We went over Clay's five paragraph essay for the week. It was definitely an improvement from last week, but he's still having trouble keeping to one topic per paragraph, giving a clear example, and fully developing his ideas. His introduction was better, but he's still rushing to finish, rather than gradually building to his thesis statement. We'll continue to work on it.
Read poem written yesterday and make changes, then type the final copy and add a picture to illustrate the poem. Will did a good job with the poem, and he is doing well with typing.
Cal was extremely tired when he got here and very resistant to any writing or worksheets. (He had apparently done 5 hours of science, including a 5 paragraph essay in the morning.) In the future, I asked him to bring all of his writing with him so I can look over it and help him improve. So, instead of working on writing, we read a short story to work on reading comprehension, retention of details, and writing about literature. We finished the story and had a nice discussion about it, and he will write an essay on it on Friday.
After reading Clay's paragraphs for today, I decided to focus on editing and rewriting. His ideas were jumbled, he didn't have clear topic sentences, and his third paragraph was all over the place without any one specific topic. Even more disconcerting was the appearance of "like" in his writing, which is very new, and repeated run-on sentences. It appears, that as Clay gets more comfortable with writing, he's starting to put less effort into it. We went over two of the paragraphs, and I assigned the introduction and conclusion for Friday.
Introduce new type of poem called "diamante." Explain that it doesn't have to rhyme, has 7 lines with opposite, yet merging topics such as, Summer/Winter. Line 1 has one word (noun/subject), line 2 has two words (adjectives describing subject), line 3 has three -ing words (describing subject), line 4 has four words - first two words relate to line 1 and the last 2 words relate to line 7, line 5 has three -ing words describing line 7, line 6 has two adjectives describing line 7. Read/discuss examples. Brainstorm for topic then begin writing poem. Will did a good job…cute poem.
I wanted to work on verb tenses today, but Cal was not in the mood to do grammar worksheets. I started out by having him write a paragraph about his weekend, but ended up extending it to a full 5 paragraph essay. Cal's focus and effort has greatly improved. He's communicating better, and actually writes with minimal complaints. We'll keep working on it.
Clay continues to make mistakes with his verb tenses. Again, he does very well recognizing them on the worksheets, but has trouble with them when he writes. Today we focused on consistency, and started with Clay writing a full paragraph about his weekend in past tense. When he truly concentrates, he doesn't make the obvious mistakes. There are now direct consequences for any verb tense mistakes in the future. (multiple paragraphs practicing tense)
Today we worked on editing and revising the 5 paragraph essay Cal wrote on Wednesday. We spent a lot of time on the introduction, as that seems to be an area that gives Cal trouble. He tends to write with short and very direct sentences, which hurts him in his intros. He needs to work on keeping them as general as possible and saving his specific statements and examples for the body paragraphs. His spelling is solid, but definitely could improve, but I was very pleased with his attempts to use different kind of sentences to improve the flow of his writing.
Clay had his essay completed today, and while it wasn't bad, there were some glaring problems. The most concerning was his introductory paragraph, which was one big run-on sentence, didn't have a topic sentence, and didn't have a thesis statement. We have gone over introductions multiple times and Clay is more than capable of doing a better job. Similarly, he failed to have a topic sentence for each of his body paragraphs as well. He did a good job of including examples to illustrate his point, but has to focus on the required elements more carefully. We talked about taking his time and focusing while writing, and not writing just to get to the end.
Finish typing quatrain and add picture(s) - next, introduce cinquain, a very structured poem. Explain/give example - poem has 5 lines - lst. line (topic) has 2 syllables, 2nd. line has 4 syllables, 3rd. line has 6 syllables, 4th. line has 8 syllables, and the 5th. line (renames the topic) has two syllables. Brainstorm ideas for topic then begin poem. Will is doing well…I want him to see that it can be fun to "play" with words.
