CHAT Writing 2 Class Notes--WK 13 (4/24)

 Hello There!

Today was another great day with this group.  They are such a blessing as we continue to work and learn together.

As usual, we started the day with a Quick Write–since we are working our way through poetry, they wrote a “color poem”--using a template to help them get started, they were prompted to use powerful imagery to write a poem about colors that evoke strong feelings.  I think the results were pretty amazing!

After that students had another opportunity to try their hands at writing some original poetry. We read George Ella Lyon’s autobiographical poem “Where I’m From”--and listened to the poet recite it.  They had some insightful observations!  Students had time in class to compose their own autobiographical poem in a style of their choice or based on the “Where I’m From” poem template.“I could tell some really got into “the zone” writing these and my hope is to hear some of these performed at our Poetry Event. 

Speaking of the Poetry Event, which will be the last day of class, we spent some time introducing this project.  It takes a lot of work to put on an event like this, and to split up the labor, each student will sign up for a role on a committee.  Their grade on this project will depend on not only their poetry performance techniques, but also how well they worked as a group. They are to consider which committee they want to join and as homework, they are to answer two Discussion Questions about their first and second preferences of which committee they’d like to participate in.  They should also begin to narrow down the poems they would like to perform.  They should post the names of two “found poems” and one original poem to the discussion question on Google Classroom.  The “found poems” can be from our poetry book, your own poetry collection, from the library or another source.  Each poem should be at least 4-5 lines and CHAT appropriate.  We will spend the bulk of next class period on committee work.

To conclude our Grammar for the year, I have a Mastering the Comma Test that they will take next week.  For this week, they have a review sheet that they should complete and then correct. (The Key is on the Google Classroom assignment.)  Correcting their own work will further help them review and will be much more beneficial than waiting a week to see if they got the answers right.  

Last, for Writing—now that students have turned in their FINAL formal essay for me (whoohoo!) they will submit a more informal Reflection Essay.  I passed out the guidelines for that assignment.  It is due the last day of class (May 8).

We have a couple fun weeks planned to finish out our year, so let's make sure you get caught up on any late work.

Assignments for Next Week:

–Which Committee? Discussion Question

–Which Poems?  Discussion Question

--Choose 3 poems for your contribution to the Poetry Jam (Here is the scoring/committee information)--Two found poems; one original poem

–Finish composing “Where I’m From” poem

About the Reflection essay

–Reflection Essay (due May 8)

Complete the Mastering the Comma Review sheet and correct it. (Bring the corrected version to class)

Links for This Week

Color Poem

“Where I’m From” George Ella Lyon audio

Writing 1 Class Notes–Week 12 (4/17)

 *Scroll down for the link to the essay contest!

Welcome back to CHAT!  I hope you had a wonderful break and are ready to finish the year STRONG!  The weather is really starting to turn Springy now!  

We started out with Visual Vocabulary.  Today’s words are:  fallacious and ardent.  Hopefully these students are never ardently fallacious!  I told them that we only have one more installment of Visual Vocabulary before the end-of-semester quiz.

We moved on to discuss the Writing portion of the class.  Today I checked in about the Comparison/Contrast essays that are due today.  This essay required some research, citations and Works Cited page. It also requires the most amount of Style elements for this year.  For some, this list of Style elements is a comfortable challenge and for some, it has been a tough stretch. 

If you are in the second category, I talked about how to reduce the checklist.  I demonstrated using the document camera how to choose just a few elements from both the Dress-Ups and Sentence Opener categories and how to indicate those chosen elements all the way through their essay.  If you are wondering which elements you should choose, I like to use the EZ + 1 strategy.  That is, choose the elements that feel easy for you, and then add one more.  

Be strategic about this!  Your checklist should not look sporadic! For example, if one of your chosen elements is an -ly adverb, then I should see that -ly adverb in each paragraph.  Please write “Reduced Checklist” on your Checklist if you decide to narrow it down.Unless you have indicated that on your checklist, I will expect all boxes to be checked–but DO WHAT YOU CHECK & CHECK WHAT YOU DO! 😀

In light of this new information, I extended the deadline.  It will be due next week (4/24). I recommend students use their time well and get in any compositions/essays that are still in the “In Process” category.

Last announcement:  As per my email, you may check Google Classroom for your current grade.  I have lost the battle with my grade book, so I won’t be sending any more reports this year.  I will send out final grades with some comments at the end of the semester.

For the Literature part of the class, we worked with a poem that is assigned for next week.  It’s actually one of my very favorites!  “The Red Wheelbarrow” by William Carlos Williams is short and packed with imagery.  After reading silently and aloud a few times (this did not take long!), we watched a short biographical video on his life.  Students then used a handout that helped them discuss the imagery and themes.  We discussed the other imagist poet Ezra Pound.  Students are assigned to write two poems in the style of Williams or Pound.

For Grammar we practiced Simple and Compound sentences again. Students had time to work on the two worksheets in class. Remember, just because you see a FANBOY, does not necessarily mean it’s a compound sentence.  You’ll know it’s compound if the sentence has two independent clauses.  Then put your comma before the FANBOY.

That is all!  Blessings on your weekend!

Mrs. G

Homework

Week 13 Poems

Poetry Response Packets

Imagist Poems–write 2

Week 12 Grammar 

–Simple & Compound Sentences

–Writing Compound Sentences 

Compare/Contrast Essay (if not yet finished or would like to reduce checklist)

Links for this week

Visual Vocabulary

WK 12 Poetry Discussion– “The Red Wheelbarrow”

*IEW Essay Contest

CHAT Writing 1 Class Notes–Week 11 (4/3)

April is Poetry Month in Writing Class!  As an English teacher, it’s probably not surprising that I enjoy poetry.  But honestly, I haven’t really gotten into it until later in life.  If they are not already enjoying it, my goal is to open a door of poetry enjoyment for my students through reading some great poetry and attempting to write some lines of our own.

