For Those of You Interested in an Advertising Career

Watching all of you take the final is bittersweet: I see stronger writers cognizant of active verb choice, clever hooks, and modes of discourse, or the culmination of eighteen weeks of effort; I also see that I will not have the opportunity to read your words anymore or to discuss essays, articles, current events, or random behavior of students in the hallway.

I wish all of you the best as you journey to your final semester of your high school career or to your entrance to the collegiate environment. As I said in class, you are always welcome to contact me for advisement or assistance. You may not be physically in my class, but you will always be my students.

Before you do begin second semester, I do want to add one more item regarding this course, which involves one more way to earn points for your semester grade.

As many of you may recall from last year, I visit classrooms in January to help pique interest in Advanced Composition and let students know all the options available to them junior and senior year.

Another way to call attention to Adv. Comp. is to create a poster that grabs the eye and provides key words that would attract a student to the course. And in the past years, our department chair has blown up this poster into a mega-poster that is on the English department bulletin board second semester.

If you would like to make a poster for Adv. Comp, and perhaps earn 10-20 extra credit points (dependent on effort), create one advertisement and share/e-mail it to me by 7:00 a.m. on January 4. This will need to be in digital format.

You will find below some facts about the course that you may want to include; however, you can also bring in stuff you have learned or liked this semester to encourage a student to take the course. Remember, this is an advertisement and prospective students walking down the hall will not stop to read full sentence explanations. The winning poster will be selected by another teacher or staff member and will receive an additional 10 extra credit points.

Advanced Composition Fun Facts:

• Junior and seniors
• Semester classes with objectives to prepare the literary analysis and writing skills needed for college advancement
• College credit is paid in advance and earned from the class grade
• Advanced Composition curriculum focuses on composition, rhetoric, and argument in order to write college-level products
• Written products will include extensive analysis, argumentation, and research essays in addition to multiple styles of writing
• Emphasis on essay writing skills, mechanics, and vocabulary
• Texts include professional and student work to gauge rhetorical comprehension and proficiency
• No summer reading 

Our Last Advanced Composition Class

While technically our last class is Thursday, our real last class where we could interact with each other was today. For the majority of the class, we reviewed all the parts of the final. Remember, you  may come in starting at 7:10 a.m. on Thursday to start your final early.

I returned your essays to you, which cover tips for improvement. If you have any questions in the next few days, ask!

Good luck on all your finals!

P.S. You may want to check the blog during holiday break.

Cocoa & Cram on Monday! Plus More!

I will be participating in the Cocoa and Cram study sessions on Monday between 5-8 p.m. and all of my students are welcome to join me for review.

To give you a sense of what that would involve, I will be offering assistance for three classes at once.

For AP Lang, we will focus on rhetorical analysis prompts and multiple choice passages. I will have sample rhetorical analysis prompts, which we will close read, select strategies, and create mock outlines to review essay structure for this purpose. I will have multiple choice passages, which we will use to practice close reading skills and accuracy of answer. I will also have my rhetorical toolbox cards if you would like to play memory games. While you do not need to know every definition for the final (though, I would be happy if you did), it helps to have the main rhetorical strategies and modes of discourse ready for application on the exam.

For AP Lit, we will focus on multiple choice passages, which will allow us an opportunity to practice close reading skills and accuracy. The passages will be a hybrid of prose, poetry, and drama since your final will be a full AP Lit MC test. I will also have the poetry cards and the literary toolbox list to review the terms.

For Advanced Composition, we can review the styles of writing, grammar and punctuation rules, and tips for the final. We will be going over all of the above during class on Monday, so if you have any remaining questions about the final, we can work together during the cram session.

And, since I will be at school between seventh hour and the cram session, I will have my room open during that time for student use.

So, what exactly is student use? Since all of my students are working on some type of essay, you are welcome to use the computers starting at 2:30 p.m. until around 4:50 p.m. when I will need to close up the room for the Cocoa & Cram study sessions. I will be prepping and grading and dealing with textbooks (have you turned in all of your novels yet?) and possibly running errands here and there, but I will be available to answer any questions you have regarding the essay.

And, starting at 4 p.m., any AP Lang and AP Lit students are welcome to come and play with the AP Lang and Lit Cards to help prep for the final. I will even bring my AP flashcards to help you study. This will primarily be student-led review, but I will be in the background for any clarifications or questions that you may have.

Remember, all essays for all of my classes have a deadline of 11:00 a.m. on Thursday, December 22. The essay must be in hard copy and must be delivered by this time or the grade will be a zero -- no exceptions.

In all circumstances, I hope the aforementioned opportunities will help you with the finals and your last essays of the semester!

Cocoa & Cram on Monday! Plus More!

I will be participating in the Cocoa and Cram study sessions on Monday between 5-8 p.m. and all of my students are welcome to join me for review.

To give you a sense of what that would involve, I will be offering assistance for three classes at once.

For AP Lang, we will focus on rhetorical analysis prompts and multiple choice passages. I will have sample rhetorical analysis prompts, which we will close read, select strategies, and create mock outlines to review essay structure for this purpose. I will have multiple choice passages, which we will use to practice close reading skills and accuracy of answer. I will also have my rhetorical toolbox cards if you would like to play memory games. While you do not need to know every definition for the final (though, I would be happy if you did), it helps to have the main rhetorical strategies and modes of discourse ready for application on the exam.

For AP Lit, we will focus on multiple choice passages, which will allow us an opportunity to practice close reading skills and accuracy. The passages will be a hybrid of prose, poetry, and drama since your final will be a full AP Lit MC test. I will also have the poetry cards and the literary toolbox list to review the terms.

For Advanced Composition, we can review the styles of writing, grammar and punctuation rules, and tips for the final. We will be going over all of the above during class on Monday, so if you have any remaining questions about the final, we can work together during the cram session.

And, since I will be at school between seventh hour and the cram session, I will have my room open during that time for student use.

So, what exactly is student use? Since all of my students are working on some type of essay, you are welcome to use the computers starting at 2:30 p.m. until around 4:50 p.m. when I will need to close up the room for the Cocoa & Cram study sessions. I will be prepping and grading and dealing with textbooks (have you turned in all of your novels yet?) and possibly running errands here and there, but I will be available to answer any questions you have regarding the essay.

And, starting at 4 p.m., any AP Lang and AP Lit students are welcome to come and play with the AP Lang and Lit Cards to help prep for the final. I will even bring my AP flashcards to help you study. This will primarily be student-led review, but I will be in the background for any clarifications or questions that you may have.

Remember, all essays for all of my classes have a deadline of 11:00 a.m. on Thursday, December 22. The essay must be in hard copy and must be delivered by this time or the grade will be a zero -- no exceptions.

In all circumstances, I hope the aforementioned opportunities will help you with the finals and your last essays of the semester!

Self-Eval Day

I just realized that I posted an AP Lang blog under your class, so I hope you weren't too confused regarding another essay to write. Don't worry -- you just have the argumentative research essay left to go. During today's class, you received a lengthy self-evaluation handout that asked you specific questions regarding the organization, idea, voice, and mechanics of your argument. Take the time to go through each question and adjust your essay as necessary for Friday.

Peer edit day will be Friday!

Research Day 5

Today's class was our last in the library, and the deadline for the outline covering your argument's claim, evidence, warrants, counterclaim, rebuttal, and conclusions.

For tomorrow's class, you will need the first draft of your essay completed at 11:45 when we resume after lunch. I have a specific self-evaluation handout for you that should help you fine tune your writing prior to peer evaluation day on Friday.

As a reminder, on your assignment sheet, it clarifies that if you are absent tomorrow, you will need to share or e-mail your essay to me by the given time. I will then reply back with the self-evaluation sheet.

Research Day 4

Final deadlines for the claim and source pages 5-8 were today during fifth hour's class time. Tomorrow is the deadline for the outline. As a reminder, this assignment is worth more than 300 points, and you have a little over a week to complete the essay.

We will be in the library tomorrow and back in the classroom on Wednesday for the self-evaluation day. As announced in class, the first draft on Wednesday is due at 11:45 a.m. after we return from lunch.

Research Day 3

Today's deadline was 12:30 p.m. for four sources. If you did not turn these in by that time -- whether in person or, if absent, via digital means, you may still receive half credit on Monday.

We will be back in the library on Monday and Tuesday!

Survey Link

Do the district a favor and take this technology survey at some point today: http://survey.fzsd.us

Research Day 2

We resumed research time in the library. The first deadline, for sources 1-4, is 12:30 p.m. on Friday. If absent, you are still required to share/e-mail/photograph materials by this deadline for credit. See you on Friday!

Research Day 1

As evidenced by the post subject, we started researching in the library today. While you do have class time to research, that does not excuse you from working on this assignment outside of class. Make sure you are staying up to date with your work as your first due date is this Friday.

The Last Paper Assignment

After wrapping up our sample argumentation on Women in the Military topic, you were assigned your last paper, the Argumentative Research essay. For tomorrow's class, we will be in the library so you may start the research process. Make sure each source has a source page or a notebook page to keep all of your evidence separate and understandable.

The Counterclaim & The Rebuttal

After finishing up your warrant for the Honey Boo Boo claims, we read your work to the whole class for further exemplification of argumentative claims, evidence, and warrants.

