Week of Dec. 6-10

This week our class worked on our final outlines for our research papers. We were in the media center located in the library. Wednesday we turned in our 75 research note cards. To form them into an outline we had to organize our cards by what subject they were talking about which would turn into paragraphs in our papers, and once we had them into subjects we organized the cards within their subject by the order in which we wanted to talk about them. I found this very helpful when putting together my outline.


Sarah J

Week of November 29 - December 3

This week the students of Ms. Nickow's 8th period english class worked very hard on their literary research papers with  much help from the librarians. Although difficult and very time consuming, the students seem to be making good progress on their projects.

- Connor

Week Of November 22-26

This week we worked on finishing our books. We went to the library for two days and Mrs.Denhart worked on helping us find more information and how to cite our work for Magazines and such. Monday in the classroom we worked on how to pick a thesis for our research papers and developing them. Plus Ms.Nickow showed us what she expects to be written on our notecards. which were also due this week.

Week of November 1 - 5

This week, we began the week by editing our narrative paper and writing them in the computer lab. There we discussed how narrative paper should be a flowing story and contain thesis which should not be written directly on the paper. While essay should be descriptive, they cannot be overly descriptive that it interferes with the flow. After the discussion of narrative paper, we moved on to the compare and contrast paper. We read how compare and contrast paper could be written either in point by point or block by block. We also read our scripts in class comparing the stereotypical difference between men and women. These exercises gave us brief excerpt of how to write a compare and contrast essay.

Week of October 18 - 22

We recently started covering the topic on how to write a narritive paper. Our class was discussing the differences between wrinting a Descripitive Paper and a Narritive Paper. We also did an activity just for Narritives. That activity included finding an interesting picture, bringing it into class and having other classmates look at the picture. Looking at the picture, the class had to write down what they see, sound, taste, hear, etc. This activity really helped writing the first paragraph in our Narritive Paper.

Allie

October 18- October 22

Last week was a shorter week because of Columbus Day on Monday and an extremely late start on Wednesday due to testing. We mostly worked on editing our descriptive papers in groups. Ms. Nickow assigned us to look for different writing skills we had discussed in class such as, connotation and denotation, descriptive words, similes and metaphors, and distracting grammar. She also talked to us about the difference between since and then. We use since when it has to do with time, for example, 'Since Obama became president, many things have changed'. Because refers to the reason of something, for example, 'Because McCain lost, Obama became president'. On Friday we were introduced to our narrative unit and had to get back-to-back with partners and talk about things we have done in our lives. Then we had to tell each other what we thought was the most interesting thing mentioned. This gave everyone an idea of what to write about when we start our narratives.

Week of October 4 - October 8

This week we worked on descriptive writing.  We learned a few different ways to make our writing better by adding descriptive words into our work.  We also started our new paper; which sure enough, was on descriptive writing.  Earlier in the week we turned in our pet peeve papers and on Friday we worked in the lab on our descriptive papers.

Jim

Picture for Week of October 4 - October 8

This week in class are unit was all about discriptive writing, We wrote a discriptive paper. I wrote my paper about Midtown athletic club.


Mike

September 27th-October 1st

This week, we discussed the meaning of metaphors and similes. We looked through different examples such as the youtube video where we listened to songs that contained metaphors and similes. As a class, we also began to discuss our discriptive papers. The homework by the way is to write a 500 page paper about a pet peeve :) And we played a bunch of games...

Week of September 27th, 2010

Anger, as a metaphor.

Week September 20th-24th

During this week on Monday we wrote in our journals writing about what we would ask our 28 year old self if we could, I asked simple questions such as "Whats the future like?" and "Am I becoming successful?". On tuesday on our half day, we played a word game that had to do with a simple word, but had to guess the word without using words that were already written. After we ran out of words, the class made up our own words and we used them till the period ended. Wednesday we typed up our college prompt the whole period, just to finish up our draft to hand in for next week. Thursday we read from our book about description, and started learning about conotation and denotation. The last day of the week Friday, we had to write in our journals and also we read Ms. Nickows paper on Meatballs. The topic of the day was to write about a smell you remember, I wrote about the smell of pancakes in the morning my mom use to make me when i was little to start the day. At the end of the day, we finished up conotation and denotation

Picture for Week of September 13- September 16th

This week we worked on the first drafts of our college essays. We also had classmates look over them and give us their feedback.

Week of September 13 - September 16

We worked on making our opening sentences sound like music.  Ms. Nickow made us write our opening sentences seven times with different constraints each time.  We had to use alliteration and similes (look back at the opening for this post), quotes, questions, and proper nouns.  Usually, we write a first sentence and don't think twice.   This time, we spent almost twenty minutes trying to make our opening perfect.  We spent time in the computer lab and worked in groups to begin peer editing our personal statements and college essays.  Today (Friday) we also had our first writing journal entry.  We will be writing in our journals three times each week. 

Week of September 6 - September 10

Over the course of the week we were asked to present the class our most influential life lessons. As it may have seemed nerve-racking to discuss with others such significant topics, it was only beneficial to the start of a class relationship. We moved on to explain the process of submitting applications and the importance of proving your individuality you bring to the university. We imagined ourselves in the role of a college admissions counselor analyzing each application and the repetition they must encounter. Ms. Nickow encouraged us to find a rare instances or attributes in each others lives and expand on the topic. This is not an easy task but we must all find something that fits our full potential. We can only thank Ms. Nickow and her collegue for the helpful advice given.

Picture for week of September 6 - September 10

This week we learned some tips on how to write our college essays and talked to an admissions counselor on skype. We had some problems with the connection, but still learned some important things. We also met with our counselors to talk about college applications and graduation requirements.

Picture for week of August 30 - September 3

This is the tassle from my undergraduate college graduation!  This week, we began discussing our college application essays.  Although it is a bit overwhelming, it is even more exciting!

Week of August 30 - September 3

Everything we need to know in life we learned from English 405 class. This week, we wrote papers and spent time sharing some important lessons we have each taken away from some event, person, or other influence in our lives. Some of these lessons came from families, friends, golf courses, sports, failures, pets, and even Gossip Girl. We also spent time discussing and writing papers about our summer reading books. As the week ended, we started thinking about our college essay applications. It's hard to believe it is already time to apply to college, but we are grateful to have class time to devote to our prompts and personal statements.