Sunday, October 30, 2011

Week 9 Admission Ticket

1. What are the seven sentence patterns?

2. What is a linking verb?

3. What are the linking verbs? (Hint: Consult your charts or Trivium Table.)

Bring your answers to class in exchange for your coupon. See you Tuesday!

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Week 8: At home, study prepositional phrases.

What delightful children you are raising! I am loving the papers they are writing in IEW, and they are picking up the EEL concepts well, too. Sharp, sharp, sharp!

During our EEL time yesterday, we focused on prepositional phrases. I used a stool as a visual example and placed myself beside the stool, atop the stool, behind the stool, in front of the stool, beneath the stool, etc. You can do this at home with any object, or you can pull a Dr. Seuss book off the shelf -- they are usually loaded with prepositional phrases, so have fun searching them out.

Use your memory work to memorize the definition of a preposition, and use either the EEL chart or the IEW list to familiarize yourselves with the preposition lists. Older students should try to identify prepositional phrases as adverbial or adjectival. But please know we'll be doing that in class all year long because we have to decide where to place the phrases on our sentence diagrams.

One vastly important note about prepositions -- they do not stand alone. They are always the first word of a prepositional phrase and thus always have an object. Many words on the preposition list can function as stand-alone adverbs, which can be tricky. For instance, if I say, "The bear crawled over," the word over is an adverb that tells me where the bear crawled. But if I say, "The bear crawled over the fallen log," over is a preposition and log is the object of the preposition, and the entire phrase is adverbial because it again tells where.

We have one more week to devote to compound S-Vt-DO sentences. So, during your study time, take two or more simple sentences of this pattern, add a FANBOYS to make them compound, then dress them up with prepositional phrases, adverbs, appositives, interjections, nouns of direct address -- anything we've studied so far -- and diagram as much as you can! If you hit a wall because you've created a larger sentence than you know how to diagram, don't worry. Go as far as you can and celebrate what you've already accomplished. :)

During our diagramming time yesterday, I handed out a green sheet titled "Simple Steps." This is a Q&A, similar to the one in the guide, that takes you through the tasks of identifying our sentence parts. However, this one is my own version. I put it together for Maggie a few years back. You are not required to use it, but here's why I like it. The EEL tasks direct us to identify the subject and verb first. I start in a different place -- with prepositional phrases, then conjunctions -- in order to isolate the main body of our sentence. THEN we go after our subject and verb. I believe, as the sentences become longer and more complex, it's easier to locate our main parts if we have all the "extras" set aside with parentheses. So see if you like it, but again, it's not required. I'll try to remember the extra copies next week for those who asked.

Moving at last onto IEW, the students are responsible for polishing their rough draft paragraphs and adding an introductory statement and a final clincher to their three-paragraph report on caring for the sick during colonial times. I believe they all understood this in class, and an example to follow is stapled to their assignment page.

We are two-thirds of the way through our semester. Hard to believe, isn't it? Y'all are doing great! Have a fantastic week. Please let me know if you have questions.

Erin

Monday, October 24, 2011

Week 8 Admission Ticket

For Week 8, write a S-Vt-DO sentence that contains a noun of direct address and an appositive. Tell me whether your sentence purpose is declarative, interrogative, imperative or exclamatory.

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Week 7: Students, study adverbs, appositives, and nouns of direct address diligently.

Sorry for the delayed post. We introduced an abundance of new information during EEL yesterday and a new way of key word outlining source texts during IEW. Y'all have a fun and full week of learning ahead at home!

For EEL, the guide does a superb job describing the imperative sentence pattern with S-Vt-DO, nouns of direct address, appositives, and adverbs. Spend time working with all of those using the guide and the nouns and adverbs charts. The guide also touches on verb mood, so those who have advanced students may want to identify the difference between indicative and imperative mood as well. It's not difficult to grasp.

Your IEW assignment introduces the idea and structure of topical paragraphs. We are supposed to take information that is scattered throughout a source text and arrange it into three topical paragraphs that contain topic sentences, details and clinchers. This structure is outlined in the IEW Resouce Guide (the free online download) and will eventually become a five-paragraph report for us that utilizes an introductory paragraph, three body paragraphs and a conclusion graph. I'd like for y'all to look over this structure with them and emphasize to the students how important the pattern is here. They will use it over and over and over again throughout their academic careers, and I believe it serves to help them organize their thoughts when speaking as well. The idea of writing a topic sentence, supporting it with details and clinching it with a final sentence that reflects and repeats key words from the topic sentence gives them a basic skeleton to fall back on time and time again.

Before they choose which facts they want to include in their outlines, I suggested yesterday that they go through the source text and underline all the doctor facts in one color, the superstition facts in another color, then the medicine facts in yet another color. Then let them choose the five to seven facts they find most interesting or most important regarding each topic.

If y'all have questions, let me know. Only the three rough draft paragraphs are due next week. Finals will be due the following week.

Finally, thanks to everyone for their patience and participation with pictures yesterday. I hope we got some great shots of our handsome brood!

Erin

Sunday, October 16, 2011

Week 7 Admission Ticket

Complete Analytical Tasks 1-4 for the following sentence:

The class reads stories, and I listen.

You may use a photocopied Analytical Task Sheet, or you can complete it on a sheet of notebook paper. Bring it to class Tuesday for your Admission Ticket.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Week 6: We know direct objects now!

Good evening! We covered so much ground today in both EEL and IEW, and I want to caution parents: Take a deep breath and realize that although we introduced a lot of new information, we have plenty of time in the coming weeks to learn it.