An argument does not end there! Once your claim has its footing, you will need to introduce a counterclaim. A counterclaim is not the opposite of the claim; it is another position that could be a strong, evidence-based claim. Following the counterclaim, you have the rebuttal. A rebuttal is not the trashing of the counterclaim; it recognizes the counterclaim's validity and then adds supporting justification for the first claim's strength. You created counterclaim and rebuttal statements for the Boo Boo argument, and you shared these with the class.

For the rest of class, we utilized the women in the military topic by working in groups to craft the steps of argumentation writing. Thus far, we are through the brainstorming of claims, the selection of the best claim, and the accumulation of evidence. We will resume with this on Monday.

Rhetoric Complete

For the first half of class, we were treated to the rhetorical analysis presentations encompassing Meryl Streep's strategies in her Barnard speech. Our crowd favorite presentation was our last, led by Tiana, Grace, Kayla, and Jaime. Their hook had the most depth of the groups, providing context of the speaker and how her ethos was formed over time. If absent, you will need to type up a rhetorical analysis essay on the speech. This will be due by 2:30 p.m. on Monday in hard copy form.

For the second half of class, we began our last unit!?! Argumentation!

As with any argument, the centerpiece is the claim, a position that you take on a topic. The claim could be one of many claims and is not a for or against thesis. As I mentioned in class, avoid "should" and "should not" so that you do not limit the argument and begin to move into persuasive territory. Here is the link to the qualities of a strong claim, which will be necessary information on the final: http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/english/mwollaeger/cdw.htm.

Following a claim, you have to consider evidence, which is more logos-driven. Stats, historical facts, expert opinions, and even (if used sparingly and for effect) a personal anecdote will aid your claim.

Last part of today's argumentative focus centered on the warrant, which ties the claim and evidence together and forms a concluding sentence.

To end class, we started a practice on argumentation, featuring a video interlude with Honey Boo Boo. We will finish that up on Friday.

For homework, you will read the 3 articles regarding women in the military. Annotate and prep notes so that you will contribute to our second group activity on Friday. I have hard copy packets to pick up tomorrow, but you may also read these here:

http://townhall.com/columnists/lindachavez/2003/04/30/women_in_combat_will_take_toll_on_our_culture
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29269-2003Mar25.html
http://www.newsweek.com/uncle-sam-and-aunt-samantha-149413

One Day More

Since we read "On My Own" from Les Miserables, it is appropriate to reference my favorite song from the musical in this blog title. Our class agenda today was all about your presentation prep for tomorrow. Make sure you are ready to go and be here!

Rhetorical Analysis Assessment

Today's class featured the topic of your rhetorical analysis assessment: the commencement address by Meryl Streep at Barnard University. You will find a copy of the speech here: http://www.graduationwisdom.com/speeches/0069-streep.htm. You can also listen to and watch the speech here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-a8QXUAe2g.

After the viewing and annotation of the transcript, you split into 5 groups for your presentation preparation. As a group, you selected a specific purpose and divided up the strategies for analysis for homework this evening. Miranda, you are to work on the identification and the analysis of logos in the speech; Kayla, you are to work on the identification and the analysis of ethos in the speech.

Tomorrow will be a full prep hour for this presentation. Remember, any person absent on Wednesday will have a supplementary individual assignment to make up the grade.

Logos, Ethos, Pathos

After analyzing your tone maps, which all exhibited a fluctuation of tone as Eponine, she would be the speaker of "On My Own," recognizes that she must accept the loss of a love that never knew her feelings, we read an article for its usage of logos, ethos, and pathos. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/magazine/12wwln-lede-t.html. Absentees should read the article and identify where logos, ethos, and pathos are used. We decided that the essay relies most heavily on pathos, attempting to disgust and then motivate the reader to adjust a fast food lifestyle. When you return, you will be completing the assessment for rhetorical analysis - more details on Monday.

Your Own Tone Mapping

During class, I modeled how to do a tone map using your nine tone words for "Siren Song." After indicating your tones, you then need to select 2 opposites or 2 words to create a range for your map. Then, you plot the points, draw the lines, and look for patterns in tone.

In partners, you created a tone map for "On My Own" from Les Miserables, which you may find a digital copy here: http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/lesmiserablescast/onmyown.html. If absent, you will need to read through the lyrics, identify all the tone shifts (F.Y.I. you are looking at every minor, subtle tone shift in the lines -- do not just divide by stanza), and give each section (for example, lines 1-4) a tone word. I will show you what to do in class after that.

Big Kid Tone Words

After we performed our tone conversations, focusing on the subtle shifts of team positive, team negative, team sorrow, and team neutral, we looked at the AP tone handout and identified our new favorite tone words. Jingoistic - still my favorite! To practice using the list and our former one, we read "Siren Song" by Margaret Atwood and identified the tone of each stanza. On Monday, I will show you how to a tone map and then you will be creating your own.

Diction to Tone

For the first 1/2 of class, we worked on diction analysis. I provided feedback for each body paragraph, allowing for revision. (How impressive you are becoming in organizing paragraph, adopting active verbs, and bringing in multiple examples of evidence.) After the revision process, you composed a team introduction and turned in the team "almost" essay. We will be reading these on Friday, so any absent paragraphs will need to be attached on that day prior to class starting.

For the last 1/2 of class, we played with tone. Using different tones to verbalize statements and identify tone shifts. At the end, you received the umbrella tone list, divided into groups, and sculpted conversations using similar - but not same, Emerson - tone families. We will perform these conversations on Friday so that you may guess the tone shifts.

Miranda, we never made it to tone mapping, so I hope you did not work ahead. We will be doing that on Friday, so please treat the handouts I gave you as a preview.

Team Emerson

We finished up analyzing the paragraphs for Emerson's "Education" and identified topic sentences that would cover the diction and purpose.

In groups of 3, you then composed a thesis statement for the following prompt: "How does Emerson utilize diction to reflect his purpose?" In each group, each person selected one form of diction listed in the team thesis to compose a body paragraph. A strong body paragraph would include multiple examples of evidence that would reflect different paragraphs.

If absent, you should create a body paragraph for tomorrow's class. Choose one form of diction and write the paragraph. Here is a link to the entire essay; we read only nine paragraphs, which I will remind you of after the link.  http://archive.vcu.edu/english/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/emerson/essays/education.html

Our section began with the paragraph "I believe that our own experience instructs us that the Secret of Education..." and ends with the paragraph "Nature provided for the communication of thought..."

Emerson Diction

We continue our emphasis on diction by looking at the first 9 paragraphs of Emerson's "Education" essay. In groups, you circled key words, analyzed meaning, and composed thesis statements indicating the author, an active verb, a specific type(s) of diction, and a mature purpose. Overall, the class is doing very well with characterizing diction in the text. My only want would be to see a bit more analysis and support from the text to validate the thesis statement. I know you will keep working on these skills as we continue forward into diction and tone later this week.

Diction

Our class focused on how to analyze diction. As every piece of literature has diction, it can sometimes be a struggle to start the analysis process. I recommend circling words that stand out: words that indicate tone and feeling, words that repeat, words that create a theme.

To practice this, we worked with quotes by circling diction and creating thesis-like statements to summarize the analysis. As with syntax, the formula for a diction thesis would be author + active verb + specific type(s) of diction + mature purpose. After our class practice, you worked with a group to analyze a quote about autumn and complete the aforementioned components above.

We will work more with diction next week. If you were absent, you do not have a makeup assignment for today. However, you can read some of your favorite quotes, identify the type of diction, and then figure out the purpose. This will be an informal way to prep for Monday's class.

Syntaxing Surprises

After my lap around the room to answer your questions, you received a surprise: the deadline for the essay was not today at the end of the hour but tomorrow at 3:45 p.m. Be aware that you will not have class time to work on the essay tomorrow, so any finishing touches will need to be completed for homework or in study hall. As with all of your hard copy essays, you will need to turn this in if you are on school grounds at any point of the day. If absent for the entire day, you will need to share/attach/photograph the essay and then turn in the hard copy the next day.

Syntaxing

Today's class was dedicated to self-evaluating the syntax essay or, more broadly, how to spruce up a rhetorical analysis essay. Use your evaluation suggestions and the tips from class to work on your essay. During class tomorrow, you will have the entire hour to complete a final draft of the essay. If you think you  need more than the allotted hour, take some time this evening or during a study hall to work on it.

Might Not Be Periodic

For the first half of class, we (since I was, technically, playing the role of the simple sentence in one group) shared the different sentence structures you highlighted over the weekend. During this process, you noted when and why the author brought in simple sentences, complex, and the like. Furthering this interaction, your group also noted other syntactical friends like enumeration, anaphora, rhetorical questions, and the like.

For Wednesday, you need to write 3-5 paragraphs responding to the following prompt. Have a hard copy with you for class -- this includes absent students as well.

How does Sherman Alexie utilize syntax to reflect his purpose in "Superman & Me"?

Be aware that you will be self-evaluating your work on Wednesday. If you do not have a draft, you will not be able to break down your rhetorical analysis skills.

Syntax & Superman

To begin class, we finished reviewing your syntax handout.

Then, you printed out your evil paragraph for me. If absent, you will need to share that paragraph with me so that I can have a copy.

