Week 4: Diagram!

Diagram!

It's a simple, exclamatory/imperative, S-Vi sentence with "implied 'you'" as the subject. Get it? If you do, you've got Week 4 already. Hooray! (btw, that's an interjection...)

No new charts this week, but you should review charts and memory work from Weeks 1 through 3 with the goal of successfully mastering just a bit more than you did last week! Isn't this easy?

Depending on students' command of comma usage, I'd also spend time discussing commas in a series, with nouns of direct address, and with appositives. (Notice I used two commas with the series here instead of just one, mostly because I want to ensure my readers' proper understanding by separating those three prepositional phrases that begin with "in," "with," and "with.")

I actually didn't cover appositives in class, but an appositive is a noun or noun phrase that follows and renames another noun. Appositives expand or expound by adding extra information. An example would be, "George Washington, our first president, was born in Virginia." Or "Essentials, a language arts skills and writing class, meets on Tuesdays." Appositives are set off by commas and are not essential to the meaning of a sentence. In other words, you could remove an appositive from a sentence ("George Washington was born in Virginia." "Essentials meets on Tuesdays.") and the meaning would not change.

We introduced diagramming (Task 4) in class. Start with your sample sentences at the end of Lesson 4 to begin the diagramming process at home, and then encourage your students to make up simple S-Vi sentences of their own. Proceed similarly to this:

Using your Student EEL Task Sheets and Steps 5-7 on the "Simple Steps for Solving Sentences" that I handed out last week,

1. Dictate;
2. Check mechanics;
3. Identify and label your subject and verb;
4. Identify your sentence structure, purpose and pattern;
5. Diagram!

Turning to IEW, the assignment reinforces the KWO skills learned last week and introduces two simple sentence openers: the -ly opener and the "very short sentence." Students should incorporate both of these into their papers this week. We completed half of the KWO in class; students should finish the KWO Wednesday at home.

I'd suggest completing the rough draft Wednesday as well; revision and dress-ups Thursday; final draft Friday; and illustration, labeling and checklist Monday.

Reading the students' poems proved to be a highlight of my week last week! I wish we had time to read them all in class. Please share them with an audience at home! Each poem deserves a reading. I can't wait to read the paragraphs turned in today...

As always, thanks for sharing your kids with me on Tuesdays! They are a joy and a privilege.

Erin