Writing 1 Class Notes 3/23

 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 Pre-Write

-- Prediction Essay Rough Draft

-- Read Week 11 Poetry 

-- Poetry Response (2 Poems)

-- Complements Worksheet (John Updike)

-- Sentence Patterns (Mr. Jackson)

-- Sentence Patterns Practice (Four bakers)

Links for this Week: 

About the Prediction Essay 

A.I. Prediction One Pager

Week 11 Poetry Readings

Writing 1 Class Notes–Week 9 (3/16)

 Greetings!

Another full, productive day today with these students.  We are sure learning a lot together!

QuickWrite

If people knew how hard I work to gain my mastery, it would not seem so wonderful at all. -Michelangelo

We got a little highbrow culture today as we pondered this quote and a sculpture by Michelangelo.  After we listened to a short podcast of art critics discussing The Pieta, we responded to one of the following:  

• What does this quote mean to you? 

• After watching the video, what thoughts do you have about this sculpture,mastery, art, hard work, or learning as a “vehicle”?

•  Is there something that you are trying to gain mastery of in your life that takes a lot of hard work?  Write about it.

• Have you ever experienced a piece of art that caused you to pause and think?  Describe.

• What do you know about Michelangelo;  his life; his work?

Words of the Day

DALLY: to waste time idly

DEMENTED: crazy, mentally ill, insane

FELONIOUS: involving criminal activity

GORGE: to stuff with food (v.); a small canyon with steep walls (n.)

After a quick homework check, I reminded students how to properly cite online articles in MLA style as well as how to do hanging indents for their Works Cited pages.  They should be up to date on those because their Analogy/Examples Final drafts are due today.  (If they need some time to clean up their Works Cited pages, they can do that over the weekend and turn them in ASAP.) 

I told the class we will be changing our syllabus a little:  instead of the next essay being a News Story Essay, we will be writing an essay that focuses on Artificial Intelligence.  I will assign that essay next week so that there would be time for a class discussion and activity around this.  

I have been communicating with parents about the topic of Artificial Intelligence and specifically ChatGPT.  Today was the day we unpacked that as a class.  

To start out, we watched a short Youtube Video on the tool and students had the opportunity to read and analyze three pieces of writing.  Their job was to decide who composed the piece:  a teacher, a student or a robot.  Much to their surprise (SPOILER ALERT!) all three were computer generated!  This led to a lively discussion.  Their assignment is to open an account on ChatGPT (if they don’t have one already) and to interact with it.  They are to write about their experiences and do some fact finding.  Next week, as I mentioned, I will assign an essay on this topic.

We did not take time to discuss O. Henry's stories, "Retrieved Reformation" and "The Pimienta Pancake."  Next week we will read "The Ransom of Red Chief" and discuss all three stories.  The worksheet and Annotations (2) are due next week.  In the links section below are some videos and an audio version of the story. 

We continue to work on sentence patterns and sentence elements for our Grammar instruction.  Last week and this week we practiced identifying direct objects and indirect objects. Their worksheets for this week are again on direct and indirect objects.  There is an Edpuzzle video to help them deepen their understanding.

Homework

Playing Around with ChatGPT wksheet

Read “Ransom of Red Chief”

2 Annotations

Short Story Worksheet

Wk 9 Grammar

EdPuzzle Video

Nouns as Direct Objects

Compound Direct Objects

Finding Direct Objects

Links for This Week

Audio and Video of “Ransom…”

Youtube on Michaelangelo’s The Pieta

ChatGPT video

Writing 1 Class Notes--Week 8 (March 9)

 Hello All!

Another snowy day, but the sun was shining and so were these students!  Here’s what we covered.

Quick Write

Here are today’s prompts:

• If you were a parent, would you prefer a girl or boy child? Would you like to have the choice to determine the gender of the child? Why or why not?

• If and when I raise children, I'll never…

• What 3 things do you do that irritate your parents the most? Why do you do them?

• What 3 things do you do that your parents appreciate the most? How often do you do these things? Do you think you could do them more often? Why or why not. 

Words of the Day

AMALGAMATE: to combine, mix, or blend

BELEAGUER: to annoy persistently; harass

ANTIQUATED: old-fashioned and obsolete

CARICATURE: a distorted representation of someone or something

Literature

We have read two more Short Stories:  "Makes the Whole World Kin" and "The Furnished Room."  The first story is about a burglar who makes an uncommon connection with the man he's robbing, and that is the one that we talked about.  The second story the class felt was harder to connect to–it was a melodramatic tale about loss and quiet desperation. O. Henry's stories are full of unexpected twists and endings.  We had an in-class quiz about the first story.  

Writing

The “ticket” needed for entry to today’s class was their hard copy of their Analogy/Examples Essay.  We used it to do some Peer Review.  Some students found this to be a more challenging piece of writing because of the MLA style formatting that is required.  It was noted that this is like a “mini-research paper”--which it is!  The Final Draft is due next week.

