Week at a glance Aug 22 - 26, 2011

Curriculum focus: determines word meanings through knowledge of word structure: Greek and Latin roots and prefixes and suffixes (11.1.3.k3), organizing and planning a written piece (11.7.1.3), composes persuasive writing (11.7.2.1c), adapts writing by identifying, analyzing, and understanding audience (11.7.2.2), writes using one or more text structures when appropriate to a achieve a specific purpose or to address a specific audience: problem/solution (11.7.2.4d), and develops clear and purposeful ideas with sufficient evidence and/or relevant detail to satisfy purpose using sufficient evidence, examples, anecdotes, quotations, expert opinions, and/or statistics (11.7.2.1d)

Root words for this week (root - definition - examples):

1. culpa - blame - culprit, culpable
2. duc / duct - lead - conduct, seduce, introduction
3. jud / jur / jus - law - judge, jury, justice
4. polis / polit - city - police, politician, metropolis
5. rect - straight - correct, direct, insurrection
6. urb - city - urban, suburb

We will continue our Root Words unit this week with the roots listed above, quiz on Friday. We also write our first essay of the school year: the Personal Narrative. The Personal Narrative is an essay with both narrative and expository elements. Students will focus on a specific song, movie, book, food, or place and explain its significance to them.  Since this is our first essay, we will go step-by-step through the writing process. Students will submit an electronic copy of their rough draft by the end of the hour on Friday. Check the Course Materials section for copies of this assignment.

• Mon: New root words; quiz on Friday.  Personal Narrative, assignment overview. Personal Narrative pre-writing due Tuesday.
• Tues: Personal Narrative pre-writing checked in class. Creating an informal outline. Begin creating an informal outline for the Personal Narrative.
• Wed: Personal Narrative informal outline checked at the beginning of the hour. Creating the introduction.
• Thurs: Personal Narrative - meet in the computer lab to begin writing the rough draft. Introduction paragraph checked by the end of the hour. Continue writing the rough draft.
• Fri:  Personal Narrative - meet in the computer lab to finish writing the rough draft.  Root Words quiz; Personal Narrative rough draft due by the end of the hour.