I was disappointed to miss the October class and was pleased the class had gone ahead as usual. Actually I was not very disappointed as I was in Tasmania helping our son celebrate his 50th birthday!
Hints:
This month we discussed some grammar traps. Firstly we talked about when to use apostrophes, looking at some examples of correct and incorrect usage. One simple example was the difference between “its” and “it’s”. “Its” is around ownership and “it’s” is what is known as a contraction of “it is”. We also looked at some common spelling mistakes/confusions, for example “principal” and “principle”. One thought for working out which to use is that the principal of a school is a pal, so use “PAL”.
Our challenge:
We had a very brief challenge, identifying words from a description, with the only clue being the number of letters in the word was the same as the Scrabble value of the first letter of the word. It was made more difficult as some of us had not played Scrabble for many years and so had forgotten the values if the letters.
Our stories:
For our written work to share with the class there were three prompts:
Hints:
This month we discussed some grammar traps. Firstly we talked about when to use apostrophes, looking at some examples of correct and incorrect usage. One simple example was the difference between “its” and “it’s”. “Its” is around ownership and “it’s” is what is known as a contraction of “it is”. We also looked at some common spelling mistakes/confusions, for example “principal” and “principle”. One thought for working out which to use is that the principal of a school is a pal, so use “PAL”.
Our challenge:
We had a very brief challenge, identifying words from a description, with the only clue being the number of letters in the word was the same as the Scrabble value of the first letter of the word. It was made more difficult as some of us had not played Scrabble for many years and so had forgotten the values if the letters.
Our stories:
For our written work to share with the class there were three prompts:
- The lady with a troubled look on her face
- Daffodils danced in the breeze their tiny yellow trumpets exuding music to willing listeners
- The reflections on the still water of the lake, did not reveal what lay beneath
A range of new stories were shared this month. In many cases these covered issues that are common to lives today – family violence, bereavement, mental health. And as happens on occasion one of the contributions was a poem – about how inspiration had failed in finding the right story to write. The poem was brilliant.
The topics for our 12 December class are:
We are planning to continue writing over the Christmas break with a challenge to write every day as part of the plan.
Joy Shirley
The topics for our 12 December class are:
- She/he stood on the balcony
- She sat staring at the screen. The words of betrayal sliced into her like a blade. An intimate and intense email meant for her boyfriend but mistakenly sent to her.
- The rain was so heavy she/he could not see to make the right-hand turn, so she/he turned left
We are planning to continue writing over the Christmas break with a challenge to write every day as part of the plan.
Joy Shirley
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