Week 24

Our Essentials Class!

Well done!  What an accomplishment to make it through another year of Essentials.  I'm so proud of each student.  Thank you for sharing your Faces of History papers last Tuesday.  It was interesting to hear about so many different characters from our nation's story.

I will read your critique papers and return them to you at the closing ceremony this Tuesday evening at seven.

I wish you well and pray for your continued success as you tackle another year of Essentials or move on to new endeavors.

Much love,
Mrs. Varnell

Our two Ronald Reagans!

Ulysses S. Grant's wife, Julia Boggs Dent Grant

Harriet Tubman

Susan B. Anthony

Clara Brown (not dressed up, of course)

Abraham Lincoln

Laura Ingalls Wilder

Week 23

EEL

Today we covered compound-complex sentences again, this time using the S/Vt/IO/DO pattern. We also talked about the last of the verbals--gerunds. Finally, we wrapped up with an overview of verb mood, focusing on the subjunctive mood.

Compound-Complex

The recipe for a compound-complex sentence is
independent + coordinating conjunction + independent + subordinate clause.
Practice, practice, practice!

Gerunds

These verbals are always in the present participle verb form and are always used as a noun.  When thinking about the definition of a noun (person, place, thing, activity or idea) gerunds usually fall into the activity part.

Here are some examples:

Swimming is fun.
I like biking.

Verb Mood, Subjunctive

Verbs are either indicative, imperative, or subjunctive.  Imperative give commands.  Indicative are everything else, except for those that are subjunctive.  So, what are subjunctive?  They are the sentences that express a wish or hope.

I wish I had made my bed like Mom said.
I wish I were taller so I could dunk the ball.
If only a maid were to magically appear and clean my house, I would be able to relax.

One temptation with the subjunctive mood sentence is to use the verb was, but please remember to use were.

Wrong: If I was green, I could pass for a Martian.
Right: If I were green, I could pass for a Martian.

IEW

Our final unit! Unit IX.  This week we are writing a critique.  You can use the source text provided in U.S. History-Based Writing Lessons on page 211, titled "A Successful Expedition" or you can use your own source text like we did in class.

In class we read the children's story, Parts, by Ted Arnold, and filled out the critique outline on page 213 of U.S. History-Based Writing Lessons.  Use this same outline to complete your critique.  Remember, the critique is just a recapping of a story or event like a movie or play and then adding a fairly technical introduction and a final paragraph stating your opinion.  Follow the outline and you're sure to succeed.  I am attaching the checklist in an email.

Looking forward to being with you for our final class next week!  I will read your papers and be ready to return them to you for reading.  Dress up as the character from you paper, or if you did a character of the opposite sex, dress up in that time period and similar style of your character.

Party!

Everyone will bring a snack to share next week.  I will email the list of food items and supplies that each of you signed up for.  If you were not able to sign up, please email me and I'll put you on the list.

Love my Essentials Class! Have a great week!

Week 22

EEL

Compound-Complex Sentences

We started with a three or four word S/Vl/PA, then added a coordinating conjunction and an S/Vl/PN.  Voila! a compound sentence.  From there, I asked the students what I needed to add to make the sentence complex.  A subordinating conjunction, of course!   We made a few compound-complex sentences then did the front of the task sheet (task 1-4) to take it further.

Verbals-Participles

Participles are the second type of verbal that we have covered.  Last week we worked on infinitives.  Next week we will talk about gerunds.  The important thing to remember about verbals is that they look like verbs (are in verb form) but are used as a different part of speech.  Identifying their use in a sentence is key to recognizing them.

We have seen participles before when working through verb anatomy.  The form used for verb anatomy is infinitive, present, past, present participle, past participle.  So, play would be to play, play(s), played, playing, played.  Notice those last two forms--present and past participle.  These are the verbs + -ing or -ed.  These can be used as adjectives as well as verbs.

Here they are as verbs.
The dog was sleeping.
The child was jumping.
The mother was delighted.

Here they are as adjectives (verbal form)
The sleeping dog jumped when I shouted.
The jumping child was distracted.
The delighted mother received blooming flowers.

Here is one that mixes both.
The boys were swimming in a rushing river.

When a participle is used in verbal form it will always be an adjective and will be diagrammed under its antecedent (the word it modifies) on a line that curves.

IEW

We had a great time playing vocabulary hangman!  Thank you, students, for taking over class and running the show.  I got to sit back and relax and guess words along with all of you.

Assignment

For our papers this week, please finish up your five paragraph Faces of History paper.  Add an opening anecdote and illustration if you would like.

Please include in your page protector...
Faces of History Paper
Bibliography
Body Paragraph Checklists (3)
Introduction/Conclusion checklist

In my email, I have included the Student Resource Notebook download that you are entitled to own if you own the IEW American History-Based Writing Lessons resource.  On page 18 you will find the MLA Bibliography and Works Cited examples. Please pattern your bibliographies after these.

