This week I have been teaching writing skills for History Day using handouts developed by the Writing Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Designed for college students who need some extra support in writing, these resources are at an appropriate level for students in the middle school AGATE classes.

I am having the class read one handout a day this week: introductions, thesis statements, evidence, arguments, and conclusions. Some days they read silently with partners and add sticky notes with question marks when they run into a “clunker” (something they don’t understand) and a sticky note with a star when they run into a “link” (something that makes them think of a connection to something else they have heard or know about). Then they discuss the clunkers and links with their partner before the class discussion. For the handouts on evidence and arguments, I had the whole class read together—I felt there would be far too many clunkers!

Because History Day projects are often done in groups, I then have the class practice group writing. The groups use poster-size sticky notes to write the most important things they learned from the day’s lessons. Then each group decides on the single most important sentence they want to remember. I write those sentences on the board exactly the way they tell them to me. We work together to evaluate the sentences, organize them, combine, revise, and edit. Then I type them and post them. The paragraphs they’ve written so far are on the right hand column of following page: http://www.kragen.net/middle-school-class-materials.html.

When I first told the students that the material was from a college site, they were a bit intimidated, but they are feeling more comfortable with it now. Learning to write quality academic research papers is a skill they are certainly capable of. And there are additional materials on the UNC site that they can explore: http://writingcenter.unc.edu/resources/handouts-demos.

I wrote to the Writing Center to let them know how much  I appreciated their materials. Here is their reply:

Hi, Jan—thank you so much for writing to share what you and your students are doing!   We’re always delighted to hear that our handouts are helping writers. When  we created the first ones, they were just photocopies on a wall in our office.  When we got a website and posted them, we thought they’d mostly be of use to Carolina students.  But now we hear from people all over the world who are reading them—scientists in Antarctica trying to start a writing group, a 70-year-old woman in Minnesota who has decided to get her bachelor’s degree, students all over the world who are learning English, and lots of high school and college instructors and students here in the US. You’re the first middle school group I’ve heard from this academic year, and I’ll be passing your message along to our tutors (who are the authors of most of the handouts)—it will make their day!  We’d be interested to hear any feedback you or your students might have for us, including suggestions for other topics we might address in future handouts (and video “demos”—those are our newest source of fun here).

Vicki Behrens, Ph.D.
Assistant Director
The Writing Center
UNC-Chapel Hill

Central Kitsap is inviting parents from North Kitsap to join them for this class. SENG--Supporting Emotional Needs of Gifted--is a terrific organization. This class is a great opportunity.

For January, you will be using appositives in your sentences. Appositives follow a noun and rename it. Appositives do not start with who, whom, which, or that. They do use commas unless they are very short and just add a name. For example, my cousin Bob names the same person twice, but in that case the appositive doesn't need commas. You will use longer appositives, ones that do require commas. Here are some samples:

• Mrs. Kragen, our English teacher, told us to use appositives in our sentences this month.
• We are supposed to use longer appositives, ones that require commas.
• There are several movie versions of Cyrano de Bergerac, a story about a man with a very large nose who falls in love with a beautiful girl.
• Cyrano, a skilled swordsman, could also write poetry.
  

_Let's review some basics.

There are words. They come in eight parts of speech: verbs, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections.

There are phrases. They are groups of words that work together to do a single job: verb phrases, participial phrases, noun phrases, prepositional phrases.

There are clauses. Clauses have both a subject (with a noun or pronoun) and a predicate (with a verb). Clauses that can stand by themselves as sentences are called independent clauses. Clauses that cannot stand by themselves as sentences are dependent clauses.

There are different ways to join two independent clauses. Here are two independent clauses:
There were 58 students from Poulsbo Middle School at Regional History Day.
The girls led them all in school cheers before the awards ceremony began.

The most basic way to join two independent clauses is to use a comma and conjunction:
There were 58 students from Poulsbo Middle School at Regional History Day, and the girls led them all in school cheers before the awards ceremony began.

Another common way to join two independent clauses is to use a subordinating conjunction to make one sentence into a dependent clause and then attach it to the other sentence:
Since there were 58 students from Poulsbo Middle School at Regional History Day, the girls led them all in school cheers before the awards ceremony began.

A less common way to join two closely related independent clauses is to use a semicolon:
There were 58 students from Poulsbo Middle School at Regional History Day; the girls led them all in school cheers before the awards ceremony began.

