Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Week 12 Admission Ticket

For Week 12, I want the kids to actually spend time reading through the Samaritan's Purse catalog. I want them to envision some of the needs in countries where people have far less access to education, opportunity and convenience. And I want them to see how the combination of their hard work and willingness to freely and cheerfully give of the little they have will pay huge dividends and bless the lives of people whom they will never meet.

To class, just bring the tickets they've earned and the money they'd like to contribute!

Week 11: God loves our cheerful givers, and I do, too!

I have to tell you. These kids blow me away. Their eagerness and excitement over the Samaritan's Purse gift, not to mention the desire of several to contribute above and beyond the suggested amount of their own money, really grabs my heart. God loves a cheerful giver, and we have an entire classroom full of happy philanthropists! Bless all of you moms for sharing your sweet children with me!

In my mind, their enthusiasm overshadows the work we actually did in class yesterday, but we still accomplished a bit in both EEL and IEW.

EEL consisted mostly of review. We formally introduced Task 5 on the EEL Student Task Sheets, which will serve as an excellent review tool at home the next two weeks. During this time, revisit the whole semester's material in a fun and relaxed fashion. Question and probe your students, looking for strengths and weaknesses or incomplete understanding. Now is the time to ensure a firm foundation in what we've learned. Over these two weeks, mix and match the first four sentence patterns and four sentence purposes to form simple and compound sentences. Using Task 5, modify them, dress them up, and diagram the dress-ups to the extent you can. Remember: We haven't yet covered complex or compound-complex sentences. You may want to skip those two elements of Task 5 modification for now. However, the rest should come pretty easily for the students.

We'll spend most of our time next week playing a review game the kids and I brainstormed for during our "secret" meeting yesterday! :) For the game, please ask the kids to bring a dry erase marker from home if they're frustrated with our class markers. I'll purchase new markers in January.

IEW again asks the students to write creatively this week. I haven't read their papers yet, but from what I heard yesterday, the students are doing a fantastic job. Like last week's assignment, Lesson 12 features three source text sections from which students will outline their entire story sequence. We completed two section outlines in class, which leaves only one for home before brainstorming and rough drafts.

The new decoration is 3SSS, which stands for "three short staccato sentences." Essentially, this is three VSS's strung together for effect. The kids grasped the concept quickly in class. I anticipate they'll incorporate it into their papers with ease. Notice on the checklists, however, that only one decoration is required per section. While they can include as many as they wish, only one of the three options (dialogue, alliteration or 3SSS) is required per section.

Next week should be fun. We'll probably flip-flop our time, completing IEW first and saving our EEL review game time for after. Then we'll leave the last 30 minutes or so open for Samaritan's Purse and the cookie exchange. Whew! It'll be a full two hours!

I'll probably touch base again concerning Samaritan's Purse. I sent home the gift catalogs with the kids and asked them to bring their tickets and money to class next week along with the knowledge of what they'd like to purchase. For those who contribute their own money, remind them to add in the sponsors' match. For example, a student who's earned $5 in tickets and contributes $5 will actually be able to spend $20.

An important note: I DO have Week 10's papers still, as I only got through half of them. And, of course, I have Week 11's that were turned in yesterday. So most of the kids have an additional three tickets coming to them. A couple who turned in papers late and haven't yet received them back may have four. They can factor that into their counting. I'll try to send out an update of what I have here at home so everyone knows exactly what to expect.

Please email me as you have questions. And will someone shoot me an email on this yummy cookie exchange idea? I think y'all hammered out details while the kids and I were outside yesterday.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Week 10: Diagramming is doable!

Great class yesterday!

We introduced S-Vl-PA sentences, which prompted a discussion of adjectives, using our Modifiers: Adjectives and Adverbs chart. You'll find a lengthy discussion of adjectives in this week's EEL lesson to review at home with your student.

S-Vl-PA sentences incorporate the complete list of linking verbs named on your Helping and Linking Verbs chart. In class, the kids seemed to grasp this sentence pattern easily. The EEL Guide explains the S-Vl-PA structure well incase you need help understanding, identifying and explaining it. For practice at home over the next few days, dictate simple and compound declarative S-Vl-PN and S-Vl-PA sentences and, using the Simple Steps chart, let the kids label and diagram. Encourage them (and help them if needed) to dress up the sentences with adjectives, adverbs and prepositional phrases.

As we will not introduce anymore sentence patterns until January, I expect you to spend most of your time this week on IEW. Students are again assigned creative writing, this time retelling the story of the fall of Babylon found in chapter 5 of Daniel in the Bible. Whereas last week, students could construct an entire story sequence out of the first section, this week, they'll need to rewrite all three sections to successfully move all the way from setting to theme. But remember: Short and sweet can be just as effective as long and loquacious!

We completed the outline of the first two sections in class. Before beginning a rough draft, they'll need to complete the outline for Section III and brainstorm adjectives, verbs and adverbs for all three sections.

The new decoration is dialogue, and students should include dialogue in their papers. We discussed proper punctuation and capitalization in class. Follow up on this at home. Those quotes, commas and end marks can be confusing til you get the hang of it!

As this post is late, and Maggie is due at piano in 10 minutes, I'm rushing! Please contact me if the post is unclear.

Week 11 Admission Ticket

Week 11's admission ticket for our Gilded Coupon Campaign is the IEW Vocabulary Crossword that I emailed two days ago. If you have trouble printing, let me know.

