Week 21: A compound sentence, which is also complex, is compound-complex, and the students nailed it!

Class Overview:

This week we covered compound-complex sentences and introduced one of the verbals--infinitives.

Compound-Complex Sentences

We began by having students come up with a two word sentence in the S/Vi pattern.  To that, they added a coordinating conjunction.  Then we added another S/Vi.  (Compound)  But we didn't stop there.  We next added a subordinate clause to one of the S/Vi sentences.  (Compound-complex).  We worked through this a few times, using the S/Vt/Do pattern.  This stretched students a bit more, having to come up with transitive verbs.  Then we used the Task Sheet and "tasked" one of the sentences.

One of the classes came up with this fun compound-complex sentence,
Apple, who was not a fruit, ate juicy oranges, yet she was not a cannibal!

(Thank you Jessica and Ryan for your well-timed humor).

Of course, when they got to the end of task 5, the class had contributed quite a lot of dressing up and decorating and the sentence read,
Apple, who was very much not a delicious fruit, slowly ate juicy oranges, yet she was not a blood-thirsty cannibal!

Verbals (Infinitive)

We tackled infinitives as best we could.  The guide considers this an advanced task that doesn't need to be taught if the class is young in understanding.  But we took the challenge and found ourselves squarely matched.  The point I wanted the kids to see is that to + a verb, that base form of our verb anatomy, is not used as a verb in a sentence.  Please have them memorize the definition of an infinitive: An infinitive is to + a verb used as a noun, adjective, or adverb.

Infinitives used as subject nouns and direct objects are straightforward and fairly easy to identify. It's those pesky adjectives and adverbs that are rather difficult to place.

Take a look at chart Q (Verbals) to see how an infinitive is diagrammed.  It goes on stilts!  How fun!


Well, we're winding down for the year, a final 5 paragraph assignment in IEW, Memory Master proofing, and compound-complex sentences.  Keep going and finish strong!  You have so much to celebrate once you cross that finish line.