Then, we read the essay "Superman and Me" in class, identifying the purpose(s) of each paragraph as we went along.http://static.schoolrack.com/files/34213/220710/Chapter_4-Part_3.pdf

You were then divided into groups to identify the syntax in "Superman & Me." Each student will highlight a specific sentence type or two sentence types for class on Monday. In addition, we reviewed your rhetorical strategy handout for other syntactical analysis. After you highlight the text, go back and see if you notice any other related strategies to help with your syntactical analysis.

Our absentee students will form a group and/or work with another group depending on attendance. Here is what you will need to highlight in the text:

• Tiana - Simple & Cumulative
• Gabrielle - Compound & Compound-Complex
• Miranda - Complex & Periodic

Syntax

For our first half hour, you shared in same and different rhetorical article groups. After turning in this assignment, we moved onto syntax and the six types of sentences that we will focus upon in our identification and analysis: simple, compound, complex, compound-complex, cumulative, and periodic. To practice identification of these sentences, you grabbed two highlighters and a partner and highlighted independent and dependent clauses to help ascertain the syntax. We will finish going over the handout on Friday.

Favor -- I would like to have a copy of your evil paragraph. Please revise your paragraph to make sure it is error-free and then print out a hard copy for me. If you are not here on Friday, share the paragraph with me so I can print it out. Thanks in advance.

Rhetorical Terms

In order to amp your rhetorical analyses and look beyond logos, ethos, and pathos, we reviewed/learned 42 strategies that authors use to reflect their purposes in writing. To put this into action, you drew an article, read its content, and completed a handout breaking down the components of a rhetorical analysis. Absentees will need to pick up hard copies next class.

Rhetorical Analysis

Our new unit will cover rhetorical analysis, something that you have worked on in previous English courses.

To start, we focused on purpose and the many purposes that authors may have in writing. This may be something as simple as to inform, to explain, or to persuade. Or, the author may be defining, comparing and contrasting, narrating, exemplifying, describing, arguing, and a plethora of other reasons.

With purpose at the center of rhetorical analysis, we then move forward to rhetorical strategies/persuasive appeals. In essence, you are identifying the "what" the author uses in a text and "why" he/she uses it to reflect the purpose.

All of the above connects to the rhetorical triangle: subject, speaker, and audience. When analyzing (and writing for that matter) you want to identify these elements and utilize these in relationship to the overall purpose of the text. The rhetorical triangle connects to the three main persuasive appeals: logos, ethos, and pathos.

To put this into action, we read this article http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/13/nyregion/13teens.html and identified how the author incorporates the persuasive appeals and why.

At the end of the hour, you worked in a group to define rhetorical strategies, terms, and devices. If you were absent, know the meaning of voice and wit so that you can contribute during tomorrow's class.

St. Louis Assessment

The whole hour was dedicated to your compare and contrast essay assessment. If you were absent, you will need to schedule a time to make up this exam next week.

The Second to Last Day of Compare and Contrast

The first half of class centered on the compare and contrast team essay. The second half was the last chance to complete group notes for the assessment tomorrow. If you were absent today, you will need to turn in these notes BEFORE school tomorrow so that I may make copies for your group.

Team Writing Day

Our entire hour was dedicated to the perfection of your team compare and contrast essay on high school and college. This team essay was due at the end of fifth hour. Our absent group, you have until midnight this evening to finalize your essay.

Don't forget that your team notes are due tomorrow, and the compare and contrast writing assessment will be Thursday!

Compare & Contrast Team Essay

First, we reviewed the group research needed for the compare and contrast essay assessment this week. Each group will research 10 locales in St. Louis, with each group member taking responsibility for 2 places. Notes are due on Wednesday, the day in which I will copy all of your notes for use on the in-class writing prompt on Thursday. Our goal is to NOT have homework this three day weekend!

Class-wise, we spent the hour in groups working on a team compare and contrast essay on high school and college. Groups should continue working on their paragraphs over night in order to expedite the collaborative work tomorrow.

If you were one of my five students absent, you will be completing the team essay in class tomorrow. You are not required to write out anything in advance as you will work on this together.

Friday

In a world without vocabulary, we jump right into writing. First, you met with your partner to evaluate your compare and contrast paragraphs. Overall, you are understanding the need for multiple examples, transitions, and final concluding statements. However, maintain your focus on the thesis statement (or topic sentence in this case) and its incorporation of both comparing and contrasting.

After our evaluation time, we read "Sex, Lies, and Conversation," a text looking at the way women and men communicate and how this can lead to relationship problems.

The remainder of the hour centered around your group research assignment for the compare and contrast assessment next week. In your assigned group, you were given 10 St. Louis locations that will require research (cited research). Each person will take 2 of the locations and make a plethora of notes for the assessment next week. (You may even go to these locations to help add to your ethos!) The notes will be due on Wednesday. The assessment will be during Thursday's class.

On Monday, we will complete a team essay practice on high school vs college - the topic you selected on Wednesday. If there is time on Monday and Tuesday, you will be able to work on your notes for the assessment.

The Last Vocab Quest

Prior to lunch, you completed the last vocabulary quest for Advanced Composition. This quest featured all 75 words from this course!

Post lunch, we focused on compare and contrast writing by...

• reviewing the 5 components of basis, thesis, organization, transitions, and conclusions.
• working in a group to create a basis, thesis, example organization, and concluding statement for 2 subjects.
• reading "Two Ways of Seeing a River" to see how Twain used block organization and analogy to create his impressions of a novice and an expert and what is lost when one becomes accustomed to his or her profession.
• creating a community board of c/c topics.
• selecting a topic for a c/c 1-2 paragraph assignment, which you will have on Friday for evaluation with a partner (and maybe me too). 

If you will not be here on Friday, make sure to stop by on Thursday for your work. You will have tasks to complete for Monday and next week. 

Comparing & Contrasting

1. We spent quality time reviewing vocabulary for our last Vocab Quest tomorrow. Make sure you know ALL 75 words!

2. You received your exemplification essays with feedback. As I mentioned in class, paying attention to details -- citations, person usage, punctuation -- yield dividends for your written presentation. Little errors distract the reader from your ideas and organization.

3. We commenced the compare and contrast unit by looking at 5 qualifications of this mode of discourse. First up, you must create a basis, or the purpose for the compare and contrast essay. This occurs with brainstorming, T-charting, Venn-diagramming, or some other prewriting activity. Second, you want a specific, non-generic thesis statement. Using "there are many similarities and differences" does not engage the reader of help you clarify the direction of the essay. Third, you will need to determine a pattern of organization: either block (all A then all B) or point-by-point (A, B, A, B, and so on). Fourth, during your essay writing, remember to utilize transitional expressions - words, phrases, sentences - to add flow between your subjects. Fifth, construct a conclusion that ends with a final thought or perspective for your audience instead of regurgitating everything prior to this moment.

4. At the end of the hour, you divided into 6 groups, selected a c/c topic, and completed the basis portion. We will continue work on this tomorrow...

Transitioning

1. We reviewed - twice - for the Vocab Quiz to end all vocab quizzes, which may be the case for your high school English career. We will review one more time tomorrow, and the quiz will be on our block day.

2. We reviewed the Grammar Quest in order for you to notice your mistakes and continue studying grammar for the final in December. Grammar never goes away!

3: In my quickly constructed office, we met to talk about your narrative and the class. I would like to do this for exemplification papers as well, so be prepared for the same scenario later this week.

Final Drafting

Ah, brevity - vocab, Works Cited Page format, work time on exemplification final draft.

Works Cited Sample

Many of you will use EasyBib to construct your Works Cited page, which is highly recommended to help guide your through the process.

In order for you to have a visual with formatting, check out this link to a sample paper from MLA. Scroll to the end of the essay and make sure your formatting and information match.

https://style.mla.org/files/2016/03/mla-sample-paper-fourth-year.pdf

Exemplifying Peer Evaluations

This class focused on the exemplification first draft, its completion and its evaluation by your peers. As noted on the scoring guide, exemplification continues to focus on using specific examples - from different subjects - and selecting the appropriate range to best represent your understanding of the abstract noun. During peer evaluation, you completed visual and auditory reviews to better proof your writing.

I am typing this in the midst of your peer evals. In theory, we will talk about the WC page at the end of the hour. However, if we do not reach this part of the agenda, we will go over this during Friday's class.

The final draft of this essay will be due by Friday by 3:30 p.m. in hard copy form. Remember, if you are absent, you are required to send the essay via Google or attachment by this time. You will then need to bring in a hard copy for the next class. If you are at school for any time during the day, the hard copy is still required by the deadline.

On Friday, we will continue with vocabulary, and you will have the majority of the hour to work on your final draft for the deadline.

Writing Day with a Little Coterie Too

1. We continued unit 5 vocab with the next 4 words. The last 3 will be tomorrow.

2. We spent the majority of the hour writing the first draft of the exemplification essay. You have over night and the first half hour of class tomorrow to complete your first draft for peer evaluation.

3: We watched an SNL sketch exemplifying a coterie and satirizing Wes Anderson films.

Your Abstract Noun

After vocabulary, you were officially assigned the exemplification essay assignment. In theory, you could plot the essay by selecting an abstract noun, brainstorming examples, constructing a thesis that defines your abstract noun, selecting relevant examples, selecting the range, researching for specific evidence, and writing the first draft.

