Week 20: Students in the class cheered about adverbial prepositional phrases! (adj. phrase, adv. phrase)

Okay, okay, so students may have groaned about adverbial and adjectival prepositional phrases, but they tackled them brilliantly!

Class Overview

We started off with Grammar Rule #6, Tricky Words!  Then we shifted to different adjective modifiers that can be used when doing task #5 on the task sheet.  Finally, we landed on the very challenging adjectival and adverbial prepositional phrases.

Grammar Rule #6, Tricky Words

From there, their, and they're, to continual vs. continuous, to affect verbs and effect nouns, we covered tricky words.  These are words that adults commonly misuse and really need to be studied and focused on in order to correct.  One reason these words become issues is because we speak them incorrectly.  Parents, if you model this through using these words incorrectly, choose one and work on it.  Awareness and constant correction is the way to remedy the mistake.  If your children hear you use the words correctly it will make difference--unless, of course, we're talking about homonyms.

Adjective Modifiers

This exercise was taken straight from lesson 20 in the EEL guide.  We matched sample sentences with the correct adjective modifier type.  We identified noun modifiers used as adjectives, adjective clauses, single word adjectives, prepositional phrase adjectives, and even appositives.  This exercise helped identify many different ways that an adjective can appear in a sentence.

Adjectival and Adverbial Prepositional Phrases

Identifying adjectival and adverbial prepositional phrases is difficult!  Students rose to the challenge, though I got a lot of blank stares too.  The key to this skill is to figure out the word modified and identify which question the prep. phrase answers.

The bridge over the water is lovely.

Over the water is the prep. phrase.  It modifies bridge.  It answers the question Which? bridge--the one over the water.  It's an adjective prepositional phrase.  One thing that may trip up students is that prepositional phrases tell where so often.  Your student may look at the sentence and say that over the water describes Where the bridge is.  Remember that if your phrase modifies a noun, you have an adjective.  If it modifies a verb or adverb, it is used as an adverb.

Encouragement

If your child was a deer in headlights during a lot of yesterday, it's okay.  Please be patient with the three tour process of this class.  This year may be your year to be exposed to the terminology and to follow some but not get all.  We are in the last stretch and are encountering many complex concepts.  Just concentrate on the basics if you feel overwhelmed.  Drill the memory work and write out charts.  From there, work on the task sheet at the level of your student.  Assess where they are in their understanding and gently prod them forward or just shore up shaky understanding.  You have next year to tackle this again.  There is no crying in Essentials! : )

Week 19: LIE on the foundation that Essentials LAYS.

Class Overview

This week we took a closer look at verb anatomy, using the infinitives to lay and to lie.  We followed that up with a quick glance at two sentence patterns, S/Vt/IO/DO and S/Vt/DO/OCN.  Finally, we enjoyed a review game!

Verb Anatomy

Using the verbs lay and lie is difficult even in English.  We utilized these in class to get a taste of the difficulty of learning a foreign language.  Here are the sentences we used.  We filled in the blanks with the correct word and form.  Chart D is the verb anatomy chart that we used as a reference.

I ________ (past) down in my bed.  lay
The workman __________ (pa. part.) bricks. laid
She has __________ (pa. part.) on the floor for three nights. lain
_________ (present) down. Lie
_________ (present) down the book. Lay

Remember that lay means to put and will always have a direct object. 

Lie means to lower and the subject will always be doing the lowering to themselves.

Sentence Patterns IO and OCN

We took a look at two sentences and I asked the students to tell me the pattern of each.  The first sentence was a bit more difficult because we have not visited the IO pattern in a while.

If she could, would Jenny give her sister the flute?  S/Vt/IO/DO
If she could, would Jenny elect her sister team captain? S/Vt/DO/OCN

In order to even approach these sentences, the students had to identify the introductory subordinate clauses and set them aside.  Then, because the remaining sentences were interrogative, they had to change around word order to find the subjects and verbs.

I was really proud of the way they tackled these difficult complex sentences: so much success to celebrate!

Review Game

Congratulations to everyone who played the review game! Though some teams ended up with more points, everyone was a winner because all displayed mastery of so much material.  You can find the Jeopardy style game on C3 file sharing; author, Classical Conversations.

Have a great, healthy, happy week!

Just for Fun! Stuff Grammar Nazis Never Say

Week 18: We considered today's review games delicious and today's party fun! (S/Vt/DO/OCA)

Class Overview

What a fun time we had as a combined group today!  Thank you, moms, for all the extra helping hands.

