Week at a glance March 28 - April 1, 2011

Curriculum focus: generates ideas from personal experience, prior knowledge, observation applying appropriate strategies (11.7.1.1), selects a topic and relevant details for form, purpose, and audience (11.7.1.2), organizes and plans a written piece and develops a thesis statement in response to a prompt (11.7.1.3b), edits and polishes final revision to improve fluency and clarity (11.7.1.7), composes and meets the needs of the audience when creating persuasive writing (11.7.2.1c), builds a focused argument in the persuasive mode that uses logical thinking and appeals to reason, authority, and/or emotion using persuasive techniques (11.7.3.1c), the arguments opposing the writer's position are anticipated and effectively refuted (11.7.3.1g)--these are the primary indicators we are covering. We are also covering a broad range of other local indicators that, if all were listed, would be our entire writing curriculum.

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

1. fid - faith - fidelity, confident, bona fide
   
2. ger - old - geriatric, gerontology, gerontophobia
   
3. nat - birth - neonatal, natural, nation
   
4. phyt - plant, growth - neophyte, geophyte, phytobiology
   
5. spir - breathe - inspire, perspire, spirit
   

This week we'll be preparing for the Local Writing Assessment, an in-class essay assignment students will complete next week. To make sure we are prepared for the LWA, this week will be a review of persuasive writing basics that we've learned throughout the year and applied to our recent Death of a Salesman Essay. Students will wrap up this week of review with a practice outline and reflection, due by the end of the hour on Friday.

• Mon: New root words; quiz on Friday. Persuasive Writing Basics - notes in class.
  
• Tues: Persuasive Voices - notes and discussion. Practice paragraph due Wednesday.
  
• Wed: Persuasive paragraph due. The Thesis Statement - practice and evaluation.
  
• Thurs: Responding to a writing prompt - informal outline due Friday.
  
• Fri: Root Words Quiz. Informal outline and paragraph response due by the end of the hour.