You will have class work time through Tuesday on this first draft; the first draft evaluation will be Wednesday, a day in which we review the Works Cited Page as well.

Feedbacking Sybaritic Team Essay

Yes, I made feedback into a verb form. No, it is not a word -- yet.

After vocabulary today (by the way we are nearing the end of your vernacular enrichment for this course), we spent the majority of the hour analyzing the team essays for examples, citations (Cody, our citation policeman), cohesiveness, diction (who would have thought alliterative phrasing and sybaritic lifestyles would go together?), and mechanical consistency.

With two exemplification writing samples down, we will start your exemplification essay next week. Given your list of abstract nouns, choose 5-20 that you may want to use for your own exemplification. You may want to consider which words would be most conducive for researching specific examples. On Monday, each of your will choose one word -- and each person in the class will have a different abstract noun to exemplify.

For the last 15 minutes of class, we played on the buzzers, giving you a chance to be on the Scholar Quiz team and review facts. For those of you with the background knowledge and trivia (you know who your are), you can join the Scholar Quiz team at any time during the year.

Grammar Questing

As promised, the first half of our course was dedicated to finishing the team exemplification essay. All groups shared their essays with me, and I will be providing feedback for you during our next class.

After lunch, you were given the whole hour to complete the Grammar Quest, the last part of our mechanics review. If anyone was absent, he or she will need to schedule an appropriate time to makeup the quest in the next 48 hours.

We will start Unit 5 Vocab Experts on Friday.

Sybaritic!

After copying down vocabulary words for unit 5 and learning your new expert word, we spent the time before lunch analyzing "The Catbird Seat" for author's topic, purpose, specific examples, and range. 

Following our lunches, we began our group exemplification on the term "sybaritic," a vocabulary word and an abstract adjective that needs better clarification via specific examples. In your group today, you brainstormed possible examples (according to one group, I somehow managed up on a list), constructed a thesis statement clarifying your group's definition of sybaritic, you selected your four examples for the essay, and then you determined the range of these examples. At the end of the hour, each person is the group claimed a paragraph of this essay as his or her responsibility. Come into tomorrow with your first draft so groups may peer evaluate and complete the best team essay.

Grammar Quest will also be tomorrow - after lunch. Make sure to review your handouts and notes so you will perform well on the assessment. 

Tomorrow is the last day to make up vocab quiz 4. 

The Last Grammar Review...and Clowns

Other than clown exemplification throughout the hour (not on topic but at least you were using specific examples), we started class with the vocabulary quiz for Unit 4. This quiz was half individual and half class for your overall grade.

The remainder of the hour was working through the last grammar review, a preparation for the Grammar Quest on Wednesday. Make sure to study, review, other infinitives prior to the Quest.

For homework, read "The Catbird Seat" and annotate the examples used for the author to exemplify his point. You will have questions to focus your discussion tomorrow.

Our Evil Class Essay

After our vocabulary review for Monday's quiz, we spent the majority of the hour reading our body paragraphs for our class essay exemplifying evil. Throughout each body paragraph, the main consistency was the plethora of specific examples - featuring quoted materials - that exemplified how each subject was the epitome of evil. As we move forward into more exemplification, keep bringing in more details and examples.

For the remainder of the class, you worked with a partner/partners, to complete the third, and last, grammar review. If you have any remaining work left, finish over the weekend and we will go over the answers on Monday.

Evil Wednesday

1. We finished all our words in Unit 4. Review will be Friday and quiz next week.

2. We finished our second grammar review by looking at comparative pronouns and identifying all parts of speech in sentences.

3. We resumed our exemplification unit by writing body paragraphs for our class essay on evil. During today's class, you worked on structure of exemplification paragraphs: a topic sentence that clarified your specific example and its connection to evil, supporting details that explain why and how this example is evil via quotes and multiple examples, and a concluding sentence summing up the evil example. Following a drafting, we discussed the need of transitioning quotes into your writing. At this point, you should not "shove" a full sentence quote into the middle of a paragraph. Instead, transition any outside evidence into your writing to avoid choppiness. In addition, we clarified how to cite in a paragraph. Remember, the citation is placed at the end of the sentence and the period goes after it. With this knowledge, you revised your paragraph for our class reading on Friday.

If you were absent, you will need to write a paragraph exemplifying your evil example for Friday's class.

The Great Grammar Review Takes Over Fifth Hour

Alas, the evilness that we wanted to write about today has been pushed aside in favor of the grammar review.

What happened today...

1. Vocab Experts for Unit 4 - we are 12 words in with 3 to go in this unit. From the growing number of "passes" in class, I highly recommend studying these words now in order to retain them for later.

2. We almost finished the grammar review -- we will go over the identifying parts of speech section tomorrow.

That means tomorrow's class will be Evil Wednesday featuring our class exemplification essay. Make sure you have your notes with at least one quote for your evil selection.

Exemplification

After four more vocabulary words, we began our next mode of discourse: exemplification, or more simply put as using specific examples to clarify an idea or topic.

To break this down into digestible components, we used the broad topic of "student" as our introductory sample.

 First, brainstorm all related words, ideas, objects, people, feelings, or anything that pops in your head regarding the topic. You do not want to limit your possible examples, so do not edit your ideas.

Second, select a theme or (better yet) a working thesis statement that could could cover several, specific examples. For example, we picked "stress" as an overall theme for students.

Third, select the relevant examples from your brainstorm and group like examples together. For instance, we removed the chaff not related to stress and then combined remaining examples into school-related stress, outside of school stress, and results of stress.

Fourth, select the range, or the order you would like your exemplification to follow. This may be chronological, spatial, least to most important, most to least, cause and effect, or any other way to keep your exemplification organized. In class, we chose cause and effect by ordering school, outside, and results.

Fifth, specify each examples. During our class practice, we went from having "a lot of homework" to exemplifying the hours, the practices, and the steps involved for PreCalc; we went from having "to do everything" to exemplifying counter service, customer service, drive-thru service and food preparation while working at McDonalds; we went from "everything in the past and present" to exemplifying scholarship, GPA and ACT statistics, and college major selection.

To further specificity, we read "Be Specific," an essay that calls upon all writers (that would be you) to bring in specific names of flowers, people, and places to help the reader better understand your exemplification.

And, we are not finished yet! To practice all of this exemplification, you created a class brainstorm on the board - the topic of "evil" haunting all of your examples. With all of these samples, we created a class thesis statement to define evil and help tie together our specific examples. Then, each of you selected one example of evil.

Lots to do outside of class tonight...

1. The final draft of the narrative essay is due by 2:45 p.m. on Wednesday. Please staple the scoring guide to the final draft.
2. On your selected evil example, jot down the reasons why this person/thing/entity/idea is evil. You will need to include at least one direct quote from a website or source. Do not forget to write down your website and address for citations purposes. (For this assignment, you may use .com and even Wikipedia for your sources.)
3. Complete the second grammar review. We will go over this in class tomorrow.

Narrative Peer Review Day

The majority of the class focused on peer reviewing your narrative first draft. Each student read his or her essay out loud, and the other students gave feedback and editing suggestions for improved writing. THE FINAL DRAFT - IN HARD COPY FORM - IS DUE ON TUESDAY BY 2:45 P.M.

The remainder of the time was for vocab experts and handing out your second grammar review, which is due Monday for our class time.

Prepositions

Today's class focused on our last part of speech, the preposition. Utilizing prepositional phrases, we created short stories -- without any verbs since these phrases do not partake in any verbage! Afterwards, we practiced identifying all the parts of speech, discussed how not to end a sentence with a preposition, and practiced the eradication of too many prepositional phrases in a sentence.

For the remainder of the class, you began working on the module review for englishgrammar101.com, in which you are practicing grammar and mechanical reviews in preparation for the Grammar Quest next week. Make sure to check off if you have mastered a skill, need some review, or need full study for each element. This will help individualize your studies and success on the quest.

See you on Friday with your narrative first drafts and the grammar handout completed!

P.S. The number is 372.

College Ap Tips & Samples

After recapping "Porkopolis," an excellent college application essay that reveals the narrator's genuine nature, passion, and dedication, we continued forward with tips for writing college ap essays and narrative essays. To further exhibit the qualities of voice, imagery, and random Bananas, we read two sample essays from Harvard, and you heard three sample essays from my former students. With all of these narrative and college ap samples, it was time to assign the narrative essay. You have 3 choices for your narrative assessment: game narrative, future narrative, or a college ap/scholarship prompt.

For Friday's class, you will need to have the first draft of your narrative for peer and teacher evaluation. This draft will need to be a Google document as we will be sharing drafts with each other over the course of the hour. Final draft will be due Tuesday, September 27, by 2:45 p.m. in hard copy format.

Warming Up, Punctuating, College Apping

1. Simultaneously, we briefly met to review your narrative warm-ups while you copied down unit 4 vocabulary. For those of you camping, that means I will need to see your narrative warm-ups for credit points.
2. After assigning vocab words to begin tomorrow, we reviewed punctuation by having students go to the board and correct sentences for comma, semicolon, and colon issues.
3. We began a college application essay example entitled "Porkopolis," which takes the boring prompt of selecting an influential person and creates a narrative that reflects more about the writer than Lisa Simpson.

