Board Races of Evil

After finishing the last review and practice of grammar, we started our next exemplification activity. Today's abstract noun is evil. During class, we started the process by brainstorming anything and everything that is evil. Then, each of you selected one example to use for further research.

In class tomorrow, we will work more with evil and review how to create citations in writing. the exemplification component will be the first half hour prior to lunch. We may work on this as well on Friday. Then, you will have the GRAMMAR QUEST post-lunch. Make sure to study all your rules, check out englishgrammar101.com and chompchomp.com for more practice.

Nearing the Quest

These blogs have been fairly short for your class as we have spent the last few days winding down Grammar Boot Camp and preparing for the Quest on Wednesday.

Without much ado...
1. Vocab Quiz 4. If you were absent, you will need to make up the quiz by Friday.
2. Grammar Review Part II. We identified the parts of speech, and I gave you tips to help you recognize different parts of speech. For instance, start by identifying nouns in the sentence. Then, go in this order: pronouns, verbs & infinitives, adjectives & adverbs, conjunctions & prepositions.
3. As individuals and then in small groups, you completed a practice Quest. We will go over the answers tomorrow.

Review Part II

During class, we will be analyzing "The Catbird Seat," an exemplification essay, for its theme, purpose, specific examples, relevancy, and range. Next week, we will return to writing by creating a practice exemplification on an abstract noun-- I promise this one will have more options for you than "creativity" -- and eventually your own exemplification essay. The second part of class revolved around Grammar Review Part II, the sequel. If you are struggling with any sections, utilize practice exercises on englishgrammar101.com and chompchomp.com.

Don't forget the Vocab Quiz on Monday -- it will cover the 11 words from Unit 4 and, of course, feature return words from the previous units.

Review

As we may have noticed, we are in review mode for your big Mechanics Quest next week. At this point, you should have completed the first part of the review using englishgrammar101 and the checklist. If you did not have a flawless review, you will need to review and study the specific grammar and punctuation categories. For Friday's class, you will need to arrive with the second review completed. The plan is to go over this handout and then have a practice Quest next week before the real deal.

In addition, we will continue our exemplification unit by reading another brief essay during Friday's class.

Prepositional Cliffhangers!

The title of the blog makes our class sound dramatic! During class, we shared our prepositional short stories, which helped us learn about prepositions and the requirements of prepositional phrases. 

Then, we discussed two sins in writing: ending a sentence with a preposition and over-prepositioning (my own term) in writing. 

Whenever you notice a preposition at the end of the sentence, you will need to revise the word order and construction of that sentence. For example, "Mrs. Bennet had many grievances to relate, and much to complain of" comes from Jane Austen's pen. This could be rewritten as "Mrs. Bennet had many grievances and complaints to relate." 

In addition, you may be the habit of using a great deal of prepositional phrases in your writing. The result = wordiness! 
     The balloon of blue from the circus floats across the sky with clouds.
     The blue circus balloon floats across the cloudy sky.

As for exemplification, we practiced the relevancy, range, and specific aspects using the broad topic of "creativity." For homework, you are to take your assigned specific example and create a paragraph illustrating its creativity. If you were absent, you will need to pick a specific person, place, or object and write a paragraph illustrating how your selection reflects creativity.

Since we ran out of time on vocabulary, we will resume vocab experts tomorrow.

Exemplifying Prepositional Phrases

After learning four new vocabulary words (catharsis, kudos, risible, estrange), we began our exemplification unit. Exemplification is exactly how it sounds -- a writing style that emphasizes examples. For instance, we brainstormed all the related words and emotions of this general topic: students. Next, we picked "bad decisions" as a theme to clarify a direction to our exemplification. Then, comes the three qualities of exemplification writing: relevancy, range, and specificity. First, relevancy involves selecting the items on the brainstorm that connect with the theme and ditching all the items that do not fit. You can then group the items into usable categories such as social, educational, and emotional for our student examples. Second, range connects to organization of examples. Do you want a chronological order, a least important to most important order, etc. For today, we decided to organize socially then emotionally then educationally. Last, specificity involves taking a vague idea (lunchroom bad decisions) and making these into memorable, specific, image-filled examples (starting a fight over spilled peas). To further instill the exemplification ideas, we read "Be Specific," a short essay detailing the necessity of specific names and information for all objects -- whether it be flower, cheese, or person.

