Week 18

I apologize for any advertisement links that are popping up in my text.  I didn't put them there. Please don't click on them.

EEL

We mostly focused on review.  I thought the students did a great job at asking the right questions to determine sentence patterns when we did the matching handout.  Those PA/PN, OCA/OCN sentences were the tricky ones.

Finally, we got to the active and passive voice lesson!  We identified whether sentences were active or passive by determining if the subject was doing the action.  Active, yes.  Passive, no.

To identify a sentence in passive voice, look for the following key elements.  1) a helping verb coupled with a past participle form of the verb (example: was helped) 2) the person or thing doing the action is the object of the sentence 3) there will be a stated or understood "by + object doing the action".

John bought a new puppy.   Active: John is doing the buying.

The new puppy was bought by John.   

Passive: "was bought"= helper + past participle, John is an object, "by John"

More examples:
A= I admire her voice.
P= The voice was admired by me.

A= The tornado ravaged the town.
P = The town was ravaged by the tornado.

This week, continue to review your part of speech charts and work on memorizing any questions that help identify adjectives or adverbs, nouns or verbs.  This memory work comes first.  Only after the memory work is solid will the understanding come.

IEW

We began unit VIII today, the Library Research Report.  We will really begin this type of report next week, but will warm up to it this week by adding an introductory and concluding paragraph to body paragraphs that the students have already written.  So, pull out the apple reports or a previous paper that has more than one paragraph and use the outline guide given on page 197 in the student text to write these extra, short paragraphs.

The goal in this assignment is to gain understanding of the structure of the coming paper.

Introductory paragraph

topic one, two, and three paragraphs

concluding paragraph

This paper is technically an essay because it asks for the writer to state his opinion in the closing paragraph.  The prompts "Most significant" and "Why?" create this distinction.  When answering this question, please make sure that the student does not use "I" or "We".  

I think that apples are important because…

Rather, have them simply state their opinion as a fact.

Apples are important because…

Like my passive voice sentence example about Mrs. Apple inventing the apple pie, feel free to make up facts if you wish.

Please contact me with any questions you might have regarding the assignment.  Have a blessed week, and Happy Valentine's Day!