For tomorrow, finish those last 3 paragraphs of "Porkopolis" and be ready to talk about the author's decisions in creating this narrative structure.

Punctuation on the Board!

For those missing our third vocab quiz, you have until Tuesday to make up the assignment. For the majority of the hour, we reviewed comma, semicolon, and colon rules using the handout you received on Wednesday. To add to the drama, we worked on the handout on the board, with students noting punctuation errors and explaining why. For homework, complete narrative warm-ups 1 & 2.

Lastly, if you would like to bring in your own college application or scholarship prompt for your narrative writing, find the prompt and bring this to class with you next week.

Narratives & Punctuation

1. We performed our dialogue conversations, with each interlocutor portraying a specific gender and age. With this brief activity, you were required to pay close attention to diction and how this portrays a character in a narrative.
2. We reviewed vocabulary by playing last person standing. That means your quiz is tomorrow!
3. We read "My Mother Never Worked," a sample narrative that we discussed in small groups.
4. We started punctuation rules by identifying independent and dependent clauses, learning about the rule of 5 and how it involves those FANBOYS, seeing how commas impact the mixing of independent and dependent clauses, and locating transitions and their punctuation.

For homework, finish highlighting 1-5 on the punctuation handout and complete Narrative Warm-up number 3 (on notebook paper, no full sentences required).

In addition, don't forget that your future narrative essay for this course can double as a college application essay. You are more than welcome to bring in a prompt that you will use on your application.

Dialogue

After vocab experts today, we continued working with narrative features. By discussing and analyzing the narrative features of "Only Daughter," we reviewed the theme and how it haunts every moment of the narrator's existence, time and how the narrator utilizes flashbacks to show the inundation of parent apathy, characterization and how two characters can be the focus of a story, dialogue and how it can be appropriate or distracting, and imagery's effect on creating a fully developed text.

To continue with dialogue, we worked with how words and details can reveal much about a character. Given an age and gender, you created a conversational piece that utilizes details to provide characterization and audience understanding. We will read these aloud on Wednesday.

To continue with Wednesday's agenda, we will review vocabulary, read another sample narrative, and review punctuation rules utilizing highlighters and activities.

Adverbial Narratives

To begin class, you performed your adverb skits, utilizing a plethora of adverbs to show action and behavior. While each skit came into fruition, the remaining students jotted down all the adverbs used and then reviewed the adverbs aloud.

Next, we returned to vocabulary unit 3, in which we are at a total of 12 words. As a result, we will have 3 words tomorrow, review on our block day, and the quiz on Friday.

Then, we started our next writing unit: narrative, the world of storytelling, often in first person. Narrative is about focus (theme), time, dialogue, character, and imagery. Be mindful of what characters and dialogue populate your narratives. To emphasize these narrative writing traits, we read Malcolm X's "Coming to an Awareness of Language" and analyzed these traits as a class.

For homework, read "Only Daughter" and prepare notes/discussion points for tomorrow.

Grammar in Motion

Today, we finished up our who/whom tricks. When in doubt, remember that who connects to a subject and whom connects to an object. Then, after vocabulary, we looked at adjectives -- identifying them correctly when reading the directions -- and the order of adjectives in describing an object. This then moved into why we would use or not use commas with multiple adjectives. If two adjectives are coordinate, or switchable, you need a comma. If two adjectives follow the order and accumulate information, then you have a cumulative situation and do not need a comma. Last up, we tackled adverb usage by acting out the same sentences using varying adverbs to describe motion. Victoriously! To end class, you are creating your adverbial skit -- creating a minimum 10 sentence skit utilizing different adverbs to create the behavior of your actors.

Narratives start next week!

Vocab with Buzzers & Pronouns!

I can tell that some of you had the competitive juices flowing during class today. First up, we added four new words to our vernacular and reviewed using the buzzers. If you enjoy the fast-paced action of Scholar Quiz, we will have them out in the future -- not every day, though!

For the remainder of the class, we worked with pronouns. The most important element to discerning pronouns and understanding the rules is the differentiation between subjective and objective pronouns. Once that is determined, you are better able to utilize the appropriate pronoun and maintain antecedent and pronoun agreement. (This also involves who and whom -- who usually has a verb after it; whom usually has a noun or pronoun.)

I am writing this blog during lunch, so I will assume that we finished the pronoun assignment and began with adjectives? In any case, we will work with more grammar tomorrow!

Composing the Descriptive Essay

Today's class will be the last one focusing on descriptive writing. Evaluating introductions and listening to samples of body paragraphs and conclusions should assist you in creating accurate, mood-inducing reflections of your three selected family members.

By Friday at 3:30 p.m., your assignment is to turn in a hard copy of your descriptive essay. Attach the scoring guide and your three previous descriptive writings (painting, library, object) to the final draft. If you are absent all day, you are to share the essay with me and bring a hard copy on Monday. If you are at school at any point of the day, you are required to turn in the work by this time. (This will be the expectation for all future essays.)

For the remainder of the hour, you copied down vocab unit 3, which will begin tomorrow, and worked on your essay. Today is the last class time to work on the essay; the remainder of the work - the beautification of your writing - will occur for homework.

P.S. Don't forget literary devices in your own writing -- utilizing similes, metaphors, personification, hyperbole, alliteration, and other techniques add to your presentation and voice.

P.P.S. Don't use contractions - spell out everything!

Essay Format & Structure

After our second vocabulary quiz, we looked at MLA format, essay titles, and introductory paragraphs. For example, we looked at how one could use an anecdote, imagery, and analogy to set up an essay, provide foreshadowing details, and lead to a thesis statement. We ended the hour by working on introductions, which you will be peer evaluating tomorrow. We will also look at body paragraphs -- samples to show how every single detail counts -- and concluding paragraphs. The challenge of a conclusions stems from finding a way to end with a memorable final thought or image. If you have already set up an analogy or theme in your introduction, you can use this to tie together the conclusion.

Final draft of essay will be due on Friday by 3:30 p.m.

Rushing into Essay Structure

1. We reviewed vocabulary, which means a quiz is coming on Tuesday.

2. We practiced grammar issues including subject-verb agreement, active & passive verbs, to be verb eradication, and split infinitives. 

3. We peer reviewed your descriptive paragraphs regarding your relatives. As noted, the more you can "explode" a detail - showing one's voice, clothing, behavior - can add to the overall impact of your description.

4. We very hastily reviewed essay structure - introduction, body, and conclusion. Yes, this was a complete rush job, but the clock worked against us today! For Monday, write an introduction to your relative body paragraphs. You are more than welcome -- and I would recommend this for future drafting - to type up these four paragraphs for classroom work. We will work on introductions and conclusions next week, and then you will have a final draft!

Verbage

On this last day of August, we finished learning the last 3 words of unit 2 vocabulary and played last person standing for a review. We will have another review on Friday, and your quiz will be Tuesday after Labor Day.

In the continuance of grammar perfection, we completed a quiz over capitalization and apostrophe usage, our two featured noun-related mechanical features. Then, we moved into the world of verbs by looking at subject-verb agreement (including more tricky ones separated by prepositional phrases and ones involving the mighty "or"), active and passive verb choices (active rocks; passive not), and split infinitives (avoid for traditional, formal writing situations).

For the remainder of the class (and homework if needed) you are to choose 3 relatives and write a paragraph describing each one. As we brainstormed on the board, you may consider physical features, actions, reactions, thinking, processes, mannerisms, body language, sayings, diction, dialogue, history, comparisons, clothing, hair, and style. We will use these 3 paragraphs for peer/teacher review and to build your first essay for this class.

A Little Bit of Everything

As part of Advanced Composition, we focus on diction via vocabulary improvement, grammar and mechanical rules, and writing styles. Today's class featured all of these elements.

1. Vocab Experts continued with 4 more words. We are nearing the end of our second vocabulary unit!
2: We reviewed nouns and identifying these entities in a sentence, then recapped capitalization rules, and finished with a flourish of possessive apostrophe rules.
3: We read "Words Left Unspoken" and discussed its thesis, imagery, voice, mood, and literary devices. This is an excellent example of how to describe a person through physical features, motions, and objective facts.
4: You received your extra credit assignment: a maximum of three 6-word book summaries due by Friday. Extra credit will amass based on creativity and effort of presentation. A maximum of 15 points can be earned per summary.
5: For tomorrow's class, you are to write 2 paragraphs. Select an inanimate object (no cell phones) that has meaning to you. Write 1 paragraph using objective details, and write 1 paragraph using subjective details. While you most likely will not write in this manner - separating objective and subjective descriptions - it will allow you to see the differing impact that will occur.

Prepping Grammar

Today's class was a hodgepodge: vocabulary experts, highlighting the 4 senses used in our library descriptions, reviewing the definitions and examples of the main parts of speech, and looking at how we can specify our diction using verb choices.

Tomorrow, we will spend some time with a descriptive reading, nouns and capitalization, and more descriptive writing. Your first essay is coming. Use these practices to further challenge your descriptive abilities.

Place Descriptions

I just realized -- after teaching this class for about 4 years now -- that I always have students read "Ground Zero" and then follow this by writing a description of the library. Subconsciously, I must have made the correlation between the two tasks: it is all about places, the settings that we must describe.

