Today’s Quick Write was about: Optimism!
No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to the horizon of the spirit.
-Helen Keller
Write what the quote means to you and why.
Are you an optimist or a pessimist? What do you think about that?
Tell about an experience you’ve had with optimism or pessimism.
Optimistic Question: What is going well for you this week?
After a poll, it was decided that our class has a lot of optimists! Maybe that is why teaching this group is so fun.
We had no Words of the Day today. Instead, we reviewed the last O. Henry short Story: “Ransom of Red Chief.” They had a brief, small group review time where it was agreed that the story was both funny (a boy so bad and mischievous that his family didn't want him back from the kidnappers) and sad (for the same reason). After that we had a short Quiz.
Students then received their new Poetry books. It is my hope they will read some poems that will become favorites. We talked about how each week from here on out students will read all the assigned poems and respond to two of them.
Here are their 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. Our poetry unit will culminate in a Poetry Jam (poetry contest.) More details on that to come.
For our Grammar portion of the class, I gave some worksheets for continued practice in identifying sentence elements for the various sentence patterns that have been covered this semester.
We spent the bulk of the class time discussing the upcoming essay–the final "from scratch" essay. (Following this essay, students will complete a re-write of an earlier written essay and a short reflection paper.) This is a Prediction Essay. In this case, students will be making a prediction on how A.I. like ChatGPT will change things in the future.
As a Writing teacher, I struggle between wanting to prepare my students for the terrain out there while at the same time providing them opportunity to learn and hone writing skills. There are just no shortcuts in that area. The only way forward is for students (and teachers) to learn how to work with this “new normal.” In that vein, students will choose a target audience and make a prediction. In the course of their research, they will need to generate questions their target audience might have as well as give why they think their predictions might be right (and wrong) based on their research. They will need to have a personal real-world example and support their predictions using correct MLA citation and a Works Cited page.
After that, they split up into small groups and created a poster-sized One-Pager with the criteria for this paper. I was encouraged to hear some very astute conversations and work. The goal is to help them Pre-Write this paper and get their juices flowing. As an exit ticket, students jotted down their takeaways from our “Gallery Walk” of the different posters.
The Pre-Write and Rough Draft are due next week (3/30.)
Assignments for Week 11 (March 30)
-- Prediction Essay Rough Draft
-- Read Week 11 Poetry
-- Complements Worksheet (John Updike)
-- Sentence Patterns (Mr. Jackson)
-- Sentence Patterns Practice (Four bakers)
Links for this Week:
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