In that vein, our Quick Write was a poetic one.  I asked students to think of three questions–(serious, funny, or mundane) and to write them in a list.  We took a few minutes to arrange them into a poem while we listened to music.  I am looking forward to reading them!

Writing

Today, the KWO for the Compare/ContrastEssay was due.  Students who met their deadline received 20 points. Since two quotes and two sources are required for this composition, today we reviewed how to write both direct quotes and paraphrases for online sources.  We talked through how to cite sources both with and without an author.  After that, we reviewed how to put together a Works Cited page using some common generators.  They should be in good shape to write one for this essay.

The Literature portion of  class was dedicated to poetry. Some students enjoy poetry and some are not crazy about it.  We talked about how poetry is art made with words.  I told them that it is said that poets are born–but the rest of us can learn how to write verse and enjoy it.  :) 

After refreshing ourselves on last week’s poetry selections, we had a short discussion on themes and what stuck out to us.  It was interesting to hear their insights.  Their homework is to read the poems for next week and respond to two.  

After that, we had a very brief Grammar teaching on Simple and Compound sentences and students had time to work on the two worksheets in class.  We talked about the fact that when a FANBOY is connecting two independent clauses, it is called a compound sentence–and in that case, you must put a comma BEFORE the FANBOY.  If there is a FANBOY, but it is not connecting two independent clauses, it is a simple sentence and there is no comma necessary.

Blessings on your weekend!

Mrs. G

Homework for this week

• Compare/Contrast Essay

Read Poetry:  

• Poetry:  Wordsworth (p. 12); Browning (p. 19); Bronte (24); Carroll (p. 29); 

• Hopkins (p. 31); Burgess (39)

• Week 12 Poetry (pdfs on Google Classroom)

• 2 Poetry Responses

• Week 12 Grammar 

• –Compound FANBOYS

• –Compound Sentences & Commas

Links for this week

MLA In-Text Citation practice

Poetry Quick Write

CHAT Writing 1--Week 10 (3/27)

 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)

–Compare/Contrast KWO

-- Read Week 11 Poetry (PDFs on Google Classroom)

–Raleigh (p.1); Donne (p.); Quarels (p. 4); Milton (p. 5); Bradstreet (39)

-- Poetry Response (2 Poems)

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

CHAT Writing 1 Class Notes--Week 9 (3/20)

 Hello!  

We are in the thick of it and the weather is turning warm.  Just as spring should be!  We had another great class together today.  Here’s what we did.

Quick Write

The topic today was designed to get students thinking about success, qualities in others they admire, people they admire and fictional characters they’d love to meet IRL 🙂.  They were given five minutes and they could choose whichever topic piqued their interest.

For the Writing portion of the class, we had a check-in on their Thank Me essays that were assigned last week.  The topic of this essay is to think deeply and write about what specific deeds/personality traits they’d like to be thanked for. We thought a little bit about the importance of gratitude–this time, in the form of writing thank you notes.  I hope my students are no strangers to this dying art!  We watched a few short videos on how to write a proper thank you note.  After that, each student picked out some stationary and they got started.Their finished thank you notes are due along with their essays next week.  While they were writing, I went around and gave them credit if they met the deadline for their KWO.  Their KWOs were due this week and most students look like they are tracking well.  

Two more sentence openers were added to our checklist for this next assignment and today, we learned the [5] adverbial clause opener and the [1] subject opener. The [5] sentence opener is very straightforward if you remember the WWW.ASIA.B  dress-up.  You just start the sentence with that. The only trick is to make sure to use a comma after the adverbial clause.  Remember:

AC, MC  

That stands for adverbial clause COMMA main clause.  (You need to use a comma after the www.asia.b clause when you use it to start the sentence.)   For example:

[5] When you use this adverbial clause, you must put the comma after the clause.

 The subject opener is SUPER SIMPLE!  It's what you write as a default--which is why I leave this one until last.  You simply start the sentence with a subject.  (You may use an adjective or article to precede if necessary.)  Don't overuse this because it can be very tedious to read.  For example:

[1] This sentence opener is very easy.

We didn’t discuss “Piemienta Pancake” or “Retrieved Reformation” from last week in Literature.  Instead, we had a true Pop Quiz!  I wanted to give these students the “authentic pop quiz” experience since I had given them a warning last week. Instead of grading last week’s quiz, I will grade this one.

We will discuss the above two stories plus the“The Ransom of Red Chief” in class next week.  The last story is O. Henry’s arguably most famous–it is a very humorous one that I think they will enjoy.  There is a worksheet, and a Quiz assigned on Google Classroom.  (I forgot to emphasize the quiz in class!)

For our Grammar portion of the class, I gave three worksheets for continued practice in identifying sentence elements for the various sentence patterns that have been covered this semester.  Make sure to correct your own work!

Have a blessed weekend!

Mrs. G

Homework

Thank Me Essay

Thank you Note

Read “Ransom of Red Chief”

Short Stories Worksheet

“Ransom of Red Chief” Quiz

Grammar

• Nouns as Direct Objects

• Compound Direct Objects

• Finding Direct Objects

Links for this week

About Thank Me Essay

[1] & [5] Sentence Openers