Before we did the Peer Review, I went over 5 Common Errors that I found while grading this round. They focused on the Roadmap Sentence, writing out numbers 10 and under, formatting, MLA style quotes (embedded vs. parenthetical) and hanging indentations for the Works Cited page.

Grammar

For the Grammar portion of our class, we are continuing to review sentence patterns.  This week, we are "building" sentences that follow the N-V-N (S-V-DO) and N-V-N-N (S-V-IO-DO) patterns.  Instead of using class time to discuss  transitive verbs, direct objects, and indirect objects, I have posted an Edpuzzle teaching video that students are to watch before completing the 2 worksheets.  (There are no KEYS for these worksheets.)

Homework

Read “Retrieved Reformation” and “The Pimenta Pancake” & Worksheet

2 Annotations per story

Analogy/Example Final Draft (due 3/16)

N-V-N Wksheet

N-V-NN Wksheet

Links for This Week

5 Common Errors Slideshow

Short Story Audio versions

Have a cozy weekend.  Spring is coming!

Warmly,

Mrs. G

Writing 1 Class Notes--Week 7 (March 2)

Today’s Quick Write was about lists:

Do you make lists to get stuff done?  Do you use an app?  Old fashioned paper?  

List as many points you can think of!

• What is the worst food combination you can think of? An example: hamburgers with whipped cream. (Yuck!) Think of as many as you can.

• I am grateful for…

• List all candy you can think of.

• List all the breakfasts you can think of

• Do you make lists to get stuff done?  Do you use an app?  Old fashioned paper?  

• Make a list of items a favorite fictional character would make.

Our Words of the Day

acmethesia (n)the awareness of sharp points through the sense of touch without experiencing pain. (Contributed by Stella)

And our ACT/SAT Vocabulary:

numismatist a person who collects coins

Obtrude to force something upon another person; to intrude upon

Paucity smallness of number or scarce

I started class with a bit of “buzzkill”--and in invitation to excellence.  This time of year starts getting challenging to do the things we know we should do.  We touched on the CHAT policies regarding lateness and cell phones.  I told the class I would be enforcing CHAT’s guidelines on that moving forward, so we all need to make good choices.  On that note, I mentioned the fact that we learn best when homework is done in a timely manner:  discussions are richer when we have done our reading on time and writing on time.  If we don’t meet our deadlines, we are not only letting ourselves down, but we’re letting our classmates down as well.

On that note, Examples/Analogy Rough Draft is due today.  Next week we will be doing some peer review, so each student must bring a paper copy of their essays to class with them.  We discussed how to document websites using MLA formatting and in-text citations.  There is a worksheet students can finish at home on that topic.

In the literature section of our class, we talked about two of our O. Henry Short Stories.  O. Henry is a lovely writer -- he has a crisp, clear writing story, throws in some unusual words to spice things up, and often includes surprise twists at the end.  Keep reading and annotating!

We  finished up the 39 Steps with a quiz.  Before we took that, a few in the class shared their wonderfully insightful One Pager review. I loved their creativity!  There were mixed reviews about this book.  Students were invited to share with me some suggestions for a replacement for this novel for next year which led to some good discussion..  We corrected the quiz as a class so they could see how they did.

Students elected to forgo the grammar lesson so we’d have more time for Literature.  For that reason, I assigned the worksheets as homework.   The focus is on Sentence Patterns and predicate complements.  Students have four worksheets to practice identifying those sentence patterns and elements.  (Please note, these are “Week 6 & 7” Worksheets.)

Have a great weekend!

Mrs. G

Homework

MLA Worksheet 1-2

Read

• “Makes the Whole World Kin”

• “The Furnished Room”

2 Annotations per story

Short Story Packet #1

Sentence Patterns N-LV-N

Sentence Patterns (N-LV-ADJ)

About Linking Verbs

Predicate Adjectives

Predicate Complements

Links for this Week

“Makes the Whole World Kin” & “The Furnished Room” Audio Versions

Writing 1 Class Notes–Week 5 (February 16)

Greetings!

 I am thankful we have this week off of class and I hope you are hunkered down as we prepare for this “historic blizzard” they are forecasting. Maybe even catch up on some homework for Writing Class?  In case that’s on your to-do list, here is what we covered last week.

Quick Write

The prompts were taken from the suggestions you submitted last semester:

• If you could be married to someone famous from the past who is no longer alive, who would you like it to be? Why?

• If you could trade lives with anyone in the world, who would you choose and why?

• If you could go back to any period of time or place in history what would it be and why?

