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.