Writing 1 Class Notes–Week 6--February 26

 Hello Dear Students!

We made it back from our first break of Spring semester –I trust we all had refreshment and are ready to learn together!

We began the class with two new Visual Vocabulary words:  cynical and audacious.  We discussed how with too many audacious news stories, we become cynical and hard to convince. It’s the ultimate “Boy Who Cried Wolf.”

Writing

Next, we checked in about the Compare/Contrast essays. After sharing their topics with the class, we practiced writing thesis sentences for this essay. Students had time to think-pair-share their work. I believe they are ready to begin drafting their essays if they haven’t done so already.

During their sharing time, I circulated and gave them credit if they met the deadline for the KWO for this essay.  As usual, the assignment will be closed for submissions by midnight tonight. The reason for that is to encourage students to meet their writing deadlines.😉 Speaking of deadlines, your essay should be ready for Peer Review on March 12.

On a separate, but related note:  I reminded students that it is important to draft their essays in the template provided. The software I use to help me detect plagiarism and AI use, alerts me when work is copied/pasted from outside the templates. When that happens, I must review their drafting process. As per CHAT policy, the first offense results in a meeting with a parent and if it is determined that work is not original, a student will have to take a 0 or re-do the assignment. The second offense results in a possibility of being expelled from CHAT. As you can see, this is fairly serious and why I needed to use strong wording here. If you are ever in any doubt, or have a question, please simply reach out to me and we will figure out a solution together. 

Literature

Today’s class was the last day of discussion about Animal Farm because we have officially finished it!  Before students take the Animal Farm Final Exam (posted on Google Classroom), I wanted to pause and allow students to think deeply about the connections between characters, themes, symbols and allegorical elements of the novella.  We accomplished this by diving into a “Hexagon Discussion.”  Honestly, I was impressed with the deep thinking that took place–I heard many insightful connections!  Because our discussion time was short, we didn’t have time for each group to share their most profound connection.  However, they wrote their assertions and noted their connections on a worksheet. Students will be graded on the quality of their assertions.

I passed out our next book which is a collection of short stories by O. Henry.  They are to read two of them and complete a Short Story Worksheets.

Grammar

After that, we had a mini-lesson on helping, linking and be verbs and used a  Verb Venn Diagram to complete two worksheets on different sentence patterns:  N-LV-N & N-LV-ADJ.  Varying sentence structures is one way to make your writing more interesting.  Many students finished in class, but if not, they are to be finished as homework.

Blessings,

Mrs. G

Homework for this week

Start drafting the Compare/Contrast Essay

Peer Review day→3/12

N-LV-N

N-LV-ADJ

Animal Farm Final Exam (GC)

Read:  “Gift of the Magi” & “After Twenty Years”

Short Story Worksheets

N-LV-N

N-LV-ADJ

Links for this week

Venn Diagram of Verbs

CHAT Academic Integrity Agreement