Anywho, we began class with the first 4 words of lesson 2 vocabulary. Then, we discussed "Ground Zero," paying attention to the characteristics of description: imagery, mood, subjective & objective details, and purpose. Last, we moved to the library to jot down notes covering four of the five senses.

For Monday, we will continue with vocabulary, complete an analytical activity with your 1-2 paragraphs describing the library to someone who has never been there, and begin our grammar preparations.

Describing the World

A brief enumeration of our agenda today:

1. Vocab Quiz 1
2. Copy down Vocab Unit 2 and assign your new word -- we start Friday!
3. Descriptive writing characteristics - imagery, mood, subjective and objective examples, and purpose
4. Rewrite "bland" sentences to incorporate sensory details and figurative language
5. Describe Miranda painting in a paragraph (save for after the unit when I will collect all samples)
6. Read "Ground Zero" and prep answers for the 6 questions for Friday's class.

Don't forget - we will start Grammar Prep on Monday, so you have the weekend to finish any odds and ends on the handout. You will have an additional homework assignment as well.

Finishing our discussion/summary unit

Technological issues aside (you must think that all I do is complain in your class), we finished work on your online discussion board today. In this activity, you created 3 comments utilizing the text and explaining your thoughts, reactions, and connections. 

For the remainder of the hour, we reviewed vocabulary - quiz tomorrow, and you received the summative assessment. Write the perfect summary for the Judy Blume article and turn this in tomorrow. 

I will be evaluating all your assessments - e-mails, discussion, summaries - soon. Thanks for your patience.

Mixing up discussions & summaries

After learning our last three vocabulary words, we will be reviewing tomorrow and your first vocabulary quiz will occur on Wednesday, our first block day of the school year. And before you ask, I like to mix up my vocabulary quizzes, so the format will vary for each quiz.

Beyond vocabulary, we started today with a small group discussion regarding adjuncts and their role in the collegiate environment. *If you missed discussion, you will need to show your annotations of the article to gain participation points. While these are educated, experienced, and caring professors, adjuncts do not receive the pecuniary benefits or time that their titled peers do. Hence, as several of you mentioned, this causes issues with a livable wage. While this is disheartening for the adjuncts, many of you emphasized the other side of the coin: the students and the availability of their teachers to help them and offer constructive critiques. Whether you are feeling pathos for the adjuncts, the students, or both sides of the matter, you at least know more about the collegiate teaching process and who will be teaching you in introductory classes next year. All of the above led to a second summary practice.

To end class and to start the first 20 minutes of next class, we began an online discussion utilizing a shared Google document and comments. As instructed, you will create a minimum of 3 comments -- thorough and featuring reference to the text - on the document. If you would like to finish up prior to class, feel free to do so tonight.

Lastly, I gave you the Grammar Boot Camp Prep handout. You are to have all definitions and examples ready for Friday's class. If you need a refresher of grammar, I would highly recommend https://www.englishgrammar101.com/ for rules and exercises.

Tomorrow's overall plot: complete online discussion, vocab review, recap grammar prep, summary assessment, and (maybe) descriptive writing.

Summarizing

I apologize if you checked the blog earlier in the day and wondered what essay you had to write during class. That was an oops on my part -- I put the AP Lit blog on yours!

In Advanced Composition land, we added four more words of vocabulary and finished our discussion of college writing. Using the article, you produced your first summary, which we peer and teacher reviewed.

A successful summary encompasses seven items:
1. The original text is read twice -- or thoroughly annotated,
2. The author and title are in the first sentence,
3. The author is referred to multiple times in the paragraph.
4. There are no direct quotes are a plethora of specific examples.
5. There is no opinion -- be objective and stay in third person.
6. It is short -- usually one paragraph.
7. It ends with a concluding sentence that reaffirms the main idea and includes the author.

Make sure you read and annotate the Adjunct article for Monday's class. We will be using this in a similar fashion to the Sperber article. This article will help you see that there are many types of instructors in the college environment.

Annotating

After adding four new vocabulary words to our vernacular, we spent the hour talking about and doing annotation. As mentioned in class, annotation helps with notes, vocabulary understanding, furthering research, studying assistance, and overall reading comprehension of articles and texts for college. Annotation is not a one-fits-all skill. Each of you will focus on different elements in a text. In visualization, an annotated page features highlighting, or underlining, or circling to indicate key ideas and words. The margins will feature notes, thoughts, questions, and analysis.

For tomorrow's class, we will finish our discussion -- which was very well-started by our first 8 participants. Then, we will be working on summary writing.

Laptop Woes

Our first item of interest today: vocabulary, specifically the words replete, arable, ubiquitous, and equanimity. Tomorrow, we will add for more words to our vernacular, and we will check to see if you have retained your knowledge from today.

The remainder of the class centered on the first assessment: student to professor e-mails. By 11:00 a.m. on Thursday, August 18, you will need to send me three separate e-mails. The topics for these e-mails are asking a question, reporting an absence/requesting makeup work, and requesting a rec letter. Make sure to pay attention to the details -- mechanics -- so that you will not receive any deductions on your e-mail evaluation. 

For tomorrow's class, we will be working with annotation and summary writing. We will not need laptops tomorrow, so it should be a smooth ride for us.

First Day Housekeeping

Welcome to Advanced Composition. You have chosen to take a course that will challenge you to improve your introductions, construct theses, transition ideas, create original conclusions, correct mechanical distractions, and, in essence, fulfill your writing destiny as future college and career writers.

To give you more background of me, this is my fifteenth year of teaching. My first four years were at college level, the past eleven years at high school level, and my eighth year here at FZN. I have three collegiate degrees: BA in English, MA in English, and MA in Education. I have the fortune to teach AP and college-level English courses here, and my goal is to make you become the writer you could be, not the writer you should be. (Natalie Orf put that in a thank you note, and I realized that phrase truly encompasses my teaching philosophy in composition.

For today's class, we completed any necessary school information (lunches, tardies, food, etc.). Then, we looked over the syllabus so that you may see our upcoming units. As mentioned in class, we start with what many see as more simplistic levels of writing but are actually necessary components in communication - e-mails and summaries are necessary compositions for any collegiate student.

Next, we started our first unit of vocabulary experts. For your assigned word, you will be sharing the definition, two synonyms, and a memory trick for class. We will have four words for class tomorrow. Hence, homework tonight is prepping your vocabulary.

In our last moments, we started discussing student to professor e-mails. Reasons? Asking a question, reporting an absence, advising classes, gathering makeup work, asking for feedback/editing, turning stuff in, or requesting a rec letter. What mistakes can be made in e-mails? Lack of greeting, lack of capitalization, unspecified class, student, assignments, lack of spelling accuracy. I have a feeling there are a great deal more out there.

See you tomorrow for e-mail examples, suggestions, and writing your own -- hopefully without all the mistakes.

First Draft

As our research comes to an end, you will have the first draft completed by 3 p.m. on Monday. During class on Monday, you will have time to work on the essay. However, I will have 2 elements for you to do with the essay -- these elements involve your diction and verbs, little elements that may slide by in your haste to write the perfect first draft.

A Boring Blog

At current status, we are in research mode, which means not much is going on other than reading, note taking, and claiming. Today the first four sources and claim were due.

Organizing Arguments

During today's class, we created an outline for an argumentation essay on women in the military. The process, which you may use when constructing your actual essay, commences with brainstorming possible claims, selecting the claim that would have the most evidence or be easiest to argue, listing evidence, grouping similar evidence, and composing warrants for each evidence grouping. Phew! However, we were not finished with argumentation. Next up, you selected a counterclaim (which could be one of your brainstormed claims), incorporated evidence to support the counterclaim, composed a rebuttal statement with evidence, and finished off the writing with a concluding sentence.

For the remainder of class, we discussed your argumentation essay and the requirements for its completion. While we did not finish all the due dates and steps, you are more than welcome to start your source pages for the textbook essays.

Argumentation

During today's class, we worked on the second half of argumentation with counterclaims and rebuttals.

Counterclaims are a second position that you take on a topic. It is not the opposite of the original claim. To create a strong counterclaim, you also include evidence to show its validity.

Rebuttals return the focus to the original claim's position. While a rebuttal does show how the original claim is better, the rebuttal does not "trash" the counterclaim as wrong.

For homework, you will be reading and annotating 3 essays on women in the military. We will use this information and your thoughts on the topic during class on Monday.

Digital versions of the essays:
http://beta.townhall.com/columnists/lindachavez/2003/04/30/women_in_combat_will_take_toll_on_our_culture
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29269-2003Mar25.html
http://www.newsweek.com/uncle-sam-and-aunt-samantha-149413

Presentation Prep

Today's was a work day for our rhetorical analysis presentations tomorrow. After that, we will commence our last unit: argumentation.

Meryl

To prep for our rhetorical group presentation, we watched and annotated Meryl Streep's commencement speech at Barnard College.

You can watch the speech at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-a8QXUAe2g
Here is another transcript copy in case you were absent or would like a digital one to peruse: http://www.graduationwisdom.com/speeches/0069-streep.htm

Following our viewing and annotation, I split the class into 2 groups to prep for the presentations, which will occur on Wednesday. Tuesday will be a prep day.

