Week 14: Finish writing me a fantastic story from pictures!

What a superb Essentials class yesterday! I am so pleased with all the kids are learning. Parents, your children are rising up to call you blessed. Thank you for the time you invest in them at home each week. Even if no one else sees it, our heavenly Father smiles on your work day in and day out!

During EEL, we reviewed what we've learned about clauses, discussed active and passive voice verbs, then moved into S-Vt-IO-DO sentences. Continue reviewing those subordinating conjunction and relative pronoun lists this week in addition to working on indirect objects. Practice constructing complex sentences by taking a simple sentence, choosing either a subordinating conjunction or relative pronoun, and adding a dependent clause that begins with that conjunction or pronoun. Next week in class, we will spend a lot of time diagramming complex S-Vt-IO-DO sentences. Fun, fun, fun!

We spent our IEW time learning about the two decorations assigned for their stories: alliteration and conversation. Punctuating conversation can be tricky. Keep working with them at home as opportunity allows!

The IEW assignment for Lesson 14, however, is pretty straightforward. The kids need to finish their stories, complete the Level B checklist, and turn it all in to me on Tuesday. Revise and polish one paragraph per day, perhaps, then complete the checklist on Monday. I do have a couple of pointers:

• We looked at an example story from IEW's Structure & Style guide yesterday that well demonstrates how to capture a picture's central fact in both the topic and clincher sentence of a paragraph. While this sounds easy, it can be difficult. Help your students by suggesting ideas if they need them this week.
• All of our dress-ups and decorations in the checklists are great tools for improving our writing, but it's okay to leave one out of a paragraph every now and then! If students like their paragraphs as is, and you know they've worked hard to produce excellent writing, tell them it's all right to skip that missing adjective or -ly this time! A well-written story is more important than 2 points on a checklist.
• Encourage them to read aloud as they write. Reading aloud often helps us discover what flows and what doesn't. When all three paragraphs are complete, hopefully on Friday, ask them to read aloud to an audience. It will give them time to make final changes and will make for a stronger presentation in class on Tuesday.

Have an outstanding week! Please call or email if you have questions.

Erin