Peppler’s Classroom Blog

Sorry for the later post today; I went home after 3rd hour today (I shouldn’t have come in at all, probably!) So, I’m posting this after my 3 1/2 hour nap…

‘Tis the season, I suppose.

Anyway, today we returned to DOL. Afterwards, students took out their descriptive paragraphs (due today in rough draft form), and we began the revision process. We looked specifically at the need to:

• Remove (most) of the 1st and 2nd person personal pronouns
• Check the order of the details (does the order make sense?)
• Have a strong, clear topic sentence for each paragraph
• Finish the first two paragraphs with a sentence that mentions the next element (end of place paragraph mentions the person, end of person paragraph mentions the object)

For tomorrow, everyone needs to have a complete draft of three paragraphs, and go through and do the revisions listed above. They do not have to make the changes on their electronic copy of the paper, but they may if they wish to have a clean copy for the next revision…tomorrow.

Today, we were able to get a little computer lab time.  The task was to create a draft of the descriptive “paper”, all three paragraphs.  Students need to bring a hard copy, double-spaced to class tomorrow.  We’ll discuss and practice some revision techniques using this draft.

Note: We did have a quote and an idiom, but no DOL…to save a little time.

No homework for tonight!  (Unless you didn’t use time wisely in the lab, then you gave yourself homework…)

Have fun at the assembly tonight!

We continued DOL, specifically looking at misplaced modifiers.  We had fun laughing at some real misplaced modifiers that found their way into newspaper articles.

I handed out the explanation of the description paper we’ve started; it give the “big picture” of where we are going with all the brainstorming, etc.  I’ll link to it from the Assignments page on this blog (link above).

We spent some time discussing the organization of each paragraph and the decisions that writers make as they put details in order.  For tomorrow, students should have a checklist of the details they need to include, in a logical order, for each element.  This will make drafting much easier when we go into the lab.  Hopefully, we will be able to draft the descriptions tomorrow.

Also, each student should make sure they can log in to the school computers properly before tomorrow, so we are not wasting valuable lab time on technical problems.

FRIDAY: Ok, I didn’t really “forget” to blog an entry about Friday.  We just didn’t have much of a Friday.

The homecoming assembly fell during 3rd hour for freshmen, so we did our DOL routine and went over the vocab quiz they had taken earlier.  That was about it for the time we had in 3rd hour.  1st and 2nd hour, we used our time to play a little word game (with idioms) so that our time wasn’t wasted.

Only homework was the vocab sentences, due Monday.

MONDAY:  Started new DOL week (Week 4) and collected the vocab sentences.

We then focused on the brainstorming for the place/person/object description.  I showed them a mind map (cluster map) done by an executive to demonstrate that this is not just some silly school activity, but this is what real writers do.

We then brainstormed details by creating cluster maps, one each for the place, person, and object.  The object cluster map (and the person cluster map for 3rd hour) is due tomorrow.

Coined a new term today.  Friday Eve sounds better than Thursday, don’t you think?

Today, we finished the DOL for the week (Week 3), along with quote and idiom.  Reminders about Vocab Exercises due tomorrow and Sentences due on Monday.  Also, I instructed students to number the cards in their roots binders, for easier record-keeping.

We continued with our brainstorming exercises, choosing a “place” to write about, then brainstorming the “person” that will be in the place, then the “object” that will be linked to the person in some way.  These three elements will make up the descriptions of their next writing assignment.  More details will be posted soon…

For tomorrow, other than the vocab exercises, students each need to have a place, person, and object that they are “comfortable” with as we continue through the writing process toward completing this piece.

After DOL, etc., we reviewed the vocab words for Unit Two.  We had already identified the roots for the unit, and I announced the due dates yesterday (see Tuesday’s post).

Today, we spent some time practicing some real brainstorming.  Students will be writing a description which incorporates a place, a person and an object.  This will give us an opportunity to focus on ideas and organization as well as a chance to ‘play’ with words and word choice in writing.

As part of the prewriting, I stressed that true brainstorming has to “unfiltered”, that we can’t make judgments as we go or worry about the quality of each item that we list.  Students practiced some unfiltered brainstorming before I taught them the technique of hitchhiking.

For students who run out of ideas quickly when they brainstorm, hitchhiking can be quite helpful.  You take the first item on your original list and think of other items that are associated with it or are of the same kind.  I did this as an example in class (hitchhiking-example.pdf), which might help you see it better.

Their only homework is to continue with the hitchhiking on their list until they’ve “hitched” off each of the original items.  We’ll be using this list of possibilities tomorrow in class.

Started today with the vocab quiz.  Most students said they did “okay”.  Some are already realizing they should have studied (especially the roots) more ahead of time.

When everyone finished, we still did our quote, idiom and DOL for the day.  We briefly went over the roots from Unit Two that they need to add to their roots binder, and I gave them due dates.

• Exercises 2-6 due this Friday, Sept. 28
• Exercise 1 (sentences, separate sheet of paper) due next Monday, Oct. 1
• Unit Two quiz will be on Tuesday, Oct. 9
  

All we had time for.  Tomorrow we will review the words from Unit Two, and we’ll get back into writing with some brainstorming activities.

Start new DOL week, etc.

Played around with pronouns a little.  We reviewed the types of pronouns and then did an exercise, in class, combining sentences using relative pronouns (who, which, that, etc.)  No homework for tonight…Vocab Quiz tomorrow!

New quote and idiom, but no DOL.

We reviewed the Pronoun homework, but I didn’t collect it; a number of students expressed that they were having difficulty with this one.  No new homework for the weekend.

I reminded the students about this blog and gave them a sneak peek at the blog that we will be using in (out of) class for continuing the discussion after class is over.  They will each have their own blog, but they will be interconnected with a main class blog.  Lots of possibilities!  More on this next week.

Writing “assignment” for the day:  Take one of the quotes from the last two weeks and do a free-write (about 20 minutes) reacting to the quote.  This can be agreement or disagreement, examples or anecdotes from your own experience or life in general, or any other thoughts you have when you read the quote.  This should be finished over the weekend if you didn’t finish in class.

Reminder: Unit 1 Vocab Quiz next Tuesday.

Have a relaxing weekend!

Starting routine (finished DOL for the week), then we went over the homework for today (Nouns).  Depending on the class, we had some time to read the “creative homework” excuses to each other. 

I introduced pronouns and assigned Exercise A on both page 10 and 13.  (For the exercise on pg. 13, they also have to write down the type of pronoun that it is.)  This is due tomorrow. I gave them permission to work together on this assignment with a couple others, and I gave them a little class time to get started, too.

We are focusing quite a bit on grammar skills at the beginning of the year.  This is to give them a refresher or a base for building their other writing skills.  When we are talking about how to inject a piece of writing with voice, we can’t stop in the middle to define what I mean by “adjective”. 

We’ll be moving into their first “official” writing assignment next week, as we continue to review parts of speech and other grammatical issues.