Writing 2: Writing 2 Class Notes

It was good to see your smiling faces back from break. We are officially halfway through the Fall semester now. Can you believe it?!?

Class opened with a Door Test on the Topic-Clincher Rule. Memorizing and using this rule helps us to write well-rounded paragraphs. Studies show that using gestures can support memorization; pairing simple actions with words will help this rule stick in our minds. The “test” was simple: after a practice round, everyone stood up and recited the rule using the actions we learned. They did great!

After that, we had our Visual Vocabulary words of the day: rancor and denizen.

Writing

We are continuing our unit on summarizing a reference–laying the groundwork for longer essays later in the year. Last week, the assignment was a two paragraph summary on a reference about Florence Nightingale and those were due today. Since the teaching was sent out as a set of short videos, we had a progress check-in. They should have incorporated all five of the dress-ups and the new topic-clincher rule.

After that, we had a mini-lesson introducing Sentence Openers. We will have six this year and the first one is sentence opener two: the prepositional sentence opener. As the name suggests, this sentence begins with a preposition or prepositional phrase. An example:

[2] In sentence openers, the indicator is a number in brackets before the sentence.

Students got a hand out on that opener. We worked in pairs to identify all the Dress-Ups and practice this new sentence opener.

No writing assignment this week–just catch up on any late work. I will be sending out grade reports before next class, so use this time wisely! Next week, we’ll practice summarizing with a little longer assignment and incorporate this sentence opener.

Grammar

We’re continuing with a unit on phrases in sentences. Students have reviewed preposition phrases and we covered gerund phrases last week. For this week, students will be doing two worksheets dealing with infinitives. Infinitive phrases combine the word “to” with a verb. (For example, to sing, to jump, to swim, etc.) Infinitive phrases can function as nouns, adjectives or adverbs. These phrases can also have adjectives or direct objects. One example from the worksheet had an infinitive phrase that was functioning as a noun, and in the sentence it was the direct object. No one said grammar was easy!!

Literature

This week, the Peace Like A River project was introduced. Students will choose a project from the list to present in a few weeks. For next week, students should post an answer to the question on Google Classroom about their project choice. Once approved, work can begin. Presentations will be 12/5 & 12/12. Keep reading your books and complete the Quiz over chapters 15-17 on Google Classroom. Next week we’ll have another book discussion.