For the creative portion of our show, we reviewed prepositions and prepositional phrases. Remember, a preposition exists in a prepositional phrase. The phrase begins with a prepositional and ends with an object. You can have modifiers to describe the object, but there are no verbs in a prepositional phrases. 

With a partner, you drew four random prepositions and created a story in prepositional phrases. Tomorrow, we will start by turning this story into a visualization via construction paper. Ideally, this will help all of us improve with recognizing prepositional phrases -- whether you are a squirrel in a tree, a girl in a bed of spiders, or a high school student asleep on the bus.

See you tomorrow for more exemplifying and prepositional fun!

Narrative Edit Day

What you learned today:
The narrative essay will be evaluated on 4 areas: idea, organization, voice, and conventions. With the idea, you need a true story with imagery, characters, optional dialogue, and theme. With organization, you need a memorable title, an introduction with a attention-getting hook, sound body paragraphs, transitions between ideas, and a strong conclusion. With voice, pay attention to your word choice by including specific, mature language and active verbs, your originality of expression, and your non-usage of contractions and second person. With conventions, MLA format does matter as well as mechanical conventions.

The final draft is due by 2:45 p.m. on Tuesday.

What I learned today:
Your class is quite competitive and likes the buzzer system. I guess we will have to use that for future vocabulary reviews!

Happy Homecoming!

Conjunctions & Punctuation

Wednesday was punctuation in Advanced Comp. We practiced punctuation rules regarding dependent and independent clauses, transitional expressions, semicolons, and colons. For homework, you need to finish the highlighting activity, which we will discuss on Friday.

As you now know these punctuation rules, your narrative first drafts, which are due at the beginning of the hour on Friday, should have less distractions. Remember, read your essays out loud to catch your mistakes or needed punctuation.

By the way, if you are serious about a t-shirt for the class, submit designs to me.

Sample Day

Today's class featured vocab quiz 3 and the assignment of the first 11 words in unit 4. Then, we heard sample narratives from various writing levels: sophomore, junior, and collegiate. Last, we reviewed the difference between independent and dependent clauses in preparation for conjunction and punctuation rules.

Narrative first drafts, whether in hard copy or digital form, must be available at the start of Friday's class for peer and teacher evaluation.

Narrative Assignment

On our docket today was vocabulary review (Quiz 3 tomorrow), "Porkopolis" college application essay, narrative essay assignment, and narrative warm-ups. When you enter class tomorrow, make sure you know what option you would like to explore in your narrative essay. We will have previous student samples to give you further examples of narrative subjects and characterization. Remember, you will need the first draft of your narrative essay on Friday for peer review and teacher evaluation.

Warming Up

A quick blog to remind you of Friday's class:

1. We have all the vocabulary for Unit 3 -- which means a review day and a quiz next week. We will then move to 11 words per unit due to our class size.

2. Using English Grammar 101 website (link on blog), we reviewed the difference between adjectives and adverbs, differentiated between coordinating and cumulative adjectives, and recognized the issues of double comparisons, double negatives, and dangling modifiers.

3. Work time on Narrative Warm-ups. For Monday's class, you will need all three warm-ups completed. We will look at more narrative samples and then it will be time for your own. These warm-ups will help you find a story or a direction for your own writing.

The Narrative Dialogue

As noted in class today, dialogue can be a significant reflection of character (as in our little partner conversations) and a contributor to the theme (as in "My Mother Never Worked). While dialogue can invigorate a narrative, it does not have to be part of successful writing. Utilizing imagery, character development, and time will provide a story with all it needs.

For homework, answer Narrative Warm-up #3 questions. Do not worry about complete sentences on this one. Jot down responses -- especially those that quickly pop up in your mind. Your instant reactions may provide insight and topics for your writing next week.