Words of the Day

We are continuing with our ACT words and they were:

fatalistic: (adj)  believing everything is determined by fate and is inevitable

lackadaisical:  (adj) without spirit, interest or effort

licentious: (adj)  ignoring rules or morals; uncontrolled or immoral

Charlotte submitted this beautiful word:

apricity–noun; The warmth of the sun in winter

The lion’s share of our class was spent on discussing Writing.  I have assigned an Examples or Analogy Essay.  We spent some time sharing topic ideas and brainstorming how to structure this essay.  There were some good ideas!  We will continue sharing on Google Classroom as they answer the discussion question and comment on their classmates’ ideas.  The Rough Draft and PreWrite is due when we get back from break (3/2.)

I had sent an email home to parents to broach the topic of the Artificial Intelligence tool ChatGpt.  We briefly touched on some of this tool’s capabilities and drawbacks.  I told students we will be writing about ChatGpt in the next essay and it will be a topic of deeper discussion in the future.  

One of the things this tool does NOT do well yet is to give credit to its sources and in-text citations.  Since for this essay I am requiring 3 sources and 3 quotes along with a Works Cited page, we took the class time to review MLA documentation.  This is the main way we can maintain academic honesty and avoid the charge of plagiarism.  Students took notes on a presentation and I handed out citation maker sheets for students to keep track of their sources while they do their research.

After that, we had just a bit of time to sum up the 39 Steps because we finished it!  I had some mixed reviews about the ending of this novel.  I assigned a One Pager assignment to help students to organize their thoughts about the novel and to prepare for the test. A one pager is a way to visually share key ideas and information using both visual symbols and important words to clearly and concisely share the most important takeaways with someone else. I look forward to seeing what they come up with.  We will take the test in class after break.  

I handed out the new books and assigned 2 stories, Short Story Worksheets,  and 2 Annotations (in their Notebooks.)

No Grammar this week!  Enjoy the time off!

Homework

Example/Analogy PreWrite

Example/Analogy Rough Draft

Essay Discussion Question

39 Steps One Pager

Read  “The Gift of the Magi” and “After Twenty Years”

Short Story Worksheets & Annotations

Links for this Week

Quick Write

MLA Presentation and Guided Notes.

Writing 1 Class Notes–Week 5 ( February 9)

He had a fun class today and it was quite full!

We started with a Quick Write about hair:

•  What is the worst thing you have ever done to your hair? Why did you do it? What is the best thing you’ve done to your hair?

•  If you could change your hair, how would you change it?

• If you could have somebody else's hair for a day, whose would it be? Why? What do you like about that person's hair

• Do you have any regrettable looks from the past?

• What’s the fashion trend you just cannot embrace?

Our Words of the Day were from Megan and the list of ACT/SAT Vocabulary words.  We will continue on with these words (and any that students may contribute) until the end of the year.

• alienate:  to cause to turn away

• elated:  very proud or happy or in high spirits

• epigram:  a short witty saying or quip

• finifugal:  afraid of finishing anything

We are now in Week 5, so students need to check in on their homework. I give students three weeks to get assigned work (actually, they have 4 weeks from the assigned date until I will no longer take it.)  After that extended time, assignments will be given zeros.  According to my late homework policy, any assignments due on Week 2 is now overdue. Grade Reports were sent Week 3 and I will be sending another round in a few more weeks.

Our discussion of The 39 Steps included some close reading brushing up on our Annotating Skills.  After reviewing the skills of (purposeful) underlining/margin notes, and drawing icons (arrows, stars, thought bubbles), students did a close reading of the end of Chapter 8.  The culprit is discovered in this section!   Using their annotations as a guide, students broke into small groups to discuss characterization, description and overall plot.  I overheard some insightful comments.

Students handed in the final drafts of their Narrative Essays.  I'm really looking forward to reading these because their rough drafts were so good!  

When we finish one paper, we start another.  For the next round of essays,  students can choose to write an Examples Essay or an Analogy Essay.  For both of these types of essays, the students should be explaining one thing with one or more other things. We discussed in depth about analogies and the requirements of this essay.  This topic must be “researchable”and will need to have MLA style in-text citations along with a Works Cited page. We will discuss those details next week.  For now,students have the next two weeks to do their brainstorming and research.  The pre-writes and rough drafts should be handed in on March 2.

At the end of class, I assigned the Grammar worksheets, practicing identifying and classifying prepositional phrases.  Prepositional phrases function either as adjective phrases or adverb phrases, and it can be tricky to tell what kind of phrase it is.  They have these as homework.

Assignments for Next Week

-- Examples/Analogy  Pre-Write (due Feb. 16–hand in with RD March 2)

–Discussion Question:  Which Essay?  Which topic? (GC)

-- Examples/Analogy Rough Draft (due March 2)

-- Read and Annotate Ch. 9 & 10 of The 39 Steps

-- Week 6 – 3 Study Guide Questions 

–Ch. 5-8 Quiz (if you didn’t do it already)

-- Classifying Prep Phrases

-- Prepositional Phrases -- Adj or Adv

Links For This Week

–About the Analogy Essay & Examples Essay

Google Slides Presentations

–Annotation Skills 1 & 2

–Analogy Essay/Example Essay