Hi Everyone!
We had a great class today! I am always encouraged to see such bright, inquisitive students each week who are engaged and ready to learn!
We kicked off with our Quick Write. As our writing subjects get a little more “random,” it’s great to see students leaning in to ask themselves good questions in order to think of potential topics to write on. Today’s subject: silverware.
Next, we moved on to the Writing portion of our class. Today, I introduced a new unit–really an expansion of the summarizing we’ve been working on. From now on, we will be working with multiple references, so today we worked on the skills of making source outlines and then combining those source outlines into one fused outline.
After viewing some short teaching videos which gave an overview of the process, I handed out three source texts on the subject of Victorian Christmas traditions. Together we read through the texts and picked out possible topics. After assessing which topic had the most important, interesting and relevant information, we chose one.
Then, from each source (labeled A, B & C), we filled out three abbreviated KWOs (also labeled A, B & C) and we ended up with three short source outlines. After that, our work is easy: simply scan the source outlines for the “best of the best” information and fill out one fused outline. This fused outline helps organize information, and causes us to think critically on how the pieces should fit together. It’s like a first draft and I explained that once that process is complete, the paragraph basically writes itself! For a two paragraph composition, they will need to repeat this process twice.
As I wrote my outlines for the first topic on the board, students worked on theirs. For this first paragraph, they are welcome to use my outlines or make their own. Their homework is to write a second paragraph on a topic of their choosing using these source texts. They should continue making source/fused outlines and use their checklist to write.
Whew! They worked hard during that teaching! Though I handed out our new novel, we will leave discussing the Literature portion of the class until next class. After handing out A Christmas Carol, I explained that Charles Dickens has named each of the five chapters of his book “staves”--like the lines on a music staff. There are five lines/staves in musical notation, and there are five chapters. It is a carol (song) afterall! Students will read Stave 1 as homework and answer questions.
No Grammar presentations this week–I asked the Pronouns and Prepositions groups to delay their presentations by one week. We will pick up next week (11/21) with the pronouns group of Alexa, Samara and Evelyn.
Homework
Summarizing Multiple References–Victorian Christmas
Read Stave 1 A Christmas Carol
Links for this Week
About Summarizing Multiple References (with teaching videos)
No comments:
Post a Comment