An unusual and classy way to join two closely related independent clauses is to use a nominative absolute. Change the verb in the second sentence into an -ing participle and use a comma where the period was. See how it works:
There were 58 students from Poulsbo Middle School at Regional History Day, the girls leading them all in school cheers before the awards ceremony began.

Cool, huh?

You will be using nominative absolutes in your vocab sentences during December. That's just two weeks--Dec. 7 and Dec. 14.

The kings vs lords chart and your notes on the two power points should help on the essays. The chants are full of information that is on the multiple choice test.

Look at the file above called "UW Prep." What a wonderful thing the librarians at UW have done to help all of you! Then read this note from the library staff at UW:

The UW Databases with the padlock icon are UW Restricted--only current UW students, faculty, and staff can use them from off campus.  Your students are welcome to use them (and will likely have the most success finding newspaper articles searching these UW databases) while on campus, and we hope that they'll visit a UW Library to use them again if needed.

Our website can be a bit overwhelming, so we have pulled together the most useful UW Databases and added them to the News: History Day Guide at <http://guides.lib.washington.edu/hdnews>. Students can view this before they get here and begin to use the websites listed on their resource sheets. 

The titles listed under the Microfilm heading include the Microfilm A call number that the students will need to locate the microfilm in Microforms & Newspapers (MicNews).  MicNews staff will be on hand to help the students locate their materials, use the computers, and the microform machines.

Don't forget that in every vocab sentence you write, you must use one of the vocab words in a way that demonstrates you know what the word means. If we can substitute random words in place of the vocab word, we will not give you credit for the vocab word.

For November the stylistic device to use in vocab sentences is the participial phrase opening.

• Opening means it comes at the beginning of the sentence.
• Participial means it uses the participle of a verb. For these sentences, we will use -ing verbs. (Verbs that end in -ed can be used in participial phrases, too, but we will stick with one kind.)
  
• Phrase means it's more than one word.

Here are some examples:

• Walking through the Bloedel Reserve, the visitor stopped to watch the swans on the pond.
• Hitting a line drive, the batter made it to third base.
• Savoring the delicious enchilada, Matt decided he liked Mexican food the best.

It's not a participial phrase if there is just one word:

• Meandering, the visitor stopped to watch the swans on the pond.
• Sprinting, the batter made it to third base.
• Eating, Matt decided he liked Mexican food the best.

It's not a participial phrase opening if it's not at the beginning of the sentence:

• The visitor walking through the Bloedel Reserve stopped to watch the swans on the pond.
• The batter, hitting a line drive and running as fast as possible, made it to third base.
• Matt decided he liked Mexican food the best, savoring the delicious enchilada his friend's mother had served.

Most of all, make sure you don't turn your participial phrase opening into a dangling modifier! Remember, the subject of the sentence (right after the comma) must be the person or thing doing the action of the participle. Here are some bad examples:

• Walking through the Bloedel Reserve, the pond's swans entranced the visitor.
• Hitting a line drive, third base was a reasonable goal and the player ran as fast as he could.
• Savoring the delicious enchilada, the dinner was the best food Matt had ever eaten..

Well, we made it to both libraries, both days. A huge thank you to the parent drivers who made it possible. And a huge thank you to the Kitsap Regional librarians at the Poulsbo and Sylvan Way branches who worked early--before the libraries opened to the public--to enrich the education of our children.  

It was a scramble, though, trying to line up enough last minute drivers each day, which meant I was working late into the night before each trip trying to organize all the details. I've decided I can't keep doing that, so I am going to institute "drop dead" dates for the November trips. I need drivers for 60 for Seattle on November 10. If I don't have enough parents signed up to drive by November 4, I will cancel the trip.

We will take a bus for the University of Washington trip on November 21, so we don't need drivers. However, we still need adults--one per group. Groups, you need to meet NOW to determine who the responsible adult chaperone will be for your group for that trip. Most often it is a parent although sometimes a grandparent or some other relative comes along. Again, if I don't have enough chaperones signed up to accompany us by November 14, I will cancel the trip.

I don't want to be mean about this, I just want to be able to get a good night's sleep. Especially before a field trip!

Still reminding everyone:
I told students they would need their own copies of Comedy of Errors by Halloween. Here is the link again:
http://www.amazon.com/Comedy-Errors-Folger-Shakespeare-Library/dp/0743484886/ref=wl_mb_swf_hu_c_1_dp.
If you can't afford to buy the book, let me know. I will see about getting a copy ordered through the AGATE program or the PMS library or the PTA.