Writing 1: Writing 1 Class Notes

Hello There!

Today was another great day with this group. They are such a blessing as we continue to work and learn together.

As usual, we started the day with a Quick Write–since we are working our way through poetry, the prompt today was to try their hands at Haiku. I think we realized how challenging this seemingly simple art form is!

After that, students had the opportunity to try their hands at writing some original poetry. We watched a video of local poet Rudy Francisco perform a piece called “My Honest Poem” and then read an example based on his performance. Students had time in class to compose their own “My Poem” based on the examples. I could tell some really got into “the zone” writing these and my hope is to hear some of these performed at our Poetry Event.

Speaking of the Poetry Event, which will be the last day of class , we spent the rest of the class getting into more details about this project. It takes a lot of work to put on an event like this, and to split up the labor, each student signed up for a role on a committee. Their grade on this project will depend on not only their poetry performance techniques, but also how well they worked as a group. They are to answer a Discussion Question about their first and second preferences of which committee they’d like to participate in. They should also begin to narrow down the poems they would like to perform. **A conversation regarding Poetry Event Dress Code came up in class. I posted Poll in the form of a Discussion Question asking students to give their opinion.

To conclude our Grammar for the year, we finished our study of Simple and Compound sentences by completing two worksheets which they had time to work on in class. I also passed out a review sheet that they should complete and then correct. (The Key is on the Google Classroom assignment.) Correcting their own work will further help them review and will be much more beneficial than waiting a week to see if they got the answers right in preparation for a Final Sentence Patterns Test that they will take in class next week.

We didn’t touch on Writing in class today, because students are still working on their Essay ReWrite which is due next week.

We have a couple fun weeks planned to finish out our year, so let's make sure you get caught up on any late work.

Assignments for Next Week:

–Which Committee? Discussion Question

--Dress Code Question

--Choose 2 poems for your contribution to the Poetry Jam (Here is the scoring/committee information)

–Finish composing “My Poem”( if not finished in class)

-- Complete the Essay Rewrite

–Simple or Compound Sentences

–Writing Compound Sentences

-- Complete the Sentence Patterns Review sheet and correct it. (Bring the corrected version to class)

Links for This Week