Day 3 Expections for the Classroom

Day 3

Class Expectations

07.04.2015

Expectations for ELAB:

• Arrive to class each day prepared to write. Take care of personal needs and wants before you get to class. You need to go to the bathroom and your locker before you get to my class. You must make all phone calls before you come to my class. You need to do all of your socializing before you get to my classroom.
• ELAB is a writing class that incorporates content from English, Science, and Social Studies. You are expected to write every day. You are supposed to become a better writer through self-motivation. I can’t make you write better, but I can give you tools for your writing toolbox that can help you become a better writer.
• Writing is a personal and solitary activity. You are expected to remain silently on task throughout the class. You will not work with a partner or group, so don’t ask. While writing, you will be quiet and on task. Any talking during silent writing time is considered rude and disruptive.
• Writing is a task that never ends. The writing process is a giant circle that never begins nor ends. If you publish one piece of writing, then you will start a new piece of text. You will learn about the writing process and how to structure your writing. I will teach you this learning in my daily lessons.
• Find topics and purposes for your writing that matter to you, your life, who you are, and who you might become. Do not ask me for writing topics or ideas. I will teach you skills and strategies for determining your purpose and subject in daily lessons.
• Create and maintain plans for your personal territory as a writer: your ideas, themes, purposes, genres, forms, and techniques that you’d like to experience and explore.
• Make your decisions about what’s working and what needs more work in pieces of your writing. Be your first responder. Read your articles or short stories with a critical, literary eye and ear.
• Listen to, ask questions about, and comment on others’ writing in ways that help them move their writing forward, toward literature.
• Take notes in your ELAB binder to create a handbook of information presented in daily lessons, recorded chronologically, with a table of contents.

·         Each quarter, you are expected to produce one published piece of writing in each of the following genres: descriptive writing, expository writing, journals and letters, narrative writing, persuasive writing, and poetry writing. I will teach you about each of the genres in daily lessons. I will also give you due dates for each of the genres. These six pieces will be graded based on the TNReady Writing Rubric, which I will teach you about this year in daily lessons. Recognize that good writers build quality upon a foundation of quantity.

·         Work on your writing for at least three hours outside of school each week.

·         Have access to a flash drive or cloud storage so that you can transfer your book from the computers at school to your computer at home.

·         Maintain a record of the pieces that you have published. File published articles chronologically in your binder, with the most recent piece on top.

·         Recognize that readers’ eyes and minds need your core competencies to be conventional in format, spelling, punctuation, and usage. Work toward conventionality and legibility, and use everything you know about spelling, punctuation, and usage as you compose.

·         Continually revise your writing, keeping in mind the 4S method: Structure, Substance, Sequence, and Style.

·         Writing is a process of discovery, and you don’t always produce your best stuff when you first get started. Revision is an opportunity for you to read over what you have drafted. This review process is the chance for you to make sure that you said all that you wished. You will read your piece with your audience in mind.

·         Take care of your writing materials, resources, and equipment.

·         Each quarter, establish and work toward significant and relevant goals for yourself as a writer.

·         Take a deliberate stance each day to make sure that you have written well. Use the lessons to help you become a better author.

Student Tasks:

1.      Write five ideas that could be included in a book called 101 Creative Uses for Trash.

2.      Define the following words:

·         Document

·         Promote

·         Illustrate

·         Reveal

·         Interpret

3.      Answer the following in a complete paragraph. Your paragraph must have a topic sentence, three details, and a concluding sentence.

*Who owns the land? For thousands of years, native Americans regarded themselves as caretakers, not owners, of the land. The Europeans who began arriving in North America, however, saw things differently. They laid claim to the land and aggressively defended it from Native Americans and from one another. In the end, the British claim overpowered all others. Yet, the question remains: What entitles people to claim land as their own?

4. Answer the following in a complete paragraph. Your paragraph must have a topic sentence, three details, and a concluding sentence.

*What makes an explorer? America’s early explorers traveled for many reasons: to gain glory for themselves or their country, to find gold or orhter riches, to discover new routes for travel and trade. Yet none of these motivators alone seems enough to make the uncertainties of exploration—unknown destinations, unknown rewards, unknown dangers—worth the risk. What is it that causes people to seek out the unknown?