Greetings!
As always, we had a productive class. I really enjoy this group of students. For our Quick Write today,
we played a word game, Give Me Five, that I had gotten while in
England. The game consists of a deck of cards with categories (Fruits
and Vegetables, Items found in a Bedroom, Pets, Types of Meals, etc.)
and letters of the alphabet. Either I or a student drew a card, and the
students had to write 5 things that fit that card. The students got
points for any answers they had written that were unique; in other
words, they were the only ones who had written that answer. We played a
few rounds. I like activities like this because it 1) plays with
words; 2) causes everyone to be involved; 3) forces the students to
think creatively; and 4) is interactive and helps us to continue to
develop good class dynamics.
We had another in-class writing activity. I had the students write a paragraph or two about why they
had chosen their topics. As we're nearing the finish line, I wanted
them to refresh themselves regarding their chosen topics. It's very
easy to lose that initial enthusiasm and get lost in the details of the
researching and writing. I asked each of them share with the class
their thoughts and perceptions about their topic and their thesis.
Hopefully, they were encouraged by hearing from each other.
I handed back some rough drafts with
my comments and corrections. With the first draft, I looked for
content and organization. With this draft, I was primarily focused on
mechanics and grammar. I made a few comments about content, but for the
most part, we're in the "fine tuning" stage. We talked this week about
looking at the paper paragraph by paragraph. And then sentence by
sentence. I had one professor who challenged us by saying, "Pretend you
have to pay for every word. Since none of us wants to waste money,
make every word count."
We also had some discussion about the MLA
citation guidelines. If the students have questions about how to cite a
specific type of source, they can check one of these places:
Son of Citation Machine
Easy Bib
Purdue OWL MLA Formatting
Class Notes from Oct. 24 (which has other links to other blog posts)
Week 6 Handout
Week 10 Handout
No Class Next Week! Have a great Thanksgiving!
Mrs. Prichard
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