Persuasive Appeals

After finishing up and sharing our tone maps, we used a text to identify logos, ethos, and pathos and how the other manipulated these appeals to reflect his purpose. At this point, you have worked with syntax, diction, tone, logos, ethos, and pathos, all strategies that you will work with next week in a group assessment.

Tone Mapping

During today's class, we worked on the tone mapping technique, a visual method to comprehend tone shifts and patterns in writing for rhetorical analysis.

So, how do you create a tone map?
1. Read the text and make sure you understand the content and the author's purpose
2. Identify tone shifts - I usually draw a line
3. Specify the type of tone used in each section of the text - do not repeat the same tone word throughout the activity.
4. Select 2 of the tone words to construct a range - all the other tone words should be within these two words
5. Construct a map
6. Analyze the tone patterns

We will complete steps 5 & 6 on Friday. If you were part of the absent group, you will have to complete this activity fairly quickly.

Team Diction Essay

During class, we split into 2 teams to construct an essay answering this prompt: How does Emerson use diction to reflect his purpose in "Education"? Each student contributed to the essay by writing one paragraph. (If you were absent, you will need to construct one body-style paragraph in response to the prompt.)

Following evaluation of these essays, we began to look at tone via handouts and verbal activities.

Diction

To begin class, we had a surprise syntax quiz in which you had to identify the types of syntax. MP, you can make this up next week, and it takes about 10 minutes.

For the remainder of the class, we worked with diction: noticing patterns of diction, repetition, and author's purpose. We will continue analyzing diction on Monday.

Syntax Essay

Thursday was a word day on the syntax essay, or an opportunity to create an original rhetorical analysis. During class tomorrow, we will start work on diction and how authors create patterns of phrasing to convey their purpose.

Superman & Me

After spending quality time analyzing the purposes of Sherman Alexie's paragraphs, you will construct a 3-4 paragraph essay (you can do 5 if you feel the urge), on this prompt: How does Sherman Alexis utilize syntax to reflect his purpose in "Superman and Me"?

Syntax

After our last vocab quest -- a team effort, we reviewed our 6 forms of syntax (simple, compound, complex, compound-complex, cumulative, and periodic) by definition, identification of sentences, and creation of sentences. For homework, read "Superman and Me" selection, annotate, and identify the purpose of each paragraph. Be specific with your purposes and do not limit yourself to just "to entertain" or "to explain" or anything else vague.

Rhetorical Analysis

During class, we added three words to our vernacular. We have three left in this unit and for vocabulary in Adv. Comp.

Meanwhile, we began rhetorical analysis - the "what" and the "why" the author uses strategies and writing organization to express a theme or argument. This involves the rhetorical triangle: the speaker, the audience, and the subject. In addition, this brings on the three musketeers of rhetorical appeals: logos, ethos, and pathos. During class tomorrow, we will review standard rhetorical terms, and you will be constructing a rhetorical analysis of your own.

C/C Test

The whole hour was dedicated to the compare & contrast essay prompt writing. If you were absent, you will need to make this up by the end of the week.

C/C Prep

Sorry for the delay in updating the blog. After much grading and Scholar Quiz competition, here is the recap of Friday's class: began our last unit of vocabulary, reviewed Grammar Quest, completed notes for the compare and contrast prompt on Monday. I will be making copies of the group notes for class, and you will use these to help provide evidence for the compare and contrast essay prompt. You will have the entire class time to work on the prompt, so be ready to start immediately. Starting Tuesday, we will begin rhetorical analysis work.

Researching STL

We will start a new round of vocabulary experts on Friday - the last round of your high school English class career! I know the feeling is bittersweet.

Meanwhile, you will have a compare and contrast essay prompt on Monday during class time. In order to have enough ethos to compose a specific, detail-oriented writing, you are working with a group to take notes on 10 locations in the STL area. By the end of the day Friday, I will need the group notes to make copies for all of your group.

Partner C/C

After peer reviewing your paragraph(s) compare and contrast, you were divided into partnerships to create a partner essay -- one partner in charge of the introduction and first body paragraph and the second partner in charge of the second body paragraph and conclusion. We will review and critique this writing during class tomorrow. You will also learn more about your assessment and have time to prepare for the writing prompt next week.

Comparatively Speaking

After reviewing vocabulary -- one more 10 word burst after this one -- we read "Sex, Lies, and Conversation" to contrast the communication styles of the genders and, hopefully, absolve any relationship dysfunction. To continue our practice compare and contrasts, you selected a topic, created a basis, composed an original thesis, and wrote 1-2 paragraphs comparing/contrasting the items. We will use these paragraphs to critique each other tomorrow during class.

The Rest of Third Quarter

On Wednesday, we completed the Grammar Quest, the culminating activity of our Grammar Boot Camp. If absent, you will need to complete this activity as soon as possible.

During Friday's class, we finished our grouping of 10 new vocabulary words and turned in the final draft of the exemplification essay.

Our latest writing style is compare and contrast writing. There are 5 components to this writing style; the basis (brainstorming and figuring out the examples and direction of your essay), the thesis (which should not include the bland "similarities and differences), the organization (block vs. point-by-point), the transitional elements, and the conclusion (the final thought for your reader).

We practiced these components by creating a basis, thesis, organizational outline, and concluding statement for various topics. We identified these components by reading Mark Twain's selection on the change of perspective apparent in all of our experiences.

Readying Our Quest

During Monday's class, we peer evaluated our first drafts of the exemplification essay, which is due on Friday in final format. Remember to include a Works Cited Page for your sources.

Overlapping between Monday and Tuesday's classes, we reviewed for the Grammar/ Mechanics Quest. On the Quest, you will need to revise grammar and explain why, revise punctuation an explain why, answer questions related to rules of grammar and punctuation, identify parts of speech, and differentiate between active and passive constructions. We will complete the Quest during Wednesday's class after our lunch period.

February 26

Vocab quiz 4 is completed. We will only have one or two more units left for vocabulary in the semester.

Exemplification essay - the first draft - is due for Monday's class and peer review.

We almost finished our grammar review -- the active/passive and parts of speech sections will be for Monday's class. In addition, complete the practice quest to further prepare for the actual quest next Tuesday/Wednesday.

February 24

After a competitive turn reviewing vocabulary on the buzzers -- don't worry, they will be back when we finish all of our vocabulary in a few weeks -- we spent quality time peer and teacher reviewing your exemplification paragraphs on the sybaritic lifestyle. If absent, you will need to share your exemplification with  me for feedback.

Next, the official assignment for the exemplification essay. I do have hard and digital copies of this assignment available upon request. The first draft will be reviewed on Leap Day! The final draft deadline is Friday, March 4, at 3:30 p.m.

Last, a grammar review handout for Friday's class. This is available in hard and digital copies upon request.

Sybaritic Exemplification

After finishing up our new vocab words, we spent the hour practicing the steps of exemplification.
1. Set up a Google document in which you can later share your work.
2. Brainstorm a list of all people, items, symbols, places associated with a sybaritic lifestyle.
3. Write a thesis statement in which you define/explain a sybaritic lifestyle.
4. Highlight/asterisk 3 examples from your brainstorm that you will use for your writings.
5. Order the examples 1, 2, 3.
6. You will then construct a body-like paragraph for each example. For each paragraph, you will need to incorporate one example of citable evidence from either a database, website, or the like.

We will use these paragraphs to peer edit tomorrow.

Evil

Due to the blood drive, we had a few absences today. Hence, I decided to save some of the work for Friday.

What did we do? First up, we had a verbal vocabulary quiz over units 3/4. Then, we copied down the next 10 words (the remainder of unit 4 and the first two words of unit 5). Second up, we began our class exemplification regarding evil. Using a common thesis (Evil actions reflect a lack of morality), each student constructed an exemplification paragraph on a specific example of evil. If you were absent, you will need to choose a person/group/idea of evil and construct a body paragraph exemplifying this evil. Classmates have already chosen Kim Jong Il, Hitler, Lucifer, Joker, Stalin, Rumpelstiltskin, Osama Bin Laden, and the Illuminati.

After vocab and exemplification analysis, we will work with prepositional rules and common errors in writing.

Prepositioning to Evil

To start class, we reviewed our vocabulary words in anticipation of the verbal quiz tomorrow. Then, the fun began: prepositional phrase short stories! In order to raise our awareness of prepositional phrases, you created and constructed short stories composed of prepositional phrases. Sound easy? It would be if you could use verbs! To finish class, we brainstormed anything and everything associated with evil -- our topic for our class exemplification tomorrow!

Narrative Peer Edit Day

In order to have peer feedback and mechanical review, we divided into three groups today and read each aloud in order for you and your partners to assist in the revision process. The final draft of the narrative essay will have a deadline on Wednesday at 2:45 p.m.

Narrative Samples

After vocab quiz 17 -- it's over and time for unit 18 tomorrow -- we read a couple of narrative samples from my previous classes. Overall, the narratives focused on a precise theme, provided memorable imagery, utilized literary elements, and left the reader with a clear understanding of the narrator. To wrap up today's agenda, you were assigned the narrative assessment, which involves your pick for the prompt. For Wednesday's class, you will write a working introduction to start your narrative. The first draft will be due Friday, and class will involve peer editing.