Final Note

The papers are due next week but we will not read them until the final class day.  I encourage you to dress the part of your character on week 24.

Also for week 24, everyone please bring in a treat to share!

Week 21

EEL

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.

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 sometimes 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!

IEW

Thank you for reading your papers!  I so enjoy hearing you present them in class.  If you left one of your papers at home and would like to share it next week, please go put it in your backpack right now so you don't forget to bring it on Tuesday!

Dual Dress-Ups and Triple Extensions

We introduced our two final dress-ups this week.  If you use them in your writing, please underline the words or phrases and note it in the margin with either a 2x for the dual dress-up, or 3x for a triple extension.

The first was the dual dress-up, on page 188 of our text. This is just using two adjectives, verbs, or -ly adverbs in a row in a sentence.

Bright, colorful fireworks explode in the dark sky.  (2X adj)
Fireworks, bright and colorful, explode in the dark sky. (2X adj in a different order)
Marines stand at attention and salute when I pass. (2x verb)
Widows tearfully, lovingly mourn over fallen soldiers. (2x -ly adverb)

The Triple Extension can be found on page 50 in your Student Resource Notebook.  It is simply repeating the same word, part of speech, phrase or clause in a sentence.  This adds impact and can even make writing sound sophisticated.  Here is one of the examples that repeats prepositional phrases and words.

"…government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from this earth.
(A. Lincoln)

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.

Week 20

EEL

Today we looked more in depth at adjectives.  If your student has not yet memorized the definition of an adjective or the questions that adjectives answer, please take a look at chart L and make it a priority to memorize the gray portion.

But today we jumped to the bottom of the chart and tackled types of multi-word adjectives, the adjectival phrase and the adjectival clause.  We looked at many samples of sentences with adverbial and adjectival prepositional phrases and labeled them accordingly.

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.

Bonus

Found the answer to the sentence that tripped us up.  Thank you, Erin Richardson and Rhonda Lin for hunting down the answer even before class was over!  I love smart phones.

There are three monkeys in that tree.

The word there is an expletive.  Nope, doesn't mean a curse word. Who knew?! It just means that it acts kind of like an interjection in a sentence.  It is there to support a style of expression, not to give more meaning.  For instance, you could leave out the word entirely if you switched the word order around.  Three monkeys are in that tree.  Same meaning, different style of expression.  In the original sentence, there would be diagrammed on a floating line above the subject noun, just like an interjection.

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.

IEW

We covered our last four vocabulary words for the year--revel, jaunty, encounter, lure.

We took a look at lesson 29 and talked about the anecdotal opener.  Consider adding one of these to your paper.  Especially if you are ahead in the writing, you will have time to hunt down a good story about your character and stuff it full of five sense descriptions.

Some specifics.
The anecdotal opener is a paragraph all to itself that goes before your introduction.
You can italicize it.
It is no more than 8 sentences long.
It tells an interesting or amusing story.
Its purpose is to hook your reader.
You can repeat and reflect both the anecdotal opener and your introductory statement in the final clincher.

Look on page 203 in U.S. History-Based Writing Lessons to see an outline for the introduction and conclusion of this paper.  To see the outline for the entire paper, check you student guide and look at Chart VIII (Library Research Report).  The only real difference is that page 203 includes the anecdotal opener.

IEW Assignment for this week:

Finish your third fused outline and write all body paragraphs.  Be sure to use the checklists that I passed out last week to check that you have completed all the requirements for each body paragraph.  Next week we will move on to writing the introduction and conclusion.

Week 19

EEL

This week in English grammar, we took a closer look at verbs and walked through the importance of irregular verbs and principle parts of verbs.  Having the principle parts of verbs memory work in Foundations helped smooth this discussion.  For practice applying the concept, we chose to lay (to place or put) and to lie (to lower, something that "I" can do to myself) and worked through sentences with different tenses of these verbs.  Another good set of irregular verbs to work through would be to rise and to raise.

We also reviewed the OCN sentence pattern and composed an interrogative, OCN, complex sentence.  We began with the OCN declarative sentence and practiced the three different ways to make it interrogative.  After making it interrogative, we added a dependent clause.  Voila! Interrogative, OCN, complex.

IEW

This week we began our 3-4 week Library Research Paper.  For homework, students will need to…
1. Locate 2-3 good sources about a person in United States history.
2. Narrow down to three topics to research about that person.
3. Make key word outlines (KWO) from facts in each source for topic #1 then fuse the outlines into one 5-7 fact KWO.
4. Repeat for topic #2.
5. Brainstorm strong verbs, quality adjectives, etc. so that the student is better prepared to write the paragraphs.

Be ready to continue next week with a third KWO and writing all three body paragraphs.

The third week, we will tackle the introductory and concluding paragraphs.

A possible fourth week will allow us to polish up the papers and prepare costumes (optional) for reading on the last day of class.

Note: One option is to write the paper without revealing the person's name.  Then everyone can take a guess about who it is.

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!