Writing 3 -- Research & Writing: Writing 3 Class Notes -- Week 12 (November 18)

Greetings!

We had a good day in class and covered a lot of ground.

Quick Write

For today's Quick Writes, we had the following prompts:

1 -- Contribute to the list of Quick Write ideas to be used for my classes for the rest of the year.

2 -- Write about a sports mis-hap that happened to you or that you know about.

3 -- November 18 is National Princess Day and November 16, 1553, was the day that Queen Elizabeth I became the queen of England following the death of her sister, Mary. Write about any royalty that you are especially interested in.

Words of the Day

We had no words because I anticipated the class time to be too full.

Homework Discussion

We went around the room, and the students shared where they were in the process of their papers and what challenges they were experiencing. Some common themes about their challenges came up: time management issues, difficulties finding the right resources, personal challenges, overcoming perfectionism, refining and defining the focus and topic, etc. The students are all in different places in their progress, but they're all moving forward. Some rough drafts have been handed in the the past couple of days, and I will get them back to students over the weekend.

One of the common challenges was finding enough resources. I recommended trying ProQuest or EBSCO, online databases of peer reviewed, academic articles. Most local, public libraries have access to these articles and journals.

Presentations

Students are required to present something to their class. It can be a quick overview of all their topics or a focused look at one aspect. They can have some kind of visual aid to help them in their presentation. Lots of students use PowerPoint slides, but they could use a poster or use some other object. Because we have a large class, the presentations will need to be short (10 minutes), about which some students are really glad. I showed them a short, humorous video about giving presentations. I'm also posting some of next week's assignments, because they're related to our presentation.

Below is our Presentation schedule:

December 2 -- Michael, Gabi, Philip, Levi, Tyler, Jessie

December 9 -- Benjamin, Elliot, Josie, David, Kara, Maria

December 16 -- Ellie, Ethan, Carson, Brooke, Leighton

Sample Paper Reading

Students took some time to read a sample paper by one of my students from about 8 years ago. This was a well-written paper, but not perfect. They were told to look for what the writer did well and what was not as strong.

Helpful Resources

In the links below I've included some websites that might be helpful at this stage of their writing. Some students might need help with in text citations and the Works Cited page. Even though we've talked about this multiple time, it's always a little different when you're actually doing it. One resource listed below is something that one of the students, Kara, said she was using. Supernotecard is an online note-taking app.

We won't have class next week. Enjoy your family and Thanksgiving weekend.

Blessings,

Mrs. Prichard

Homework for Next Class (12/2)

Research Paper Assignments