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.