Cal came in today and was definitely in a better mood. I told him on Monday that we would be writing today, and while he stalled at the beginning, once he got started, he whipped out 4 pretty decent paragraphs. On Friday, we're going to work on proofreading and editing what he wrote.
Clay only had two paragraphs completed and both needed a lot of work. The first paragraph had a solid topic sentence, but he failed to fully develop the idea or give examples. In the second paragraph, he just jammed three topics together and had no topic sentence or development. We talked about what he needed to improve and how he could fix them. We'll see what he hands in on Friday. As for the verb agreement, he's doing very well on the worksheets and I expect it to improve in his writing.
Cal was very quiet and lethargic to start the class. But as we discussed on Friday, instead of trying to avoid doing work, he communicated with me that he wasn't feel well today, and didn't want to write. This was a step in the right direction in two regards: first, he's communicating, and two, rather than trying to get out of work completely, he was willing to work on grammar instead. He did very well and seems to have verb agreement down solidly.
We started off by selecting a topic for this week, and spent a good bit of the session discussing different ideas for the body paragraphs and the thesis statement. We then reviewed and worked on verb agreement again, which is something Clay continues to have trouble with in his writing.
Review pattern(s) for writing couplets, triplets, and quatrains. Read examples of each type of poem and brainstorm ideas to write about, then write poems.
Will did a good job with this assignment…wrote the poems and almost finished typing all of them. We will finish this tomorrow.
Cal was a half hour late for our session today. This is indicative of the focus and effort he's put into this class. Rather than have him write, I decided it was time for us to talk about where he is as student, and what he wants to accomplish with this class. It was a very productive conversation and Call committed to communicating with me better, and putting more of an effort into the class.
Clay did not have his essay with him today, and instead whipped out a couple of paragraphs in a short time. He is supposed to email the paper to me over the weekend, and I'll go over it then. We broke down the two paragraphs he did have, and I had them re-write them, and work on developing his ideas.
Explain/give examples for writing couplets, triplets, and quatrains - go over rhyming pattern for each. Brainstorm for ideas, then begin to write poems Will is doing a good job. I think he is enjoying this assignment.
We crafted a solid introduction and started to work on the body paragraphs. As I've said many times before, Cal definitely has the ability to improve his writing.
Clay's computer had died and he didn't have the charger, so I didn't get to read the paragraphs he wrote for today. But we continued working on grammar with verb tense/agreement worksheets. Clay has very little trouble with the worksheets, but for some reason that's not translating to his writing, as verb tenses/forms are his most common mistake. We'll keep working on it.
