Writing 3 Class Notes -- August 29

 Greetings!

Those of you who have children who have taken classes from me may remember these weekly class notes on our work in class.  I try to send them out to parents and students as soon after the class as I can.  In the updates, I include our activities, points of discussion, and assignments.  Occasionally I will share links to websites that might be helpful or interesting to our study.

I begin each class with a Quick Write.  These short exercises intended to get the “writing juices” running.  In my Writing 1 and Writing 2 classes they are light-hearted short exercises.  For this class, however, we will usually be working on ACT and SAT writing prompts.  This week’s Quick Write was of the fun variety:  the students were to list adverbs to complete the following sentence:  Lucy ______ wrote her research paper.

I like a lot of discussion in my classes, but this week I did most of the talking.  I had a large packet of papers for the students, which I’m also attaching to this e-mail.  This packet included:

Syllabus Overview – 30 Steps to a Research Paper

Classroom Policies

Grammar Plan

Week 1 Grammar—The Sentence and 8 Parts of Speech

Weekly Notes and Steps

Please take some time to read through the Classroom Policies document.  This explains some of the components for the class; always feel free to contact me if you have questions.  As you see, I have a place at the top of the paper for your signature.  I found last year that requiring the students to get a signature caused them to be more aware themselves of the details, requirements, etc. of the class.

We discussed at length the first steps of the research paper which includes exploring and discovering the topic and developing a working thesis.  As I mentioned a number of times in class, this class “separates the kids from the adults.”  I have great faith in their ability to rise to the occasion and do well!

As you’ll notice in the Classroom Policies, I have 2 other online resources:  a blog (www.chatwriting.blogspot.com) and Dropbox (an online document storage site). For the most part, the blog contains the same information as the e-mails.  You will be receiving an invitation from Dropbox to join the folder connected to this class.  I will put copies of all the handouts on this site.

Assignments for Next Week (Sept. 5)

-- Classroom Policies:  read and get a parent’s signature

-- Narrow your interests into a General Topic and have a number of Leading Questions.

Have a great holiday weekend!

Mrs. Prichard