Week 15: "Quid et Quo" means "What and Why?"

I'm terribly proud of your kids! They are so smart and make our class time so much fun!

During our EEL time today, we worked through the EEL Task Sheet, both front and back, and also introduced the "Quid et Quo" chart. I thought the kids did really well with modifying our sentence about the barking dog, and I think they'll pick up on the basic "Quit et Quo" quickly as they work through a couple of simple sentences at home. Using the EEL Task Sheet and "Quid et Quo" during your time with them this week will reveal to both you as parents and them as students what they understand and what they don't. When it comes to the "Quid et Quo" details, make them use those charts when they can't remember the answers! Celebrate what they know, and help them with what confuses them! (Or put it off til a bit later...)

The EEL Guide suggests focusing on complex interrogative S-Vt-IO-DO sentences this week. I'd start with simple sentence structures, purposes and patterns. Parse them, diagram them, Quid et Quo them. Then add modifiers and do it again. Then move to more difficult structures, purposes and patterns and repeat the process. Give them some easy stuff, but also tackle something more challenging and work through it together. See if you can get all the way up to the guide's suggested sentence!

Also notice that Week 15 demonstrates how to diagram interjections. We didn't cover this in class today. I'll incorporate it sometime, but it would be easy for you to do at home with a sentence modification from declarative to exclamatory.

IEW should be fairly simple. We opted for stretching this assignment to four weeks in order to give the kids time to write five excellent and polished paragraphs. The kids can bring their rough draft paragraphs and checklists to show me next week, but turning them in for comments and return the following week will be optional.

• All they need to complete this week are the key word outlines, fused outline and the rough draft for Topic A, which is "How Rome Began."
• NEXT week, they will complete the KWOs, fused outline and rough draft for Topics B & C, which are "Roman Government" and "Roman Society."
• During Week 3, they'll use their three topics and information from the "Rome's Greatness" source paragraphs to brainstorm and write both introductory and conclusion rough draft paragraphs.
• Finally, Week 4 is the week to revise, add dress-ups and openers, and polish! I'll try to allow extra reading time in class for these highly important research reports!

As always, please contact me if you have any questions. Thank you again for sharing your kids with me and for teaching them so well at home! Y'all are the best!

Week 15 Admission Ticket

Sorry -- almost forgot to post!

Diagram the following complex sentences:

The dog, which is black, barked loudly.

While you wait, sing a song.

Week 14: Can you diagram complex sentences while you are at home?

Good morning!

Class was super yesterday, I thought. I just love the kids' different personalities! For me, Essentials IS among the highlights of my week, so thank you for being there!

Once again, we covered loads of material in EEL. The kids seemed to absorb and understand it, and I was pleased that they stayed engaged in our diagramming! They did SO well!

At home this week,

• Review memory work for Weeks 12-14.
• Review active and passive voice verbs. Work through changing a couple of active voice sentences to passive voice sentences and vice versa.
• Practice diagramming sentences. Spend a bit of extra time on dependent clauses and the S-Vt-IO-DO sentence pattern.

PLEASE USE THE REVISED SIMPLE STEPS CHART I HANDED OUT IN CLASS YESTERDAY. I'D REALLY LIKE TO KNOW WHETHER IT HELPS YOU AND YOUR STUDENT TO PROPERLY CLASSIFY SENTENCES. I'M OPEN TO SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPROVING IT, TOO!

• IF you have time (and a more advanced student), take a look at the Verb Anatomy Building Blocks and Verb Anatomy Explanation charts, along with the Verb Anatomy: TO HAVE chart. Look to learn how we use time (past, present and future) and form (simple, perfect, progressive and perfect progressive) to express tense. Although it's overwhelming to look at initially, the explanation chart really explains well how to take one of a verb's five principal parts and pair it with a helping verb to form the appropriate verb tense.

IEW is pretty straightforward. The kids need to finish outlining Source 2 from Lesson 14, then complete their fused outlines. When you're tempted to tell them to choose one piece of information over another for their fused outline, stop! (I know it's hard!) Let them choose to include what they find most important or interesting and leave the rest. As they write their paragraphs on the Olympics, encourage them to include their dress-ups and incorporate their sentences openers. Their writing as a class has been great -- I'm impressed with their skills and success!

Please let me know if you have questions. Thank you for doing such a great job at home!

Week 14 Admission Ticket

Write two complex sentences, one that features a dependent clause beginning with a relative pronoun and another whose dependent clause begins with a subordinating conjunction. Underline the dependent clause(s) in each sentence.

Week 13: Sentences that contain a dependent clause are complex!

Most moms were able to sit through class without distraction yesterday during our EEL time. I believe that will pay off in the coming weeks.

Although we introduced both complex sentences and the S-Vt-IO-DO sentence pattern yesterday, my goal for the kids this week is to learn to identify complex sentences by recognizing dependent clauses that begin with either a relative pronoun or a subordinating conjunction. With a list in hand of the relative pronouns and subordinating conjunctions, practice identifying dependent clauses on the 112 complex sentences chart, in a book, in the newspaper or whatever they happen to be reading.

Next week, we'll diagram complex sentences in class. Then our efforts to distinguish the relative pronoun clauses as adjectival and the subordinating conjunction clauses as adverbial will make more sense, because what they modify determines their placement on the diagram. Interestingly, I've discovered since class yesterday that these dependent clauses may also act as nouns in a sentence. (I'm still learning, too! If you have it, check out pp. 58-60 in the Grammar & Diagramming Sentences book.) Look at this sentence I went over with the kids yesterday; the dependent clause wasn't sitting right with me as adverbial, and now I know why.

I told my mom that I was going to empty the diswasher so that she wouldn't have to.

• Who or what is this sentence about? I (subject noun)
• "I" what? told (verb)
• Can I answer, "I told what?" Yes! "I told that I was going to empty the dishwasher."
• SO, the dependent clause "that I was going to empty the diswasher" is the DO of this sentence! It's acting as a noun!

I believe I'll use this sentence again in class next week to demonstrate for the kids, not only because this clause is functioning as a direct object, but also because "mom" is an indirect object that answers "to/for whom?"

Speaking of indirect objects, you can touch on them at home if you'd like; the EEL guide covers them on page 159. But I'm planning to spend more time on them, including diagramming, in class the next two weeks. I'd much rather you focus on differentiating between simple, compound and complex sentences.

Regarding IEW, my hope is that this week's assignment is easily doable with the revisions we discussed in class. One paragraph instead of five, a revised outline, and a revised checklist. I did mean to mention that if your student would like to write about a different Greek myth, or even a fable, please do so. The lesson is adaptable.

Last, thank you, moms, for loading this semester's charts and memory work into the students' notebooks during class. I'm glad to know it's done, and I hope it worked well for you to get it done then and there rather than worrying over it at home. See you all next week.

Week 13 Admission Ticket

Time to get back into the swing of EEL! We will kick off our second semester with a new sentence pattern AND a new sentence structure, so I want the kids to prepare by refreshing some particular bits of memory work.

For Week 13, students should know the answers to these four memory work questions:

1. What are the seven sentence patterns?
2. What is a complex sentence?
3. What is a dependent, or subordinate, clause?
4. What are some subordinating conjunctions?

They may either submit the questions and answers on a piece of paper or be prepared to answer when asked.