What a busy day in English 9.

We started the class out reviewing the five stages of the writing process:

Prewriting

Rough Draft

Revision

Editing

Publishing

Today’s writing workshop included an editing review of the revised copies of our second friendly letter assignment. Using the original Writing a Friendly Letter handout all of the following points were reviewed:

• Headings should be aligned in the center of the page and include three lines: street address, City, State Zip Code, and Date. Make sure you don’t forget the comma between the city and the state.
• Skip one line between the heading and the greeting.
• The greeting should be left aligned and have a comma after the name.
• Skip one line between the greeting and body.
• The body of your letter must include at least three indented paragraphs. A paragraph is normally three to eleven sentences and contains a complete thought. Due to the paragraphs being indented in a friendly letter, there should not be any extra lines (spaces) between paragraphs.
• The closing should be aligned in the center and match up with the alignment of the heading. There should also be a comma after the closing.
• Skip one line between the closing and the signature.
• The signature is your name written in cursive.
• Skip one line between the signature and the post script.
• The post script is left aligned and begins with the letters P.S. Every letter must include a post script or final thought.

Student then selected partners to proof read each other’s letters and look for punctuation, capitalization, spelling, or other convention or grammar errors that need to be corrected in the final draft.

Students were reminded that on Friday they will turn in a packet that includes their final draft on top, the revised draft in the middle, and the rough draft on the bottom.

We moved from the writing workshop to a quick review of where each group should be in the reading of the literary circle book they have been assigned for tomorrows first literary circle meeting. 

• All students reading To Kill a Mockingbird must have finished the first chapter.
• All students reading The Jungle Book must have finished the first story.
• All students reading Dracula must have finished the first four chapters.
• All students reading The Outsiders must have finished the first chapter.
• All students reading Of Mice and Men must have finished the first chapter.

Everyone must come to class tomorrow with their literary circle role sheet completed for the literary circle meeting that will take place in class. The role sheets will be turned in after the meetings. 

We concluded class with some very focused vocabulary review in preparation of Friday’s Week 1 – 3 Vocabulary Test.

• Crossword puzzles were provided as a study guide for Friday’s words. Students were instructed that there are four different versions of the puzzles and that they should use them as actually study guides not simpley try to get the boxes filled in. A hint was even dropped that the wording on the crossword puzzles matched the wording used on Friday’s test.
• A lively game of Kahoot was played as an in class review of the words as well.  This gave us a wonderful opportunity to not only show our competitive side, but to look at the small nuances that make one answer correct and the other three not correct. This has been especially important for those students having trouble differentiating between words that may have very similar denotative meanings, as well as being able to point out how the part of speech of the word can indicate that only one answer is correct. For example, while a braggart might very well be overbearing; proud; haughty the word braggart is a noun and therefore is not a correct answer. A person who is overbearing; proud; haughty and likes to brag about their own worth is a braggart, but overbearing; proud; haughty is the definition of the adjective arrogant. 
• The Kahoot used in class today can be found for further practice at Mrs. Scales’ Week 1 – 3 Review.

Students were also reminded to read the blog everyday for a review of the important issues covered everyday in class.