Befuddling Verb Rules

After our new three vocab words, we spent some quality time with verb rules - including subject-verb agreement, active and passive verb phrasing, and split infinitives. As we need another day of practice with these rules, we will do a second round of verb work tomorrow. Afterwards, we read "My Mother Never Worked" and analyzed its theme, dialogue, time, character, and imagery in its narrative style. At the end of class, you received your narrative warm-up handout. Complete the questions for warm-up three for tomorrow.

Narration

1. We added 4 new words to the vernacular.
2. We reviewed noun identification (make sure it is not an adjective), capitalization of proper nouns, and apostrophe usage.
3. We began our brand new narrative unit, which will focus on theme, time, character, dialogue, and imagery. In order to identify these components, we read the following essay: http://wp.lps.org/mpayant/files/2012/07/Coming-to-An-Awareness-of-Language-Malcom-X.pdf. If absent, read through and identify the five items listed above. I will not be collecting this from you. However, it is a brief exercise to prep for next week's narrative work.

Verbage

After completing our vocab quiz - which will need to be made up by absentees this week - you wrote down the next 10 words, which we will commence on Friday's class. Then, we finished up our definitions for the grammar prep.

Returning from lunch, we spent some quality time with your descriptive essays. First, the addition of specific, mature active verbs aids the level of diction every time. Removing "to be" verbs, familiar ones (uses, says), and redundant choices creates a better presentation for your writing. Second, eradicate the usage of second person from your formal essays. Third, formal writing requires full words, so spell out those contractions! After two rounds of conferences, we spent the last ten minutes reviewing capitalization rules.

Do not forget your deadline for the descriptive essay is 3:30 p.m. on Friday in hard copy!

Concluding

After reviewing vocab for our brief vocab quiz tomorrow, we reviewed your introductions for hooks, diction, and thesis statements. Whether it is an analogy, an anecdote, or some show of mature diction, you want to engage your audience from the opening sentence. A strong hook aids not only in the start of the essay but also the end of the essay. A conclusion is a reference to the essay, but it should not be a regurgitation of everything that came before. If you have an analogy for a hook (the brick by brick analogy courtesy of Jenna), then your conclusion can return to this analogy and finalize its meaning. If you have an anecdote or partial story for a hook (the boxing ring courtesy of Logan), end the story in the conclusion. As noted in class, do not worry about sentence count in your conclusion - or for in any paragraph for that matter. You want quality sentences that fully explain your point or tie the essay together.

The hard copy final draft of the descriptive essay has a deadline of Friday at 3:30 p.m. If absent all day, you will share/e-mail the draft and then bring a hard copy on the next class day. If present at any point on Friday, the deadline remains the same.

For our last twenty minutes, we spent time with nouns, verbs, and pronouns. We will finish up with adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions, and prepositions tomorrow.

The Essay, Descriptively

After our new three vocab words, we focused on how to further our descriptive paragraphs on family members. Using similes, metaphors, precise examples, and imagery, your ideal goal is to construct a writing that reflects each family member's persona. If you introduce that someone is funny, show us an example of his or her phrasing or behavior; if you introduce someone as tough, show us an example of his or her tenacity. If you want us to get to know a person, compare him or her to something we know: a tea kettle, for instance.

All of these paragraphs equate to the body section of an essay. Each body paragraph should commence with a topic sentence, the main point that will be exemplified in the paragraph. After you have crafted all the descriptive, quality details, you will wrap up the paragraph with a concluding sentence, the final thought regarding this person and what you want your reader to remember.

Moving forward, we discussed MLA format with heading (writer, professor, class, date due), page number insertion, title placement, and overall font (12 Times New Roman).

Wrapping up class, we looked at introductory paragraphs, which include a hook and a thesis statement. As noted in class, a hook can be an analogy, an anecdote, an example, or any other multi-sentence, attention-getting opening that will engage the reader. At this level, a question or a quote may limit your introduction and eventual essay, so I recommend focusing on how you can use your words to hook the audience. The thesis statement features the overall main idea of the essay. You may do this one of two ways: a thesis map, in which you list your upcoming topics 1, 2, 3; or an overall thesis that clarifies an overall idea about your topic (the family).

For tomorrow, you will need to have an introduction and your three paragraphs revised -- typed in Google (no printing needed; we will use laptops in class). We will work with reviewing these steps and then use the remainder of the time to prep for our upcoming Grammar Boot Camp.

Time to Write

After peer reviewing your subjective and objective paragraphs (remember, hold on to all of these descriptive writing practices for later turn-in date), we added three more vocabulary words to our vernacular. Then, we read the following article to look at imagery and other literary elements used to describe the culture, the father, and the situation of the author: https://www.cabrillo.edu/academics/english/100resources/'Only%20Daughter'.pdf.

Afterwards, you received three assignments.

Up on deck first will be 3 descriptive paragraphs for Monday's class. Select three family members and write one paragraph describing each one to an audience that has never had the opportunity to meet him or her. Make sure to include details that physically and emotionally represent this person.

For Tuesday, you will need to complete the Grammar Prep handout. For each item on the handout, be able to define and provide examples for course review on Tuesday.

For Wednesday, you have the optional extra credit assignment: summary posters.

Any absentees are welcome to e-mail for the specific handouts.

More Description

1. We started our next 10-word unit of vocab.
2. We used highlighters to identify sight, hearing, smell, and touch/feeling sensory details in the library description.
3. We read and analyzed "Words Left Unspoken" for descriptive writing components.

For homework, select an object that has a significant meaning to you (no cell phones and pets) and write one paragraph describing the object objectively and one paragraph subjectively.