The EEL sentence focus for the week is compound declarative and exclamatory Subject-Verb transitive-Direct Object sentences. First, we will spend the rest of the semester -- six more weeks -- on compound sentences. This allows ample time to understand the concept and memorize the coordinating conjunctions (FANBOYS) that help to form this sentence structure. Second, we will devote an additional two weeks after this week to our S-Vt-DO sentence pattern. You'll have opportunity after opportunity to teach and review, so be patient with yourselves and your students.

Work on your memory work this week, and spend your EEL time creating compound sentences from simple sentences by taking two simple sentences and using a FANBOYS to combine the two. Try to use a combination of S-Vi and S-Vt-DO sentences.

In contrasting the two sentence patterns, explain as many times as needed that intransitive verbs DO NOT transfer any action and that transitive verbs DO transfer action to a person, place or thing in the predicate of the sentence. We call that noun receiving the action a DIRECT OBJECT. Put another way, intransitive verbs have no answer to the question "Subject verb what?" but transitive verbs always have an answer to that question. Consider the two following sentences:

The cat chased.


  • Who or what is the sentence about? Cat

  • What did the cat do? Chased

  • Can we answer "The cat chased what?" No

  • So, "chased" is intransitive, and our sentence pattern is S-Vi.
The cat chased mice.


  • Who or what is the sentence about? Cat

  • What did the cat do? Chased

  • Can we answer "The cat chased what?" Yes, mice

  • So, "chased" is transitive. The mice are receiving the verb's action, and our sentence pattern is S-Vt-DO.

We discussed coordinating conjunctions (FANBOYS) during class, but I did not touch on subordinating conjunctions, relative pronouns or conjunctive adverbs as mentioned in the EEL guide. I will circle back to these later as our sentences include them. If you have an advanced student and want or need to cover these now, please do. But for most of our class, I believe FANBOYS is sufficient for the week. What I would like you to focus on is the fact that FANBOYS can join words, phrases or clauses (both independent and dependent). Examples are pretty easy to find. Pick a paragraph from a book, look together for FANBOYS, and then determine together if they join words, phrases or clauses. But incase you're drawing a blank, here's examples of each:



  • Words -- apples, oranges OR pears

  • Words -- boys AND girls

  • Phrases -- over the river AND through the woods

  • Phrases -- above the ocean BUT beneath the sky

  • Clauses -- The wind blew, SO the kite soared.

  • Clauses -- The marshmallows toasted, FOR the fire crackled.

Just FYI, the guide uses Charts G and H to introduce compound sentences and conjunctions. Please look over them with your student, and use them where you find them helpful.


During IEW, we started what will be an ongoing discussion of comma rules. They put into their notebooks a page of IEW's comma rules. Use these as guidelines, knowing there are exceptions here and there you will have to explain. For practice, I distributed a comma rules worksheet you can complete at home this week if desired. We also introduced prepositional phrase openers, and I directed them to a prepositions list at the front of their style charts. Those for whom prepositional phrases are still somewhat vague can refer to this list for now. We will cover prepositions in depth in, I believe, two weeks during EEL.


Your IEW task is to complete your three-paragraph story of the Mayflower. First you'll want to add prepositional phrase openers and additional five senses adjectives. Then you'll want to revise and complete your final checklists. When they write their final drafts, please use the MLA style and just check off where the checklist says "Composition is neat and double-spaced with name."


Finally, I'd really love for you to plan a time at home for your student to read his or her paper aloud to the family. First, it provides practice. Second, I'm finding it extremely difficult with 18 students to let everyone read as often as I'd like. I really hate for no one to hear what they've written after they devote so much time and effort. The quality and creativity of their writing is outstanding, so please make time for them to read aloud at home!


Thank you for taking the time to read all of this and investing in your children this week. See you next Tuesday.


Erin

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Week 5: Can you question?

EEL families,

Today flew by as we learned how to change declarative sentences to interrogatives during our EEL time and talked in IEW about how to take a BORING story and rewrite it in an exciting and intriguing way. The students impressed me with their paragraphs on Jamestown; I'm eager to hear the rest next week.

At home this week, spend your EEL time reviewing memory work and charts and dialoging through simple S-Vi sentences that morph from declarative to exclamatory to imperative to interrogative. Then have fun diagramming them! Pay close attention to the three different ways we can make a sentence interrogative:




  • Add a helping verb: "The dog eats" becomes "Did the dog eat?"


  • Replace the subject noun with an interrogative subject pronoun: "The dog eats" becomes "Who ate?"


  • Change your voice inflection: "The dog eats" remains "The dog eats?" but we change our voice tones to indicate we're asking a question.


Also remember that the subject of an imperative sentence is always what we call "implied you." By week's end, you will want to have spent time working with simple S-Vi sentences of all four sentence purposes. Next week, we finally get to move on to our second sentence pattern: S-Vt-DO. Yeah!



Our IEW assignment is to begin writing a three-paragraph story about the Mayflower. The final polished product will take us two weeks, but at home between now and next Tuesday, you are responsible for the following:





  • three key word outlines,


  • brainstorming quality verbs, -ly words, five senses adjectives and feelings,


  • and three rough draft paragraphs.


I encouraged the kids today to consider how they can use words to create scenes and evoke images in their readers' or listeners' minds of the events happening in their stories. I can't wait to hear what they come up with! Their creativity, I suspect, is boundless. :)



Please let me know if you have questions. Thank you for sharing time in community with me today. It's a privilege to be with you and your children!



Erin