Hello Everyone!
Visual Vocabulary
Our words for today were big “feelings words”: laconic & ebullient. The former means sparse or few words, while the latter means lively or enthusiastic. When I feel ebullient, I am seldom laconic–I usually talk a lot!
Writing
Today, the Thank Me narrative essays and Thank You notes were due. Now that those are in, it is time to introduce the next essay. This is the LAST “from scratch” essay this year!
The subject for this essay is a Compare/Contrast essay. We spent some time today analyzing a sample, brainstorming some ideas for topics and also some strategies for organizing it. This essay requires students to pull all their writing skills together and to write a five paragraph essay with a thesis statement, bibliography and complete style checklist. The KWO is due next week (April 3) and the final draft is due after break (April 17.)
For the Literature portion of our class, we finished our O. Henry short stories unit with a Jigsaw style discussion. Students became “experts” on one aspect of the three last stories: Plot, Theme, or Setting & Characters. After they had thoroughly discussed, they were also to come to a consensus on this question: What was your opinion on “The Ransom of Red Chief”? It was interesting to discuss because the story was both funny (about a boy so bad and mischievous that his family didn't want him back from the kidnappers) and sad (for the same reason).
After the discussion, I handed out their new books: Great Short Poems. This is an anthology of short verse that spans 400 years of English and American literary history. Students have the books, but I will also post the poems on Google Classroom.
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 the Grammar portion of the class, we had a quick lesson on complements. Complement is the term used for a word or words that are needed to complete the meaning of an expression. Last week we studied the use of direct and indirect objects as complements. This week, we added Predicate Nouns and Predicate Adjectives as complements. I reminded them of our Venn Diagram of linking verbs–once they have determined if the verb is an action verb (AV) or a linking verb (LV) then they will be able to identify the complement.
Here’s some Grammar Code:
PNs and PAs always follow a LV.
Since they are experts at nouns and adjectives from the Fall Semester, determining which is a noun and which is an adjective should be relatively simple. Make sure to correct those worksheets before you turn them in.
Blessings on your weekend!
Mrs. G
Assignments for Week 11 (April 3)
-- Read Week 11 Poetry (PDFs on Google Classroom)
–Raleigh (p.1); Donne (p.); Quarels (p. 4); Milton (p. 5); Bradstreet (39)
Grammar
–Week 10–Complements Worksheets (Updike)
–Week 10–Sentence Patterns (Mr. Jackson)
–Week 10–Sentence Patterns Practice (Four bakers)
Links for this Week:
About the Compare/Contrast Essay
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