October 20

Homework

• Writing Minutes
• Use your plot diagram to write down the important action of  The Elves and the Shoemaker in one or two sentences.  See the example below for Cinderella.
• Freewriting (My Unusual Pet)

October 13

Homework

• Writing Minutes (Remember to do your assignments first, then do your freewriting.  Both assignments and freewriting count as Writing Minutes!)
• 2nd Draft of Dance Flies, Vulture Bees, Scorpion Fish OR Inca  
• Add dress-ups (strong verb) and openers (subject and prepositional) if necessary
• Learn the parts of a plot for a quick matching quiz next week!  See the chart below if you can't remember!
• Freewriting (I had just completed the most amazing contraption!)

October 6

Homework

• Writing Minutes
• Outline for Glaciers
• Outline for Ice Shelf Glaciers
• Paragraph for Glaciers
• Paragraph for Ice Shelf Glaciers
• NOTE:  You may not have time to do two outlines and two paragraphs.  That's OK.  You should be able to finish one outline and one paragraph at least, some of you may be able to finish both outlines and paragraphs, and others may finish one outline, one paragraph, and some of the second outline and paragraph.  I am trying to determine how much writing each of you can accomplish in 100 minutes.  
• Remember your dress-up (strong verb) and openers (subject and prepositional) in your paragraphs.
• Freewriting (When I decided to run for President)

September 29

Homework

• Writing Minutes
• Use your Dance Flies or Vulture Bees outline to write a paragraph.  Your paragraph should include one sentence that begins with the subject and one sentence that begins with a preposition.

Use and mark with a (1), one subject opener

Good writing uses a variety of different sentence styles to keep a reader’s interest and create compelling prose. The easiest way to make sure that you are using an assortment of sentence styles is to start sentence differently.

Subject Openers

Subject openers are probably the easiest opener to use. This just means that the subject (and any modifying adjectives) comes first in the sentence. Subject openers are marked at the start of the sentence with a number 1. This helps you keep track of which openers you have used, and let’s me know as I grade what openers were intentional. Examples of subject openers are,

              David shivered under the tree.

              The six brown mice shivered under the tree

Both of these sentences have a subject opener because the sentence begins with the subject or its modifying adjectives.

Use and mark with a (2), one prepositional opener

Prepositional Openers

Like its name, a sentence with a prepositional opener begins with a prepositional phrase. Use the accompanying list of prepositions to help you. Here are some examples of prepositional openers:

            In the late afternoon, David shivered under the tree.

           Up above the village, Peter sat and wondered how to relieve his boredom.

• Freewriting (Suddenly, the candle went out!)

September 22

Homework

• Writing Minutes
• Inca OR Scorpion Fish Outline
• Inca OR Scorpion Fish Paragraph
• Freewriting ("This fall the leaves didn't just turn yellow, orange, and red....)

Here's an example of how we turned out Booklice Outline into a paragraph

 

Our outline...

Booklice

insects / eat / mold / mildew / papers

crawl / floors / bookshelves / dead / insects

< / 3 / mm

look / listen

female / attracts / male / rubbing / surface

hear / faint / creaking / tapping

place / alive / booklice

...becomes a paragraph similar to...

     Booklice are insects which eat mold, mildew, and old papers.  They crawl on floors and bookshelves looking for dead insects to eat.  Booklice are less than three millimeters long.  Don't just look for booklice, listen, too!  The female attracts the male by rubbing her body on a piece of paper.  You can hear a faint creaking and tapping.  The place is alive with booklice!

Note to parents:   I’m expecting some choppy sentences and little sentence variety.  Over the next few weeks, I’ll begin addressing sentence variety.  Also, topic and concluding sentences will be addressed a bit later in the course, so they will not be assessed in this assignment.

September 15

Homework

• Writing Minutes
• Freewriting (My adventure in Wonderland was nothing like Alice's....)
• Create an outline for Vulture Bees or Dance Flies.  

We ran out of time in class today, so if you’re not feeling comfortable with creating key word outlines, never fear.  We will be going over them again next week too!  Give it a try this week.  If you’re getting frustrated, stop and work on your freewriting.  Try again the next day.  Still don’t “get it?”  We’ll work on it together next week!   

This is what we learned today:

       Our first unit focuses solely on creating a writing outline.  You do not need to choose the words or decide on sequence.  Just like an artist copies famous works of art, we will be copying a good paragraph.  And just like the student-artist copies to learn, not to take credit for another’s work, we will use this unit to learn how to take notes, understanding that we’re not creating anything of our own.

        First, we read our paragraph.

       Second, we count the sentences and create that many entries in our outline.

       Third, we read each sentence and choose the key words for that sentence. We should choose 3-5 words (numbers and symbols don’t count toward the count!) We should choose only important words. Words like the, and, it, to, etc. should not be considered key words. These key words are to help remind you about the content of the sentences.  You may use symbols, abbreviations, and numbers, too!  Each person may choose different key words.

Here is our example from this morning.

Booklice

1. insects / eat / mold / mildew / papers
2. crawl / floors / bookshelves / dead / insects
3. < / 3 / mm
4. look / listen
5. female / attracts / male / rubbing / surface
6. hear / faint / creaking / tapping
7. place / alive / booklice

September 8

Homework

• Writing Minutes
• Freewriting (That Thursday the sun did not set)  
• Do this if you need extra writing minutes 
• Write a paragraph (whatever you think a paragraph is) about any topic you choose (This can be fiction or non-fiction, serious or humorous). Your paragraph will be graded simply pass (you turned it in) or fail (you didn’t turn it in). 
• Writing Expectations can be found here.