Pronoun Dialogue

After leaving 4 new vocabulary words today (usurp, vacillate, talisman, expurgate), we reviewed the pronoun handout. Remember, the differentiation between subjective and objective pronouns will help you determine whether it is I or me, we or us, or who (hoot) and whom. For the second half of class, we worked on a partner project involving dialogue. During tomorrow's class, we will share our character conversations and read another example of narrative.

http://blogs.bu.edu/core/files/2013/10/WhovsWhom2.jpg

Narratives & Pronouns

Just a brief synopsis of today's agenda:
1. 4 new vocabulary words.
2. Discussion of "Only Daughter" for its narrative qualities.
3. Pronouns - we focused on subjective and objective pronouns in relationship to verb usage, we reviewed possessive usage of apostrophes and when not to use apostrophes, and we hooted with our who and whom lesson. If you didn't finish up during class time, make sure to have the pronoun handout ready to go for tomorrow.

For Wednesday's class, we will be working on dialogue and how to utilize conversation to understand characters.

Narration

During Friday's class, we began our next mode of discourse: the narrative. There are 5 factors to consider when analyzing and writing narratives. First, every narrative should be centered around a theme. For instance, "Coming to an Awareness" focuses on how education creates empowerment through the experiences of Malcolm X and his time in jail. Second, narratives must consider how to use time, whether for chronological, linear progression or for the manipulation of plot via flashbacks and flashforwards (a word I first heard used in Funny Farm long ago). Third, narratives revolve around characters with the protagonist the most important one. Remember, you want to be selective with whom you place in your story. Fourth, narratives allow one to incorporate dialogue. However, dialogue should be used sparingly and for specific, memorable commentary. Fifth, imagery remains a holdover from descriptive writing. The best stories take the reader into the setting and allow him/her to meet the characters and become part of the plot.

For Tuesday's class, make sure to read "Only Daughter" and prepare responses to the five narrative questions. You will discussing this narrative for participation points, so make sure you are ready to speak.

I hope you have enjoyed your Labor Day weekend. I had the opportunity to visit iheartfink's atelier this weekend and try on a few looks from her runway show. And before you point out my lack of capitalization in the previous sentence, the brand is not capitalized and it is all one word!

And, I did put in the extra credit points. You may want to look at your grades in the next few days as many more assignments will be added into the mix and the grade will inevitably drop to a more realistic number.

Descriptive Assessment

Today was the last day of descriptive writing. While description sounds rather easy in comparison to the steps and research required in process analysis or argumentation, we have spent a great deal of time focusing on the details (imagery using all of the senses, paragraph and essay structure, hooks and introductions, capitalization, & verb choices). The deadline for the descriptive essay final draft is 3:30 p.m. on Friday, September 4. Turn in hard copy. If you are absent for the entirety of the day, the deadline holds, but you may e-mail an attachment or share with me the essay.

See you on Friday for vocabulary and new stuff --- narratives & verbs!

Yes, Double Space Everything

On the descriptive writing front, Adv. Comp focused on the remaining parts of essay structure: body, conclusion, and MLA format. For tomorrow's class, you will need to have a completed first draft of your relative essay. Do not bring a hard copy as we will be sharing and peer editing via computer tomorrow. 

Tips:

• Have your essay in MLA format. If you made a mistake, you can correct it during peer review. (If you need a refresher, head to the additional resources section on the blog.)
• Construct an introduction that hooks the audience and provides a thesis, a direction, for your essay.
• Compose body paragraphs that create round characters, full of imagery and small details that reflect a person's identity.
• Finish with a conclusion that is not a summary. Consider what are the most important, lasting ideas that reflect your family and share that with the audience.

Post-lunch brought vocab quiz 2. Any make-up quizzes must be completed by Friday, September 4.

And, we also reviewed identifying nouns and subjects in order to practice capitalization rules. While capitalization may seem easy, it is a mechanical component, when flawed, that creates a great deal of distractions in student essays. Go here for a recap of the main capitalization rules and start editing your essays for errors: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/592/01/ .