Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Week 4

I loved your collective nouns! Thank you for looking them up and bringing them in. They were a great excuse to buy chocolate.

EEL

We introduced the imperative sentence with the understood you.  We practiced changing declarative sentences into imperative sentences.  For instance, Sarah writes, becomes, Write.  The colossal toddler stomped on an unsuspecting ant, becomes, Stomp! or rather Don't Stomp if you prefer.


A few things to remember about imperative sentences.
1. They are commands or requests.  (Make your bed.  Sweetheart, please make your bed.)
2. The subject of an imperative sentence is always, "you".
3. If the subject you is not spoken, the you is implied.  When diagramming, implied you goes in parenthesis on the subject line. (you)

From the imperative sentence, we moved on to interjections.  We talked about how the interjection is not really part of the grammar of a sentence, except to add emotion.  I explained that if we use an exclamation point after an interjection, it demands more emotion than a plain comma after an interjection. When diagramming, the interjection goes on a horizontal line above the subject.

We also talked about nouns of direct address (NDA).  In the example, Sarah, write. the name Sarah is an NDA.  The speaker is directly addressing her.  The subject of the sentence is still the implied you. When diagramming, the NDA goes on a line by itself above the subject.  If there is also an interjection, stack the lines on top of one another in the order that they appear in the sentence.

IEW

Our vocabulary this week was: hostile, perilous, subside, secluded.

We played a round of hangman with our banned verbs.  Please memorize these and avoid them in your writing!  (go/went, come/came, see/saw, get/got)

We also talked about state of being verbs. (be, am, are, is, was, were, being, been)  These are the is-ing verbs.  Mrs. Varnell is in the room.  In that sentence Mrs. Varnell is "is-ing".

After having covering banned verbs and state of being verbs, it should be no surprise that our focus for this week was the strong verb. We looked at the blue strong verb section in the student binders.  Please refer to these lists if you need help or get stuck.  Also, a synonym finder (thesaurus) can help.

In lesson 7, we introduced poem writing with a focus on the strong verb.  This week you will compose two poems, one about he Native American as they watched the explorers arrive, and one about the explorers arriving in America. Each line must include a strong verb.

We started the brainstorming page on p. 57 and then transferred our favorites from the brainstorming page to our poem template on p. 56.

Finally, we talked about alliteration. It is an IEW decoration (not dress-up).
Alliteration is really rather remarkable.  R-r-r- sound repeated.  It should be used sparingly.  Please attempt one example of alliteration in one of your poems.

In labeling your paper, dress-ups are underlined, but decorations are underlined and also labeled in the margin next to the decoration.  Write the abbreviation allit. to the right or left of the sentence where it appears.

Great week!  I look forward to hearing more papers next week.

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