IEW-Week 10

Can you believe it? It's party time! A semester of hard work has paid off and our marble jar is full.

This week, continue to work on your FOH report. Many of you were able to bring in some rough draft paragraphs to dress up and first class got to play around with ideas a bit. Second class, we got a bit off track discussing colons and bibliographies but they were conversations well had.

Just to second the conclusion we came to in class, the colon is used when the second independent clause seems to confirm or explain what the first independent clause says. The semi-colon is used when the two independent clauses are closely related. I've Googled it again and every source seems to follow a variation of this. It does seem to be splitting hairs in some cases. THIS LINK from UNC-Chapel Hill Writing Center has a wealth of information about all things grammar. It also addresses the topic of whether or not to capitalize the first letter after a colon (either way is correct) and mentions some common incorrect colon usage.

This same site also has MLA bibliography information. Here is a link to the EasyBib site we talked about in class. I highly recommend that you allow your student to work through the process with you as much as is appropriate for their age/skill level. Afterwards, you can plug it into EasyBib to double check. Please let me know if you need any help with this. remember, no crying in Essentials!

If your student is first year, please do not allow these details to take the joy out of this fun assignment. I am concerned that for some, the topics we covered in class this week may overwhelm them. They do not need to use colons or semi-colons in each paragraph unless they find it fun. These punctuation rules are to stretch the skill level of the second and third tour students who are moving into Challenge not to frighten the first year students. However, it is a fun way to change up the sentence structures when they are ready.

Next week, bring your 3 rough draft body paragraphs and some ideas for introductory and concluding paragraphs. We will discuss how to make our reports first person and include some words from the time period to make it sound authentic! If you don't get all 3 done, bring what you have.

I still have not heard from some of you about a head count for dinner. We are trying to get food ordered next Tuesday evening so :) please, let me know as soon as you can. Also, if you have anything medieval-ish in your home that you would be willing to let us borrow for the evening, let me know: flameless candles, tapestries, fleur-de-lis decorations that might be appropriate, catapults or other presentation visuals from weeks past, ya know, that family suit of armor you keep for use when the castle gets attacked... hehehe, yep. They do exist in the closets of some of us!


Have a blessed week!
Melissa