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