Writing 2 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 a Cause/Effect OR Problem/Solution 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. Students were eager to discuss and share their experiences using the tool.  There were a range of experiences:  some were already pretty familiar and some had never heard of it.  I told students we will be writing about ChatGpt in the next essay and it will be a topic of deeper discussion in the near  future. As of right now, we will not be relying on Artificial Intelligence to write our essays and doing so would be dishonest.  In order to make best use of this in our class, we will need to understand its capabilities and drawbacks and we still need to know the fundamentals of writing.

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.

Because we had such a robust discussion on Writing, we did not spend as much time on our LIterature Discussion.  I handed out some information on AnnotationSkills 3 & 4–and instead of applying and discussing, I assigned students to practice annotating the next assigned stories.  They are due when we get back from break along with the Short Story Worksheets

No Grammar this week!  Enjoy the time off!

Homework

Cause/Effect OR Problem/Solution Essay PreWrite 

Cause/Effect OR Problem/Solution Essay Rough Draft

Read Hawthorne,Bierce, Poe and Harte

Annotation Skills 3 & 4

Links for this Week

QuickWrite

MLA Presentation and Guided Notes

Writing 2 Class Notes–Week 5 (February 9)

We 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

• fatalistic:  believing that everything is determined from fate and is inevitable

• finifugal:  afraid of finishing anything

We’re finished with our Mystery Unit and the assailant from our class Mystery Game from the last two weeks was unveiled. Thank you  Nick, for playing the part so well!  I hope we learned about  enjoying a good mystery through reading, writing and experience!

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.

We have finished our Sherlock Holmes stories and are not reading from a selection of short stories. For this week they read 3 stories by Russian authors, and we discussed the main points and overarching themes for each.  After that, I introduced the concept of Annotating.  I want students to become experts in this skill so they can apply it to other areas in their lives ahead; both academic and personal.  Today, we learned the skill of (purposeful) underlining/margin notes, and drawing icons (arrows, stars, thought bubbles.)  After assigning each student a story, we applied these new skills, broke into groups and discussed our findings.  I overheard some very insightful comments.

Students handed in the final drafts of their Mystery Story.  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 a Cause/Effect Essay or a Problem/Solution Essay.  We did a lot of brainstorming about how to structure these kinds of essays.  Students have the next three 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 gave a very brief Grammar  "power lesson" about the commas that follow introductory elements.  These elements can include interjections, personal addresses, prepositional phrases, and dependent clauses.  They have 2 worksheets to  practice this.  

Sidenote, Complex Sentences 1,2,3 was due last week.  As I corrected it, I noticed there were many students who did not understand the concept.  If you would like a chance to improve your grade on that assignment, please watch the video and then make corrections and resubmit your work (or hand it in) next week.

Assignments for March 4

Cause/Effect OR Problem/Solution  Pre-Write (due Mar 2)

Cause/Effect OR Problem/Solution  Rough Draft (due Mar 2)

Discussion Question:  Which essay?  What’s your topic? (GC)

Read Dickens (45); Wilde (189); Kipling (101); Munro (140) & Annotate

Week 6:  Dickens, Wilde, Kipling, Munro (Short Story Worksheet)

Grammar:  Wk5 - Introductory Commas

Grammar:  Wk5 - Commas after Introductory Phrases

Links for This Week

About Cause/Effect and Problem/Solution Essays

Google Slides Presentations

–Annotation Skills 1 & 2

–Cause/Effect & Problem/Solution Essay

Writng 2 Class Notes--Week 4 (February 2)

Greetings!

We had a fun class today -- we covered a lot of material.  As usual, we started out with our QuickWrite.  Here’s the prompt:

January 6th is the “birthday” of Sherlock Holmes, created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The fictional detective is known for his powers of deduction–the ability to reach conclusions by logical reasoning. He’s famous for solving unusual mysteries and his partner is Dr. Watson. What is your favorite mystery story or movie? Describe what it is about. Why do you like it? What do you like or dislike about mysteries? 

Or you may write about a real mystery, or unsolved mystery, you’ve heard about. How would you try to solve it? 

What are some mysteries you are trying to solve?

No Words of the Day today

I handed back the rough drafts of the Mystery Stories.  These were amazing!  I found myself thinking of the plots and characters long after reading and correcting them.  Many students wrote more than they usually did, and they were pretty creative.  Students are to revise their rough drafts into final drafts for next week. Ask your student to share his/her story with you. 

We've now finished our 6 short stories of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.  To round out this literature unit, students are to write an essay exam in which they address the question, "Is Sherlock Holmes a Hero?"  They must first define what a hero is and then apply their definition to Sherlock Holmes.  I encouraged them to use the quotes from their Sherlock Holmes Quote assignment to support their opinions.  We had a lively (heated?) discussion over some of the finer points of Sherlock’s character.  Students had some profound observations.  I am looking forward to their written responses.

We had a brief Grammar lesson on Independent and Dependent Clauses.  We worked on them a bit in class, and students should correct their work before handing it in.  There are 2 worksheets due next week.

I gave them their next book, Great Short, Short Stories,  they have a reading assignment, and a Short Story worksheet to complete for 2 of the 3 stories.  On the syllabus it says “Short Story Annotations,” however, annotations are on pause until we have a mini-lesson on annotation.  That will be in the next few weeks.

As a culminating activity to our Mystery Unit, students finished part 2 of our Class Mystery Game.  Students picked up their assigned roles  and began where they left off last week interviewing all the suspects (classmates) to solve the case of “who dunnit”--in this case, who is guilty of injuring popular girl Angela by pushing her down the stairs at Generic High School?  Justice must be served!  It was entertaining to observe them interviewing each other and trying to follow the clues, make inferences and not be thrown off by all the red-herrings.  It got a little heated at some points!  Students are to fill out the assessment sheet of who their suspects are. The assailant will be revealed next week.  

Assignments for next week

• Mystery Story Final Draft

• Sherlock Holmes Final Exam

• Short Stories: Read  Pushkin (162); Tolstoy (169); Chekhov (26)

• Short Story Responses (No Annotations)

• Class Mystery Assessment