What did we do in EEL? Review, review, review!  We have almost reached the end of fleshing out Chart A.  We only lack the compound-complex sentence structure.  There is still plenty more to learn during these last six weeks, but please consider it gravy.  We've already bitten into the meat of the curriculum.  Now we need to chew on it a bit.  That's what today was about: making sense of what we have covered to date.

How can I review at home?  Here are some ideas.

Write three or four sentences that have different purposes, structures and patterns.
1) Have your child parse and diagram each
2) Ask for a specific structure, purpose or pattern and have them choose the right one
3) Draw a diagram and ask them to identify which sentence fits
4) Have them rewrite a sentence, changing the purpose.

Name a pattern and have your child come up with a sentence that fits.


We used the following sentences in class to review structure, purpose and pattern.  Thank you, Erin Richardson, who wrote these and used them in her EEL class. What a treasure!  The sentences were listed down the left side.  The patterns were listed in a random order down the right side.  Students had to match the sentences and patterns.

Blue whales are mammals. (S-Vl-PN)
Unlike most mammals, they live in the ocean. (S-Vi)
These gentle creatures eat krill. (S-Vt-DO)
Their bodies are extremely long and leathery. (S-Vl-PA)
If I were to see one up close, it might give me a fright! (S-Vt-IO-DO)
Would you call these behemoths scary? (S-Vt-DO-OCA)
Or do you consider them one of God's most amazing creations? (S-Vt-DO-OCN)

In class we matched these sentences with their patterns, but you can go further and identify structure and purpose as well.

Grammar

Drill memory work and charts that need the student needs to master still.

Dialectic

Work through the sentences we went over in class, identifying structure and purpose.
Choose one sentence and work all the way through task #6 (the Quid et Quo).

Week 17: A sunny EEL day makes me sunny. (S/Vt/DO/OCA)

We are beginning to wind down for the year.  It may not feel that way as we tackle more difficult sentences, but really, we only have one more structure to introduce.  One great thing to recognize is that each of us is a student of our language our entire life.  The ultimate goal of language is to convey truth, beauty and virtue, and since these flow from God, the ultimate goal of language is to convey what we know of God.  And because God is infinite in his truth, beauty and virtue, we will always be students, forever learning, forever expanding, forever penning new understanding. So, with that perspective in mind, there will be no crying in Essentials; this is just one little stop on a much longer journey.  Save the tears for moments of being overwhelmed by the goodness of our Savior.

Class Overview

Yesterday, we introduced the last sentence pattern, S/Vt/DO/OCA.  We also identified all the adjectives in a very long complex sentence, (pp. 268--269 in EEL guide) diving deeper into understanding adjectives.  We referred to Chart L to determine if each adjective was descriptive, possessive or limiting.  In my second class we covered grammar rule #3 about colon use in lists and quotes.

S/Vt/DO/OCA

Determine the object complement adjective by asking the following questions:
1) (V) (DO) whom/what?
2) does it follow the direct object?
3) is it an adjective?
4) does it describe the direct object?

Some examples from class...
Jon painted the car green.
Hank calls her sister.
God called the ground good.

Here is a good one for a complex sentence with an OCA.
As long as he treats the horse badly, consider the horse wild!

Adjectives

Using Chart L (adjectives chart) we determined if adjectives in our example sentence were descriptive, possessive or limiting.  The sentence (pp. 268-269 in the EEL guide) was

Old farmer John painted some parts of his barn bright purple, although he was color blind and thought it was red.

From there, we determined that old was a descriptive, positive degree adjective, and farmer was a noun acting as a descriptive adjective, and some was a limiting, indefinite pronoun acting as an adjective...

Pegging adjective types was not the challenge as much as wrestling with identifying each part of the complex sentence.  We even found a noun clause acting as a direct object (Thank you, Patrice for steering me the right way). Here is a clickable link to the English Grammar Revolution page (always on the blog sidebar) where I find all kinds of diagramming answers.  Fun! Fun!

Grammar

Drill Chart L grammar, further than you went with your student last semester.
If you have memorized www.asia.wub, try adding to that list.  Many more subordinating conjunctions are on the conjunctions chart (Chart H).  More importantly, ask the right questions to determine if the clause is adverbial or adjectival.  Remember that adverbial are subordinating conjunctions, adjectival are relative pronouns.

Dialectic

Wrestle through some complex sentences that you find in a favorite book.  Identify adjectives and whether they are descriptive, possessive or limiting.

Compose some S/Vt/DO/OCA sentences of your own.  This is a much harder task than identifying.

Have a great week!