Week 6: We can diagram direct objects!

Wow! What a lot of material we covered in class today! My head is still spinning as I wonder, "Did I forget anything?"

To hopefully make your week at home navigable, here are the directions in which you need to steer:

1. Memorize FANBOYS and practice determining whether your coordinating conjunctions are joining words, phrases or clauses. In class we only discussed independent clauses; I purposefully ignored subordinate clauses because we will circle back around and add these to the mix in a few weeks.
2. Using two sentence purposes (decl. and excl.) and two sentence structures (simple and compound), juxtapose S-Vi sentences and S-Vt-Do sentences until students become confident differentiating between the two. If you have trouble coming up with sentences on your own, pull from the sample sentences at the end of the weekly lessons or the models on the 112 simple and compound sentences charts. You can also borrow from the diagramming book if you purchased it. Remind students to utilize their Simple Steps for Solving Sentences until the questions are intuitive and they no longer need the chart.
3. Practice classifying and diagramming each kind of sentence on the EEL Task Sheet.

The kids have three weeks to become comfortable with S-Vt-DOs before we introduce linking verbs, so don't feel like mastery needs to come in the next four days. Take a deep breath, smile, and accomplish what you can!

Transitioning to IEW, the kids' paragraphs are astounding! I hope that, even after only six weeks, you're pleased at home with the writing skills beginning to develop! This is a dynamic group.

I mentioned in class, but I'll repeat here, the kids need to turn in a rough draft only next week. (Well, they need to turn in the checklist, too. But I say "rough draft only" because they don't need to invest a lot of time in revision.) Follow the directions in the assignment, and you'll be fine.

From the source text, let them choose the facts that are most interesting or important to them. This may or may not be what's interesting and important to you. It's OK! As long as they choose five to seven facts and write five to seven complete sentences with a clear topic and clincher, save your energy for suggestions revisions regarding the final report.

I hope to leave for the beach tomorrow and return Monday (key word: hope). Should you need me, use email or my cell.

Hard to believe, but it's six weeks down, 18 to go! We're one quarter of the way through!