Search This Blog

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Jan. 11th Daily Schedule

9th Grade -

We continued to work on the sonnets for part of today - the goal was to have everyone have their sonnet to the point where it has 14 lines in the correct rhyme scheme, and is written in 10 syllables per line. We are still working on developing the correct meter.

New vocabulary words - blank verse, free verse/open form, enjambment

New Poet - e.e. cummings. We are beginning to shift into looking at more contemporary poets and poetic movements, and e.e. cummings is one of the major contributors to poetry in the 20th century. One of the main aspects of his writing to focus on is the aesthetic of the words on the page - this author often ignores or changes the rules of punctuation and grammar for visual effect, or can deliver a sentence out of order in a way that still has a logical sense.

10th Grade -

The lessons outside of the final this week are focused on proper punctuation use, because this was a common error found in the majority of student essays. We started by looking at some of the historical context for the development and usage of punctuation marks; as language developed from a pictographic system, where the meaning was clear from an image, to an phonetic system, punctuation, capitalization, and spacing became much more necessary for the writing to be comprehension.

We are going to focus on one punctuation symbol per day, with a general focus on the ones that I have seen students most commonly misuse.

Day 1 - commas. If you missed class, see me to get a copy of the notes that will explain the various ways to properly use commas.

I've been lenient with mechanics in student writing, but am letting all classes know that starting second semester, students will have to spend significantly more time polishing their writing before turning anything in to me.

No comments:

Post a Comment