Unit 2 Progress

Today we started Unit 2, Five Elements of Good Writing. We discussed the first 3 elements: purpose, audience, and clarity.

Question: How can you improve the clarity of the following sentence?

I went to a fun party last night.

Leave a comment with your suggestion!

Tonight's Homework:
Due tomorrow: Activity 6, pg. 39

Due Thursday: Vocabulary Notebook. See the Vocabulary Notebook page at the right for details.

Due Monday: The final draft of your paragraph. Please have a tutor read your paragraph. Have the tutor check your topic sentence, supporting sentences and concluding sentence to see if they are well written. Then have the tutor check your grammar, spelling and punctuation. Please type it and give it a title. Remember to indent. And remember to print it BEFORE class on Monday.

See you tomorrow!

A New Week

Today we finished Chapter 1. We talked a little more about concluding sentences, and reviewed the homework. We also spent some time doing peer editing on our paragraph.

Homework:
1. Work on your Vocabulary Notebook. Remember that you need to have a tutor correct your sentences, then you need to rewrite the ones you got wrong. Your vocabulary notebook is due on Thursday. If you have questions, look at the Vocabulary Notebook page on this site.

2. Write a second draft of your paragraph. Use the advice your partner gave you today. Be sure that you write a title, indent, and write a topic sentence. Be sure that all of your supporting sentences are related to the main idea. Then finish with a concluding sentence. This is due tomorrow.

Have a Safe Weekend!

Here's a reminder of the homework for this weekend:

• Pages 16-17, Activities 11 and 12: This is a grammar assignment. You will learn about sentence fragments (sentences without a verb) and count and non-count nouns, and singular and plural count nouns.

• Pages 20-21, Activities 15 and 16: In Activity 15, answer the questions you wrote in Activity 14, then choose the best information to include in your paragraph in Activity 16. You can include more details if you want.

• Your Fluency Journal is due on Monday.

• You should be working on your Vocabulary Notebook so that you can meet with a tutor next week. Before you turn in your sentences next Thursday, you need to have a tutor read your sentences and help you make corrections. Re-write incorrect sentences.

Have a safe weekend! I'll see you on Monday.

Keep up the Good Work!

I'm really pleased to see that everyone is doing their homework. Good job! And I'm always happy when you have questions. If you don't understand something, be sure to ask. If I don't know the answer, or can't find it right away, I'll look it up and tell you the next day.

Today we reviewed topic sentences and we learned 5 features of a good topic sentence. We practiced recognizing and writing good topic sentences.

Tonight's homework: (Chapter 1, pages 9-12)
• Activity 6
• Read about Brainstorming on page 10, then do the brainstorm at the top of page 11.
• Activity 7
• Activity 8
• Fluency journal (due Monday)

Keep up the good work!

Tuesday's Report

Today we wrote a 10-minute paragraph about what we think the most important invention is, and we discussed the syllabus.

Homework:
1. Buy your materials.

First Day of School

You survived your first day of school! And now it's time to get serious. Here's a reminder of what we did today: We got to know each other a little better, we talked about this blog, and we talked about heroes. We decided that heroes and role models may have lots of different characteristics. They might be courageous, diligent, hard-working, and talented or skilled. They serve and sacrifice. Then I asked you to think of your own personal hero.

Tonight's homework:
1. Explore this blog and leave a comment about something you found useful.
2. Write down the name of one of your heroes, and then write three reasons that this person is your hero. Write it on a piece of paper that you bring to class.

See you tomorrow!

Welcome!

Hello, FC Writing Students!

Welcome to FC Writing. I'm glad you're in my class. I'm excited about helping you achieve your writing goals this semester.

This is our class Homework Blog. Get to know it well, and use it! Every day after class I will post what we did and what the homework assignment is. That way, if you forget, or if you're absent, then you can look it up on the blog.

Also, you can see that I've put up some very useful pages, including the syllabus, calendar, and useful writing resources. I will continue to add other useful information as the semester progresses.

Let's have a great semester!

-Mrs. Bay