Daily Log

Thursday, Oct. 4
Students turned in the HW (answers to the Reading Check questions on p. 125). Reading Check questions are the ones in the box, labeled a, b, c, d.

We examined the difference between summarizing – the activity required in answering question ‘a’ -- and paraphrasing, and the students wrote paraphrases of the first sentence (first paragraph) of the Declaration of Independence. We discussed these. They also tried (and mostly failed) to identify the simple subject and simple predicate of the sentence. We began to analyze the famous second sentence and its mastery of parallel structure.

Wednesday, Oct. 3

We finished our joint work on the essay comparing the captivity narratives by Mary Rowlandson and Olaudah Equiano.

HW due Thursday: Read the Declaration of Independence, pp. 117-124 in Elements of Literature, and answer in writing the four “Reading Check” questions on page 125.

Tuesday, Oct. 2
We continued work on the essay we began yesterday, brainstorming and sketching out two two-chunk paragraphs for the essay’s heart.

Monday, Oct. 1
Starting from the students’ outlines for an essay comparing Rowlandson’s and Equiano’s captivity narratives, we began writing such an essay together. The third period began the process, the fourth period fine-tuned the third period’s work and added more, and so on. Because of the need to take all periods through the whole process, the fifth and sixth periods were able to add less to the essay, and we got only as far as the end of the first paragraph.

Students turned in their outlines.

Friday, Sept. 28
Except for 3rd period, when we pretended the school was burning down, we looked at outline protocols in Writers Inc., then at the distinction between ‘less’ and ‘fewer,’ completing an exercise over that which was turned in at the end of class.

The HW (the an outline of an essay comparing Equiano’s Narrative with Rowlandson’s) was postponed to Monday, with the stipulation that it be a sentence outline, as per Writers Inc. page 108.

Thursday, Sept. 27
We looked at the class Sharepoint site.

We read the excerpt in Elements of Literature from The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano.

HW due Friday: Write an outline, using traditional I,A,1 format, for a five-paragraph essay comparing Equiano’s Narrative with Rowlandson’s.