Twentieth Class Period: Writing Tricks

Students took a quiz over Ch. 1 of They Say/I Say. The class swapped papers and corrected the quiz, discussing the correct answers during the process. Mr. Stone distributed a handout on methods/writing tricks for elaboration. Most students indicated that they remembered theses methods from their Freshman year. Homework: Complete Ch. 2 study guide for They Say/I Say.

Nineteenth Class Period: August Reading Test

Students completed a test with short answer and a short essay question. Homework: Complete Chapter 1 study guide for They Say/I Say in preparation for a quiz tomorrow.

Eighteenth Class Period: They Say/I Say Ch. 1

Students submitted the revised draft of their classification essay. They worked on reading chapter one of They Say/I Say and completing corresponding study guide questions.

Homework for Wednesday, September 28th: Study for August Reading test: Outliers.

Homework for Thursday, September 29th: Complete They Say/I Say Ch. 1 study guide and review for quiz.

Seventeenth Class: Classification Paper Peer Critique

Mr. Stone collected the sentence combining assignment from the last class period at the beginning of class.

Mr. Stone went over the peer critique sheet for the classification paper and students peer critiqued a classmates paper.

Homework: Complete a revision plan and a revised draft for tomorrow. Don't forget Wednesday is the test over the August Reading: Outliers.

Sixteenth Class: Sentence Combining

Mr. Stone returned students remembering an event essays. Students practiced sentence combining.

Fifteenth Class: More Classification

Students discussed classification more with a second handout on classification. They further explored their paper topics with the instructor.

Homework: Write rough draft of classification paper for Monday.

Fourteenth Class: Classification Paper Prewriting

Classification Quiz

Mr. Stone distributed a planning guide and discussed how to complete it with the class. He also discussed the prewriting technique of webbing/clustering/bubbling.

Mr. Stone reminded students that a purpose statement includes a goal plus a strategy. A thesis statement includes a limited topic and a viewpoint.

Common purposes/goals for a writer include to inform, to instruct/explain, to offer an opinion/take a position, to persuade, to entertain, to narrate, to explore.

Common strategies for achieving one or more of these goals include definition, classification/division, analysis, process analysis, cause/effect analysis, illustration and example, comparison and contrast, description, and narration.

The assigned classification essay must include classification as the primary organization/thinking strategy. Additional strategies may be used.

Classification is most often used for the purpose of explaining, informing, or persuading.

Be sure the categories you develop are mutually exclusive, i.e. an item in the group under discussion should fit into only one category.

Be sure the categories you develop are complete, i.e. all items in the group under discussion must fit into one of the categories created.

A tree diagram or a table might be useful graphic organizers for prewriting for classification.

Homework: Complete the planning guide and two additional pages of prewriting for the classification essay.

You might find some of the prewriting suggestions from OWL helpful.

Thirteenth Class: Classification and Division

Students created a list of at least ten areas of interest.

The class began to read and discuss a handout on Classification and Division. Mr. Stone discussed how five students' interests might provide a topic for an essay using classification as an organizational strategy.

Homework: Finish reading the classification and division handout and read Eric Berne's "Can People Be Judged by Their Appearance."

Twelfth Class: August Reading (9/15)

Students were given class time to read/review Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers for their Wednesday, September, 28th test.

Eleventh Class: Academic Discussion

Mr. Stone distributed a handout on academic conversations and discussed the parallels to the concepts presented in They Say/I Say. The class had a circle conversation practicing the moves of an academic conversation. The discussion focused on Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Three Types of Resistance to Oppression."

Homework: Bring August Reading selection to the next class to read.

Tenth Class: Decisions in Planning

Quiz: Introduction to They Say/I Say

Lecture: Decisions in Planning

Homework: Read Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Three Types of Resistance to Oprression" from Stride toward Freedom. (See link to the right.)

Ninth Class: They Say/I Say Intro

Students worked to finish reading the introduction to They Say/I Say and complete the corresponding study guide questions.

Homework: Study for quiz over the introduction at the beginning of tomorrow's class.

Ninth Class: Final Drafts Submitted

Students organized their classification folders, wrote a one-page process journal entry about the writing of their remembering an event essays describing what what worked well for them and what was difficult for them as writers.

Students submitted their papers and continued working on reading the Introduction to They Say/I Say.

No homework! Enjoy your Labor Day weekend!