Week 21 - What do you think about Pandora's Box?

Hello Essentials families,
It was wonderful to see you all again yesterday and be back in the "land of the living."  I need a healthy dose of my CC family to keep me going.  You are all a blessing. 

Editing Exercise - Foraging for Fouls
Yesterday, the students did an incredible job attacking the editing exercise and almost exhausted all of the errors.  When they all work together competitively, an otherwise daunting task can become exciting and enjoyable. Please reinforce to your child that I am so proud of their enthusiasm and effort in class.  What a joy!

Unit 9 - Critiques (5 paragraphs, 3 paragraphs, or oral)
This week is the second week on our critique of the Greek myth "Pandora's Box."  Our goal in class was to discuss and brainstorm ideas for their conclusion paragraphs.  If your student is just starting this assignment this week, I strongly encourage you to complete the 3 paragraph option. (The 3 paragraph checklist is in last week's packet.) Alternatively, if your week is full of memory master prep and/or you are still completing a past paper, a second option is to just have them read the story,  KWO the critique, and orally present their critique to you.  The advantage of this is that they have gone through the questioning process while completing the KWO and they have experienced the structure of a critique (Unit 9). The focus of this unit is on structure. Additionally, they love spouting their opinions about the story:). If you choose to have them orally present to you, they can turn in their KWO for writing rewards.

Critique Conclusion:
In class we created ideas for their conclusion paragraphs.  Because each student's opinion of the story is unique to them, we did not complete the KWO in class.  The students enjoyed the story and had strong opinions on whether they liked or disliked "Pandora's Box."  We brainstormed their literary criticisms both positive and negative.  Please reinforce to them that the key to a strong critique conclusion is backing up your opinion with examples from the story.  Be sure to avoid the banned words. The students enjoyed incorporating vocabulary words in their descriptions and examples from the story.  I love to see them using their vocabulary words in writing discussions, this illustrates mastery of the vocabulary.  Also, while they are writing, use the critique vocabulary thesaurus distributed last week in class.  This is a very helpful tool for critique writing.

Optional Checklist:
I included an expanded checklist in the take home papers this week that lists all of the STYLE elements we have covered this year.  This was provided as an opportunity for your child to check off any additional elements of style that they include in their paper.  ALL OF THE STYLE ELEMENTS ON THE BONUS CHECKLIST ARE NOT TO BE INCLUDED IN EACH OF THE FIVE PARAGRAPHS!!!!  Just use the Critique Checklist for all of the required style and use the Optional Checklist for bonus/additional elements.  Most of the students are naturally using many of the dress-ups and sentence openers and I wanted to give them a place to check it off:). (Can you tell I am a list maker that likes to check items off my list?)

Have a wonderful week writing!  Remember there are no tears in Essentials so make the choice that best suits your family this week: 5 paragraph critique, 3 paragraph critique, or oral critique.

Happy Writing!
Tina