Monday Morning

Last night I overdosed on Lord of the Rings watching “The Return of the King” in one sitting. I have to say that there were interminable battle scenes  that I fast-forwarded through but on the whole I liked the film a lot. But, as always, I would recommend the book. I can’t say the book is better but it is different, in fact there are parts where it is very different from the movie–the part where the hobbits come back to the Shire when the Ring has been destroyed is what springs to mind instantly. Having read the book, I did know how Gollum came to be the owner of the Ring, but I was interested to see it at the beginning of “The Return of the King.” I will continue rereading the books as I am doing and then will rewatch the trilogy on DVD. I am glad I bought these movies rather than renting them from Netflix. These are movies I will definitely watch again.

This morning I went to tutor Robin at 10 am, the time she had chosen, and found that she was only just up and not prepared to focus. I was a little annoyed about this but we skimmed swiflty through what she needed to do and I started the prewriting discussion for her next essay before I left. I am going over there tomorrow at 2 pm, again, a time she chose.

Back when I was teaching seventh graders to write, I found by experience that most of the children needed a prewriting discussion time when they were working with a topic suggested by me or their text book. {If they were doing “own choice” writing, they almost always could do their prewriting lists or webs by themselves once they had learned the techniques.}The technique  we used the most often in the classrrom was to give them a timed  make-a-list  session. {I usually set the timer for 10 minutes while they brainstormed frantically in their writing note book.}. Then I asked them to tell me what was on their list, one student and one suggestion at a time as I wrote them on the board. I had to insist from the beginning that there were NO wrong or strange answers. {After they had seen the results of this, they were much more prepared to accept anything as long as the person who suggested it could explain its relevance to the subject  because they often discovered other people had ideas they would never have thought of themselves.}

As they gave me the items from their list, I put them on the board. Then, when everything we could think of on the subject was there, I told them to make a new list taking from the board what made sense to them and discarding what they wouldn’t use. When they were finished with this, I then took what *I* wanted and shared my list with them.  I then “thought aloud” as I rearranged my list and added to it on the board and they were then set free to do this with their own lists. It was fascinating how many different ways of writing about the same subject came from this. {As an aside, 5% of their final grade came from handing in all draft work with their final copy. So, no draft work meant  they could make an A–95–but that left no wiggle-room for other errors. For their final neat copy, I counted off one point for every spelling or punctuation error up to a total of minus 15.}

I don’t have enough time to do this totally with Robin but I do ask her to give me her ideas and as she dictates them, I write them down. She then does the arranging and reorganizing  and adding and dropping. This is what she will, I hope, be doing by herself today so that she can go straight to the essay writing tomorrow.

Right now I have one load of clothes washed, dried and folded. There is another one in the dryer even as I write. Then I will probably go for a walk. It is chilly and raining just a little, but, hey, if I want to continue eating cheese bread, I have to walk!

Until later..