Writing 2: Writing 2 Class Notes--Week 3 (January 26)

Greetings!

Today’s QuickWrite prompts are taken from the list that the students in Writing 1 and Writing 2 contributed to last fall. Here are the prompts for today’s Quick Write

Where do you see yourself in five years
Write one story you can’t stop yourself from laughing about everytime you think of it.
A time of awkwardness/embarrassment
If you dropped out of school and started a business what would it be
If you could only have three Apps on your phone, what would they be? Why?
Whatever …..

Today we had 3 Words of the Day:

Tenacious: Definition: Qualtiy that does not stop holding something or give up something easily; determined

Etymology: early 17th cent.: from Latin tenax, tenac- (from tenere ‘to hold’) + -ious.

Example: She's a tenacious student. She never gives up.

charisma

Definition: the powerful personal quality that some people have to attract and impress other people

adj=charismatic

Etymology: from Greek kharisma, from kharis ‘favour, grace’.

Example: She relaxed and her natural charisma started to shine through.

benevolent

Definition: (especially of people in authority) kind, helpful and generous

Opposite: malevolent

Etymology: Latin bene volent- ‘well wishing’, from bene ‘well’ + velle ‘to wish’.

Example: The colonel was benevolent, but not stupid.

Students have handed in the Pre-Writes and Rough Drafts of their Mystery Stories. Many of them enjoyed writing these and felt that they wrote more than they usually wrote. Others felt that this writing assignment was a bit harder since it's not easy to be creative. This kind of writing required some different planning and a different kind of thinking. I am looking forward to curling up with a cup of coffee and reading my pile of Mystery Rough Drafts.

We are 4 stories into our book of Sherlock Holmes mysteries, and the consensus this week was that the "Speckled Band" was more interesting than "The Engineer's Thumb." We brainstormed some adjectives that describe Sherlock Holmes’ character and their assignment is to think more deeply on that subject as we approach the end of this unit.

iMost students agreed that there was something satisfying about following clues and deducing solutions. Someone mentioned the "red herrings" in the story about the speckled band. These false clues and distractions add another layer of interest.

To that end, our class embarked on a Classroom Mystery Game–like a game of live-action Clue. Together we read the scenario: “Local Popular Girls Mysteriously Injured at Generic High School!” Students were given a map, a clue sheet and they were each assigned a character to play. They began to circulate and ask each other questions in order to solve the mystery. There are plenty of clues and red-herrings, so it won’t be easy! We were only able to begin this game, so we will finish it next week. They seemed to really engage in this activity and I saw some great acting in progress! Remember: No talking about the Mystery outside of Writing 2!!

For the Grammar portion of class, we worked again on complex sentences. In our unit on Commas, we also need to learn about sentence structures. You won't understand where the comma goes with regards to dependent clauses in complex sentences if you don't know what a complex sentence is. You won't know the difference between an independent and dependent/subordinate clause if you don't understand what the essential elements of a sentence are. All of grammar is interconnected, and the students are doing a great job at working to understand these intricacies. We watched an Edpuzzle video and answered questions as a class about Simple, Compound and Complex sentences.

Assignments for Next Week: