Writing 2 Class Notes -- Week 15 (December 14)

 Greetings!

We had a wonderful day today and combined both work and fun on this final day. 

Homework & Grades

Students handed in their final drafts of their Historical Person Composition. I will grade those projects and any other homework that was handed in; my goal is to have final grades out soon.  I mentioned to the class that I will take any homework submitted by December 22 at 11:59 p.m. If there are any questions, please contact me.  Because I have final drafts and projects from both my classes, I know that I won't have the work ready for final grades until after Christmas.  Look for them some time after the New Year.  

The Wrap-Up

As a culminating event, we combined work and fun by a quiz on the Fall Visual Vocabulary in the form of a KAHOOT! Game.  I will record their scores and use it as their grade. 

The final students to present their Peace Like A River projects were next:  We had a movie trailer, a timeline, some outfits that the main characters would wear among others.  This is a wonderfully creative group!

A Contest

Last, we had the Annual Writing 1 Ugly Christmas Sweater Contest–there were some other choices for coloring and word searches too (as per their request last week.)  They were pretty intent on their drawing and coloring, for the hotly contested 1st Prize:  a quality Spork!  Thank you, Julia, Evangeline and Sam, for impartially judging the winner.   Congratulations, Lydia!  Enjoy that spork!

After that, we enjoyed some Christmas music, a  Hot Chocolate Bar and cookies–thanks to the students who brought treats to share.  Between the quiet chatting and their choice of more coloring and/or word searches, the class really enjoyed this wrapping up time together.

Links for this Week

Ugly Christmas Sweater Template

Historical Person composition

Writing 2 Class Notes (on blog)

My prayer is that all of you have a great Christmas that includes lots of love and laughter!

Blessings,

Mrs. G

Writing 2 Class Notes--Week 14 (12/12)

We had a wonderful day in class today. A lot of the hard work of the semester is over, so our "work" today was a little more fun. Our Visual Vocabulary words for today were: laggard and efface.These words will show up on our end of the semester quiz next week–so make sure to review those. The slides are posted on Google Classroom. Writing The Historical Person composition is due next week-although students could turn it in early in order to get more time for revisions. I checked in on their source/fused outlines and answered a few questions. Grammar The class was assigned a Fall Grammar Test about parts of speech and verbal phrases. I sent home a paper copy of the test to be taken at home. They can use their notes to answer the questions at home. The best way of learning grammar is through lots of reading and writing. Direct instruction of grammar is important and helpful, and combined with literature and writing it can be pretty potent. Next semester we'll be working on commas! Literature The rest of class was used for presenting our Peace Like A River projects. Each one of them showed not only that the students had a good grasp on the details of our novel, but they also had a strong understanding of the themes and motifs of the book. We had two games (Jeopardy! And Kahoot!), sampled some delicious cinnamon rolls like the ones Roxanna made for the kids, and Nathan showed us his amazing 3D printed Airstream trailer and station wagon. All around it was a fantastic day. Next Week Our last week of the semester is next week, December 19. All work should be handed in by that date. They should not wait until then to do their work and hand it in. I will not accept any work submitted after midnight on Sunday, December 22nd. Next week we will have our "Class-mas Party." I will bring warm drinks, and students can bring goodies if they like. (Please label if there are allergens.) We will have a ZAP! Game based on what we have learned this semester, a quiz on our Visual Vocabulary. After that we will have some time to enjoy some Christmas cheer. Blessings, Mrs. G Assignments for Next Week: Historical Person composition Review Visual Vocabulary words Presentation Self-Evaluation Fall Grammar Test–open book/notes

Writing 2 Class Notes--Week 14 (12/5)

Hello All! There’s a light at the end of the tunnel and I cannot believe this semester is coming to a close–that means we are starting to wrap things up. The subject of our final Quick Write this week was: hair. As usual, they brainstormed some clever writing topic ideas! The Magical Realism One-Pager assignment was due today. For the Literature part of the class, students shared some insights on what they learned about the genre through reading a short story and whether or not Peace Like A River fit into that genre. Speaking of our last novel, we had a handful of students present their final projects–Elise shared a delicious pie sample and Caroline wrote an alternate ending. They did a great job! Next week, the rest of the class will present. For Writing, the focus today was on sources for our last assignment. Over the break, they were to look for 3-4 suitable sources on the topic of their choosing for the subject of: a historical person. The homework was to bring the physical copies of them today. For this class, we will be using MLA style to compose a type of bibliography called “Works Cited” page. After a slideshow on MLA style 9, students got into table groups and were given a folder with instructions and sources. They worked together to format the more common sources like books, websites, podcasts, movies, and YouTube videos. Though students don’t need to memorize the formatting rules, they do need to be familiar with them. It is super important to give credit to the original source–they don’t want to accidentally plagiarize–and the good folks at MLA have helped to standardize how that credit should appear on the page. On the slideshow we looked at a few online places to help them cite any source. I handed out the checklist for our last composition of the semester. It is the same process as we just did on Squanto, but this time, they have chosen the subject (a historical person), the topics, and the sources. This composition will be three paragraphs instead of two. We quickly reviewed the process: 1. Generate a list of possible topics that are common across all 3 of your sources 2. Choose 3 of those topic ideas 3. Take the first topic you chose (Topic A) and make one (shorter) source outline from each source--there will be 3 source outlines on that topic--one for each source. 4. Choose the best of the best from your source outlines and fuse them into one fused outline. Repeat that process two more times (for three paragraphs in total.) If it helps, use a big piece of paper like we did in class. I haven't posted the Checklist yet, but it's all 5 Dress-Ups and the #2 sentence opener and the topic-clincher rule. The outlines are due next week and the compositions are officially due 12/19–the last week of class. I told them it would be wise to turn it in early. That way, they can get feedback from me to avoid getting it marked “In process” at the end of the semester. Next week, we’ll cover our last Grammar topic–no grammar this week! Blessings on your weekend! Mrs. G Homework Source and fused outlines on Historical Person of Choice Summarizing Mult. Refs.--Historical Person of Choice –Composition due 12/19 Links for this Week About Summarizing Mult. Refs.--Historical Person of Choice Works Cited Practice