Time flies when you are having fun–and it sure flew once again today in Writing 2. You students are such a joy to teach! Here’s a recap of all we accomplished in class today:
We are kicking off one of my favorite parts of the year in CHAT Writing: Poetry! For our Quick Write today, we talked about the genre of poetry called “List Poetry.” Normally such a poem contains a few lines of explanation, followed by a list and ending with a few more lines of explanation. It can be musical, funny, rhyming or whatever tickles your fancy. After listening to “18 Flavors” and “Hector the Collector” by childhood favorite Shel Silverstein, students tried their hands at writing their own “list poetry.”
For the Literature portion of our class, we finished our short stories unit with an in-class quiz, then we started our next unit–poetry. Our poems come from a book titled 101 Great American Poems, and they will be reading a chronological collection of poems, starting with poetry from the early 1800s to that of the mid-1900s. 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.
We switched gears to discuss for Writing to discuss the final "from scratch" essay–an Evaluation Essay. (Our next–and last paper–is a Reflection Essay. The Essay Re Write will be omitted. See the updated syllabus.) They will choose a topic–a restaurant, an app, a news story, etc.–and they will evaluate it. The key issues for this paper are criteria, judgment and evidence.
After discussing the particulars of this paper, we had a Writing Circles Discussion. Students were given a Mentor Text (example essay) on either podcasts, pizza or pens. After doing a silent “scavenger hunt” for things such as the hook, thesis, roadmap sentence, etc, they were put into groups to discuss their findings. They were also to discuss the merits and pitfalls of their particular Mentor Text. Hopefully that will give them ample ideas for their own Evaluation essay. The Pre-Write and Rough Draft are due on 4/11 (after our Break–see updated syllabus.)
With that time flown and gone, I decided that there will be no Grammar worksheets due next week. You are welcome!
Have a blessed weekend!
Mrs. G
Assignments for Week 11 (March 28)
-- Read Week 11 Poetry
-- Poetry Response (2 Poems)
- Poetry: Read Emerson (4-5); Longfellow (6-10); Holmes (21), Whitman (22-26),Dickinson (29 - 32)
Week 11 Poetry Pt. 1 -- Emerson, Holmes, Longfellow
Week 11 Poetry Pt. 2 -- Whitman, Dickinson
-- Evaluation Essay Rough Draft
Links for this Week:
Writing Circles Discussion–With Mentor Texts
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