• Option 3: Share a story about a long car ride. 

After the Quick Writes we enjoyed some more obscure, Christmas-related words for our Words of the Day:

natal -- fr. Latin natus, "pertaining to one's birth" -- often this word is used to describe the star that appeared over Bethlehem, i.e. Jesus' natal star  [Note:  nativity also comes from the same root.]

epiphany -- fr. Greek epiphainein, "to reveal" -- a festival, manifestation, or commemoration; traditionally, Epiphany is on January 6 and is a celebration of the the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles as represented by the Magi (Matthew 2:1–12).

poinsettia -- fr. John Poinsett, an ambassador to Mexico who brought this plant to the attention of botanists -- a plant of large green leaves and large red blossoms that is used to decorate at Christmas.

wassail -- fr. Old Norse, ves heill, "be well/healthy" -- a greeting of good cheer; also hot mulled cider, drunk traditionally as an integral part of wassailing, a Medieval Christmastide English  ritual intended to ensure a good cider apple harvest the following year.

swaddling -- fr. Middle English, swathlen, to bind with clothes -- longs strips of cloth used to wrap or bind.  Jesus was "laid in swaddling clothes."

Note:  For the Spring semester, I've encouraged students to bring in unusual or interesting words that they find.

Following our beginning of class activity, we had a thoughtful discussion about the role of grammar instruction.  I had read a study about teaching grammar in 3 different ways:  through direct instruction, in the context of student writing, and in the context of reading quality material.  In this study, students in the writing-only and reading-only groups scored higher on a post-test.  For that reason, I like to incorporate as much of my grammar instruction with the students' own papers and with the literature we read.  As I mentioned to the class in response to a question, this does NOT mean that I will discontinue grammar lessons.  In the study, those who experienced grammar through direct instruction still learned a lot!

The bulk of our class time was given to the My Antonia student presentations of their book projects.  I love seeing the creativity of the class and encourage them to find a way to respond to their reading that fits who they are.  We had a short dramatic interpretation of Jim's encounter with the snake (thanks, Michael, James, Ethan, and Carson), a waltz lesson from Nalani, a quiz from Ava, some amazing sketches from Ingrid, and a game of My Antonopoly from Tyler.  (I've post pictures and videos on the blog -- see link below)

Here's the schedule for the next two weeks:

December 10

Jesse T

Josh

Bennett

Jessie M

Anna

Kara

Michael S

Ellie

Josie

Maddy

Grace

December 17

Philip 

Elliot

Leighton

Zach

Peter

Levi

Assignments for Next Week:

-- Quick Write for 12/3 (for those absent)

-- Discussion Question -- How improved (GC)

-- Comparison/Contrast Rough Draft

-- Comparison/Contrast Pre-Write

-- Verbals Practice #1

-- Verbals Practice #2

Links for This Week

Class Notes Blog Post 12/3

My Antonia Book Projects, Day 1

Have a wonderful weekend!

Blessings,

Mrs. Prichard

Tamera M. Prichard

Writing Instructor at CHAT

Writing 1, Writing 2, Writing 3

ACT Prep, British Literature

Writing 2 Class Notes -- Week 12 (November 19)

Greetings!

We had a great class today.  Students have worked hard this semester, and it shows in their attitudes and the quality of their work!

For our Quick Write today, I had students come up with some ideas for our weekly Quick Writes.  By now, they have an idea of what works for a good Quick Write, so it will be good to have ideas from them.  Usually, I type up a numbered list and students choose random numbers every week.

We covered 3 Latin roots in our Words of the Day. As I explained to the students, having some background knowledge about Latin roots will help them decode unfamiliar words that they might encounter in their academic careers.

ambi - Latin, ambiguu, having double meaning or both -- derivatives:  ambidextrous, ambiguous, ambidexterity

aud - Latin, audire, to hear -- derivatives:  auditory, audio, audience, auditorium.  (by the way, audacious comes from audacia, boldness)

aqua -- Latin, aqua, water --  derivatives:  aquatic, aquarium. aqueduct, aquifer

While the students are busily writing their Quick Writes, I hand back their homework.  Following our beginning of class activities, we discuss the homework.  This week I handed back their final drafts of the Biography Essays.  They've done a wonderful job writing!  I'm waiting for a few students to give me their rough drafts with my corrections before correcting their final drafts.  I've asked students to hand in their rough drafts when they hand in their final drafts.  I like to compare their drafts so that I can see what improvements they've made.  

