Hi Everyone!
We had a great class today! I am always encouraged to see such bright, inquisitive students each week who are engaged and ready to learn!
We kicked off with our Quick Write. As our writing subjects get a little more “random,” it’s great to see students leaning in to ask themselves good questions in order to think of potential topics to write on. Today’s subject: silverware.
Next, we moved on to the Writing portion of our class. Today, I introduced a new unit–really an expansion of the summarizing we’ve been working on. From now on, we will be working with multiple references, so today we worked on the skills of making source outlines and then combining those source outlines into one fused outline.
After viewing some short teaching videos which gave an overview of the process, I handed out three source texts on the subject of Squanto. The tie-in is fantastic–obviously because Thanksgiving is upon us. Also, a major theme of our novel this fall was miracles. What is more miraculous than the story of how God used Squanto to preserve the lives of the pilgrims? In fact, God miraculously intervened in Squanto’s life many times.
On to the writing. Together we read through the texts and picked out possible writing topics. After assessing which topic had the most important, interesting and relevant information, we chose one.
Then, from each source (labeled A, B & C), we filled out three abbreviated KWOs (also labeled A, B & C) and we ended up with three short source outlines. After that, our work is easy: simply scan the source outlines for the “best of the best” information and fill out one fused outline. This fused outline helps organize information, and causes us to think critically on how the pieces should fit together. It’s like a first draft and I explained that once that process is complete, the paragraph basically writes itself! For a two paragraph composition, they will need to repeat this process twice.
As I wrote my outlines for the first topic on the board, students worked on theirs. For this first paragraph, they are welcome to use my outlines or make their own. Their homework is to write a second paragraph on a topic of their choosing using these source texts. They should continue making source/fused outlines and use their checklist to write.
Whew! They worked hard during that teaching, so I decided to forego any Literature and Grammar this week. We’ll make it up next week. (There’s still time to submit a question for the review game.)
Homework
Summarizing Multiple References–Squanto
Finish PLAR (final exam next week)
Links for this Week
About Summarizing Multiple References (with teaching videos)
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