Writing 2: Writing 2 Class Notes

Hi All!

We got right to it today with our very first Quick Write. Every other week students are given a topic, five minutes and a few parameters. Then I play some music and our goal is to write continuously during that time. Before putting pen to paper, we talked about our first stylistic technique– the [2] prepositional phrase sentence opener. For some, this was a review and to some it was brand new. The purpose of using different sentence openers is to help students vary the sentence patterns they use in their writing. We’ll add more gradually as the year progresses.

Then I gave them a choice of writing prompts: either school pictures OR the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. I am giving extra credit for every [2] sentence opener they use and for any visual vocabulary words that are used. So far, we’ve learned poignant and blight.

Literature

The plot thickens for the Land family of Roofing, MN. In our novel, the turning point has happened that will be the central driver for the action from here on out. After reading aloud a bit of Swede’s epic poem, I asked students why they think the tone got darker and she had lost all her sympathy for the bandit king Valdez. They had some amazing, insightful answers!

In lieu of a Reader Response worksheet, we had an in-class Quiz today over Peace Like A RIver chapters 4 & 5. Because I gave them a few minutes to refresh each other because we will have a more in-depth discussion next week, we didn’t take time to discuss the novel today. Instead, we will have a more in-depth discussion next week for a Literature Discussion. For homework, they will read chapters 6-8 and complete the take-home quiz (open book) on GC.

Writing

Today’s topic was two different styles of paragraphing. Writing a paragraph is a bit of an art and I want to equip students with some tools to master it. We contrasted the basic paragraph with the TRIAC paragraph. As we learned last year, to write a good basic paragraph, you write from a well-crafted, KWO and choose ONE topic as a focus and 5-7 facts from the KWO. We also learned the Topic-Clincher rule:

The topic sentence and the clincher sentence

MUST

repeat or reflect 2-3 key words

(There will be a door quiz on that next week!) After that, I gave them the “Swiss knife” of all paragraphs: the TRIAC paragraph. The beauty of a TRIAC paragraph is that it practically writes itself! We talked through the 5 parts:

We practiced these models using an article about AI. As a class,we wrote a KWO on the first paragraph. Their homework is to write both a basic paragraph and a TRIAC paragraph using their KWOs–they can use the one we wrote together or they can write one on their own and use that.

Grammar

Students were given the KEY to all the grammar worksheets for this semester. I explained that as we work through our grammar–parts of speech and phrases–they will need to correct their own work. There is a lot of learning that happens in that process! The KEY is also posted on Google Classroom–I won’t be handing out another one. For the most part, I will teach grammar mini-lesson and they will have some in class time to complete their worksheets. This works well so I can answer any questions they might have while we are all together. Today, we reviewed nouns, pronouns, adjectives and adverbs. They have four worksheets.