I'm in the process of planning how to let the kids redeem their tickets for the Samaritan's Purse donation. I hope to touch base with y'all later in the week with some ideas. Thanks.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Week 9: Our sentence pattern is S-Vl-PN.

Today's class felt FULL! We loaded our brains with information from beginning to end. What an opportunity! Have I told you I love your kids?

I'm skipping ahead, but I want you to PLEASE encourage their IEW writing at home this week by telling them how great Mrs. Erin believes their ancient Egypt papers are. Their hard work (and yours!) definitely paid dividends on this three-week assignment. I am pleased and proud with both the effort and the results. I almost teared up in class today as I considered how successfully each student had tackled these paragraphs! Wouldn't they have thought me silly and strange? Rightly so, I'm afraid, but yeah for IEW and our young writers!

The assignment I handed out today, Lesson 9, marks our transition to writing stories. The lesson gives families the option of writing one, two or three paragraphs on the Israelites' exodus from Egypt. Choose whichever works best for your family this week. We discussed in class the elements a good story needs, but it wouldn't hurt to review those again at home. Even if your student writes one paragraph only, that one paragraph should contain the complete story sequence. We did not add any new dress-ups or style techniques, so refer to your checklists for each paragraph's requirements. As to weekly schedule, I'd suggest outlines Wednesday; rough drafts Thursday; revisions Friday; title, labeling, illustration and checklist Monday.

Moving backward to EEL, we covered principal parts using our verb charts and Week 9 memory work. Use the memory work and corresponding charts at home this week to jump-start verb conversations and deepen students' understanding of how verbs work in sentences. If they haven't already memorized them from Foundations, start chanting that linking verb list.

We also introduced our fourth sentence pattern, S-Vl-PN. I told the students that while I haven't found it written anywhere yet, I believe all S-Vl-PN sentences use a form of "to be." That's why it's important for them to know the principal parts of this oft-used linking verb: to be, am, are, is, was, were, be, being, been. Using your EEL Student Task sheets at home this week, dictate S-Vl-PN sentences, dress them up with adverbs and prepositional phrases, and then parse and diagram them. Throw in a S-Vi or S-Vt-DO here and there; I believe the juxtaposition of different sentence patterns help students grasp the bigger picture.

If accomplishing the tasks of both EEL and IEW becomes overwhelming this week (or in the weeks to come), take a deep breath and choose what to let go. Most of these students will take this class again next year. Thus they have plenty of time to master the material.

If that's the case in your house, spend a few minutes a day on verbs this week using the memory work and charts and then complete three or four S-Vl-PN sentences. I'd recommend 30 minutes maximum for EEL. Then move on to IEW. If your student thrives on IEW and time is abundant, go for three paragraphs. If not, one solid, well-written paragraph is an excellent goal.

For students moving to Challenge A next year, look for understanding with EEL but invest your time in IEW. To be honest, I believe most of the older ones have a pretty good grasp on EEL right now. I think second semester will pose a greater challenge. So if they can spend more time on their writing now through Week 12, I'd encourage it.

My older daughter, Maggie, is enrolled this year in Challenge A, which uses IEW's Bible-Based Writing Lessons. We're writing lengthy papers weekly. It's tough, mostly because it takes MUCH time to brainstorm, write and revise each paragraph well. As a result, I believe the better our students can hone those writing skills in Essentials, the better off they'll be in Challenge a year (or two or three) down the road.

Unsolicited advice in those last four paragraphs, but you can tell what's on my mind...

Only three weeks to go! See you next Tuesday.

Week 10 Admission Ticket

Okay. Today in class, we spent some time learning the principal parts of a verb, which are infinitive, present, past, present participle, and past participle. We also reviewed the four verb types: intransitive, transitive, helping and linking.

I told the students that their admission ticket for Week 10 would be to examine the verbs "lie" (meaning "to rest or recline") and "lay" ("to put or place") and determine which of the two can be used as a transitive verb and which can be used only as an intransitive verb. I'd like for them to do the same with the verbs "rise" and "raise."

I'm assigning this task
  1. to help them cement these particular meanings of each because they are often confused;
  2. to encourage memorization of the principal parts of each; and
  3. to require their brains to apply what they've learned about intransitive and transitive verbs AND S-Vi and S-Vt-DO sentence patterns.

SO, I'd like each student to bring to class a piece of paper on which they've written each of the four verbs, each verb's meaning, each verb's principal parts, whether the verb is transitive or intransitive, and a sentence that demonstrates its type. (Hint: Make them use each verb in a sentence and determine the sentence pattern to discover the verb type.)

Some may not believe themselves capable of discerning the differences. But they're clever. I know they can do it. Encourage them for me at home this week!

Incase you need the answers to help nudge them along, here they are:

Lie (to rest or recline): to lie, lie, lies, lay, lying, lain; intransitive only; I am lying on the sofa.

Lay (to put or place): to lay, lay, lays, laid, laying, laid; transitive; I laid the book on the table.

**If you ever find yourself wondering whether you should use a form of "lie" or a form of "lay," try substituting "recline" and "put." You wouldn't say, "I am putting on the sofa," or "I reclined the book on the table."

Rise (to get up, ascend, originate, increase): to rise, rise, rises, rose, rising, risen; intransitive only; The sun rises early each morning.

Raise (to lift up): to raise, raise, raises, raised, raising, raised; almost always transitive; "I raised the window" (S-Vt-DO) OR "The window raises easily" (S-Vi).

Questions? Email me!