Students should be working on the Pre-Writes and Rough Drafts of their Comparison/Contrast Essays, which are due the week after Thanksgiving Break (on 12/3)

For the Literature portion of the class, we talked about our presentation for our book projects for My Antonia.  We watched 2 videos that the students from previous years had done for their book projects.

Finally, in the Grammar portion of the class, we did a review of the phrases that we had previously worked on, including prepositional phrases, participle phrases, and gerund phrases.  During our next class we will go over infinitives.  Verbal phrases can be really confusing.  For example, when we looked at gerund phrases (verbals that serve as nouns) we had a sentence that had a verbal phrase that was an object of a preposition, and they gerund had its own direct object.  So it was a direct object of a verbal as the object of a prepositional phrase.   Confused??  Most of the students had glazed eyes and spinning heads by the end of class!

Finally, I encouraged the students to check their GradeSheets to make sure that what I have recorded is accurate and to see if they are missing any homework.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving week!  Be blessed!!

Mrs. Prichard

Assignments for Week 13 (12/3)

-- Quick Write for 11/19

-- Comparison/Contrast  Essay Pre-Write and Rough Draft

-- Discussion Question for Writing

Links for This Week

Class Notes

My Antonia Book Review

My Antonia Trailer

Here's the presentation schedule:

December 3

Michael M

James

Ethan

Carson

Nalani

Benjamin

Ava

Ingrid

Tyler

December 10

Jesse T

Josh

Bennett

Jessie M

Anna

Kara

Michael S

Ellie

Josie

Maddy

Grace

December 17

Philip 

Elliot

Leighton

Zach

Peter

Levi

Tamera M. Prichard

Writing Instructor at CHAT

Writing 1, Writing 2, Writing 3

ACT Prep, British Literature

Writing 2 Class Notes -- Week 12 (Nov. 14)

Greetings!

We had a good class time this week.  They usually come to class with lots of energy!

For the Quick Write prompt this week I asked students to give me a list of at least 10 prompt ideas.  We've had 11 weeks of writing these quick writes so they have an idea about the types of prompts they like.  I will take those prompts and use them for most of our Quick Writes for the rest of the year.  I had each student share one of his/her ideas.  I'm looking forward to using their ideas throughout the year.

Our Words of the Day (click here to see these words)

cattywampus -- 19th century slang; askew or disarrayed

bumfuzzle -- to confuse, perplex, or fluster

gardyloo -- an interjection yelled before throwing slops out the window; possibly from the French phrase garde a l'eau ("Attention!  Water!")

The class has been assigned a Comparison/Contrast Essay, and the rough draft and pre-writes are due next week.  Writing a clear thesis statement that includes the topic and the writer's stand on that topic can be really difficult.  Thesis statements are different from topic sentences in that they are meant to give purpose and to direct the focus of the paper.  We reviewed the elements of the introduction and did some brainstorming how to come up with that elusive thesis statement.  Along with the rough drafts and pre-writes, I want students to fill out the rough draft rubric.  This rubric can serve as a checklist for students to determine the strength of their introductions, conclusions, content, and organization.  

We had our first Book Project Presentations for My Antonia, and each one was wonderful.  David wrote a children's story about Jim and the snake, Joseph drew fresh book covers for the five sections of the novel, Julia brought yummy chocolate cookies, and Katie drew portraits of Jim and Antonia.  (see pictures in the blog!)  I'm looking forward to the next two weeks!  (Note:  some students have requested to change their projects.  That is OK.)

The upcoming presenters: 

Nov. 21

Trinity A

Annika C

Elliana & Aaron

Alyse P

Abbie Kate W

Irene S

Emma M

Laura M

Olivia R

John D.

Dec. 5

Michael & Aaron

Justin K

Eli A

Caleb K

Caralynn N

Isaac B

Sophia H

Brinna K

During the final minutes of class, we reviewed the Grammar topic of subject-verb agreement.  Basically, this means that if the subject is singular, the verb is singular.  If the subject is plural, the verb is plural.  It's a simple enough concept, but longer sentences with prepositional phrases and restrictive clauses/phrases complicated the issue.   They have two worksheets to practice.   (Note:  attached to this email is an handout explaining a little more about subject-verb agreement in case the information presented in class wasn't clear.)

Assignments for Next Week

-- Rough Draft & Pre-write of History Essay

-- Rough Draft Rubric (self-evaluation)

-- My Antonia project

-- 2 Subject-Verb Agreement worksheets

Links for This Week

Class Notes

Student Notes

Rough Draft Rubric

Comparison/Contrast Essay

Nov. 14 Project Presenters

Have a beautiful weekend!

Blessings,

Mrs. Prichard