Warming Up on a Winter Day

After determining that hyphen usage regarding adjectives may be arbitrarily assigned (thank you multiple grammar books, theorists, and my own ethos), we continued forward with our narrative warm-ups. For tomorrow, have an idea which narrative path you will be forging: a game narrative, a future narrative, or a prompt for an application/scholarship essay.

Meanwhile, we will review vocabulary and maybe have a partner quiz this time around. I will finish the last narrative chat with D. You will find out more about the particulars for the narrative assessment. And, we will talk clauses and dip our toes into the punctuation pool.

Only Daughter Pronouns

Today was focused on the narrative sampling "Only Daughter" and theme, time, character, dialogue, and imagery. After gaining a little participation points, we moved onto pronouns and reviewed subjective/objective differentiation including who/whom and the lack of apostrophes in possessive pronouns.

Second Month of the 2016

The time is moving fast on this school year. As a result, we are diving into our second mode of discourse: narrative writing. After sharing dialogue and guessing age and gender of your characters, we completed a mini vocab quiz and copied down the next 10 words. For the last part of class, we read "Coming to an Awareness of Language" by Malcolm X and identified the key components of narrative: theme, time, character, dialogue, and imagery.

Dialoguing

After a brief question & answer regarding your descriptive essays -- remember the deadline is Monday at 12: 45 p.m. -- we finished the last three vocabulary words of unit 2/3. The mini verbal quiz over those 10 words will be on Monday. Resuming activity, we looked at common verb issues with subject verb agreement and split infinitives. To add in something new, we discussed the five elements of narrative writing: theme, imagery, character, time, and dialogue. And with that, we started our dialogue activity, in which you are to create a dialogue with other "character" without directly revealing your age or gender. We shall continue on Monday...

Verbage

While it may seem like an insignificant part of the speech hierarchy, verbs create tone, specificity, and descriptive elements in writing. As noted in class, "to be" verbs engender passivity and reflect less mature writing. By using more engaging verbage, you writing takes on a distinct level. For instance, the difference between marched and trudged indicates the mood of the characters. When writing, always pay attention to your verbs.

For the descriptive writing assessment, you will complete a final draft of your family description. The deadline for this assignment = Monday @ 2:40 p.m. Hard copy only. If absent for the day's entirety, send/share your essay by the deadline and bring in a hard copy the next day.

Nounage

Our beginning was in the field of the vernacular and adding four vocabulary words to your mature diction. Our middle was reviewing noun rule issues including capitalization, plurals, and possessives. Remember, apostrophe usage or lack thereof may cause massive distractions in your writing. Apostrophes are for possessives and contractions; these are not used for plural nouns (desk's) or verbs (raise's). Our ending was focused on descriptive body paragraphs, the structure, and the accumulation of details that create a full picture of a person. Remember, similes, metaphors, personification, alliteration, and other forms of figurative language assist in creating a memorable description. That tea kettle analogy is still my favorite!

During tomorrow's class, we will work on concluding paragraphs and verb usage.

Time for Essays!

After working on e-mails, summaries, and descriptive work, we are graduating to full blown essay writing for the remainder of the course. First up is the mighty introduction, a paragraph with a great deal of responsibility on its shoulders. An introduction requires a hook to engage the audience, to set your essay apart from other writings, and to exhibit your writing prowess. Once the hook is in place, you need a transitional element -- phrase, sentence, multiple sentences -- to set up the ending better known as a thesis statement. A thesis may be a map (look - here are my three body paragraph topics in order) or an overall statement that will be clarified throughout the essay. At the end of class, you began the process of composing an introduction for a family-based essay.

Other items of note were copying down the next 10 vocabulary words, which we will start tomorrow, and completing our grammar prep. We will start rules and practices tomorrow -- with nouns.

Mystery Description

Today began with a review of vocabulary -- you will have a pen and paper quiz tomorrow.

After partner reading and discussion of your subjective/objective paragraphs, you wrote a description of a celebrity without revealing his/her name. For the most part, your classmates did very well with guessing the celebrity.

For homework, you have a few items to do:
1. Review for quiz
2. Prep grammar terms
3. Select 3 relatives and write a descriptive paragraph for each one. The purpose is to describe your relative -- physicality, behavior, and so on -- to an audience without any ethos on your family.

Libraries & Words

Continuing forward with our descriptive work...

We completed our vocab experts for this round, which means that we will review all 22 words during our next class session and have a quiz over such the following day.

We select 4 highlighters (each representing a sense - sight, hear, touch, smell) and highlighted the sensory imagery in our library paragraph(s). From class consensus, sight was the overwhelming sense utilized throughout the writing. As a result, you provided examples from touch (the chill of the room, the feel of the uneven stacks of books, the plants, the tables), smell (moldering paper, food from the kitchenette), and hear (keyboards, pencils, talking, the tree branches hitting the window). Make sure to keep all of your descriptive writings as I will collect these as a mini descriptive portfolio at the end of the unit.

We read "Words Left Unspoken" by Leah Hager Cohen. This essay is online. If absent, use the questions given to you for the "Ground Zero" essay and answer these on paper for participation points.

You were given the grammar boot camp preparations handout - information due Friday - to start our grammar rules review and utilization in the upcoming weeks.

For next class, you are to select an object that has meaning to you --- no cellphones or pets --- and write one paragraph objectively describing the object and write one paragraph subjectively describing the object.

Description Continues

As we continue with description, we are emphasizing imagery, mood, subjective and objective details, and purpose. To further this, we began class by describing Miranda, a painting by John William Waterhouse. From our samples, you noted that specific adjectives and emphasis of details created a written version of this painting.

Continuing class, we added four more vocabulary words to our vernacular and participated in a class discussion. Last, we visited the library to write down all the sensory details. For homework, you will write 1 -2 paragraph description utilizing sensory details to depict the library to a person who has never visited the establishment.

Summary extra credit will be due no later than Friday, January 22. Extra credit will not be available at the end of the course.

Summarizing

Tuesday's class revolved, or at least was supposed to revolve before internet service failed, around the summary assessment, i.e. the perfect summary that incorporates the seven qualities of summation and provides strong mechanics. 

Summary Assessment Steps:

1. Head to Inside Higher Ed, a compilation of articles, blogs, and information regarding collegiate issues : https://www.insidehighered.com/

2. Select an article from the website that you would like to read and use for your summary assessment. The article should be at least 5 paragraphs. Each student will need a different essay.If you were absent, you will need to select an essay that has not been utilized by another student.

 These are the essays already selected that absent students will not be able to select:

• Poverty & Merit
• Historians as Futurists
• A Sense of Duty: Campus Safety & Veteran Students
• Do Students with Guns Save Lives?
• Bias Against Female Instructors
• Debate Over Debt
• Graded on Looks
• The Adjunct: Solution
• Putting Foreign Student Firsts

3. Write the perfect summary -- either as a Google document to share or a typed/handwritten hard copy. This is due by 10:45 a.m. on Wednesday. Absent students have an additional 24 hours -- Thursday at 10:45 a.m. to sign up for the essay and turn in by this deadline.

To end class was the vocab quiz covering the first 10 words. If absent, you will need to make an appointment before or after school to make up the quiz. We also copied down the next 11 words, which we will start on Wednesday. 

More Summation

A little enumeration for today's agenda...

1. Finish our vocab experts for this first round. Review on Monday and Mini Quiz on Tuesday.

2. Learn the qualities of a strong summary and use these to revise Sperber summary.

3. Read, annotate, and discuss Adjunct article.

For homework, write a summary for the Adjunct article. 

Annotating

For today's class, we discussed the techniques and purpose of annotating and how "marking up" your readings help comprehension, perpetuate questions, prepare for discussions, and aid in future studies. Homework this evening is to write a summary on the article for class analysis and revision tomorrow.

E-mails

Thank you for putting up with the sick version of me today. During today's class, we looked over the five elements that are needed in professional e-mails. These elements include the greeting, the introduction, the body, the closing, and the subject line. Your assessment will include 3 e-mails to me on any of these subjects: absence, questions on assignment(s), turning in work, setting up a meeting, clarification on policy/information/etc. These 3 e-mails are due by 11:05 a.m. on Thursday. Feel free to finish this assignment during class.

Advanced Composition Semester 2

Welcome to Advanced Composition! This class will help you fine tune your organization, content, originality, and mechanics in order to make you collegiate writers. I look forward to helping you improve your writing over the course of semester.

During today's class, we had a little chat time to break the ice, then we looked at the class syllabus, which you should keep nearby for any necessary information over the course of the semester. In addition, you were assigned our first group of vocabulary words from Lesson 1: words 1-11. For your assigned word, you will become an expert by sharing the definition, at least 2 synonyms (preferable not the ones given in the vocab book), and a memory trick. Examples of memory tricks are as follows:

• brackish = big rack of fish
• gumption = Forrest Gump
• lachrymose = lac "cry" mose

We will start vocab experts tomorrow, so make sure you have your expert work ready to share.

During our last moments, we looked at faulty e-mails from students to professors. During tomorrow's class, we will continue looking at poor and more successful e-mails and you will be writing your own for your first assessment.

Remember, this blog is to help you with the class -- whether to refresh your memory, review class content, or catch up after an absence.