Greetings!
We've started out our new school year well. I'm looking forward to working with this group of students. Below are the Class Notes for this week. Every week I will send out notes similar to the ones to these. I include the topics of the class and the direction of instruction. At the bottom of each email I list the homework and links to the blot, to the Google Classroom assignments, and to any other helpful information.
I almost always start class with a Quick Write and sometimes with a Word of the Day. I use a variety of prompts for these short writing opportunities that give students a chance to shift into a writing mode. These prompts are sometimes serious but usually light-hearted. For our Words of the Day, I like to choose unusual words, words of current interest, or words with interesting backgrounds. I especially enjoy looking at the etymologies of words and trying to figure out the journey of the word from its ancient meaning and the modern meaning.
For this week's Quick Write I asked students to respond to these 3 questions: 1) What do you need to be successful this school year? 2) What do you need from others, including me, to be successful this year? 3) What can you do for others in order to help them be successful?
We had 3 Words of the Day:
education -- fr. L. educare, to lead or bring out -- the act of teaching or receiving knowledge
teach -- fr. OE takn, token, to show, point out, declare -- to show or explain how to do something.
heteroclite -- fr. Gk, hetero, different and klitos, a bend or inflection -- a person who deviates from the norm and/or chooses and unusual/uncommon path.
I'm afraid I had some difficulties with the Zoom aspect of the class. I used by Samsung Tablet, and I think some of the settings were different from the one I usually use. Next week I will have my computer, webcam, and new microphone. I apologize for the problems that it caused for my students attending via Zoom.
Much of our first class of the year is spent taking care of logistics and looking at some Class Resources. I gave the students a Class Policies handout, a syllabus, and a checklist of assignments. These are important documents that will help us be organized with our work this year. (Note: Parents, please read the class policies and initial it)
In addition to an overview of the topics in the class, we discussed Google Classroom. All of the materials and assignments will be posted on Google Classroom. If they haven't, students need to sign in to their chatclasses email and then join the Google Classroom for Writing 3.
Students will help with some of the teaching this semester. On the Student-Led Sign Up document, hey signed up for topics related to research, writing, and plagiarism; they are to research these topics and present the information to their classmates.
I introduced the first writing assignment of the semester, Essay #1. The bulk of the semester will be spent writing a hefty research paper, but I want the students to begin the year with a shorter essay so that I can get to know their writing styles and so that they can "warm up" their writing skills.
Assignments for Next Week
Writing 3 Class Policies (signatures needed)
Essay #1 Rough Draft (Please use the Google Doc template attached to this assignment.)
Before school started assignments
Links for this Week:
Writing 3 Class Notes -- Week 1 (August 26)
Mrs. Prichard's Guide to Technology 2021 - 2022 (on the blog)
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