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.
Wednesday, August 24, 2016
Tuesday, August 23, 2016
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.
Monday, August 22, 2016
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.
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.
Friday, August 19, 2016
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.
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.
Thursday, August 18, 2016
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.
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.
Wednesday, August 17, 2016
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.
Tuesday, August 16, 2016
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.
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.
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