Week 7: Boldly compose and diagram your prose!

In class Tuesday, we boldly added the awesome adverb to our mix of EEL rhetoric. We also dressed up (with adverbs), classified, and diagrammed compound S-Vi and S-Vt-DO sentences. I have to say, these kids grab my heart! They are eager and willing and excited and so smart. I just love spending two hours with them each week. Time flies by, and before I blink, it's 3:00 p.m.! Thank you for the privilege of teaching them!

When adverbs answer how, when, where, why, etc., in a sentence, they may exist as a single word, or they may appear in the form of a phrase or clause acting as an adverb. We focused on one-word adverbs, which often end in -ly, and phrasal adverbs.

An example of a phrasal adverb follows:

The cat dozed lazily in the sunny window.

"In the sunny window" is a prepositional phrase that answers the question, "Where did the cat sleep?"

I wish I could demonstrate the diagram! Basically, you diagram adverbs beneath the word they modify, be it a verb, an adjective or another adverb. Modifiers always belong on a diagonal line, and nouns and verbs on a horizontal line. Refer to your EEL guide or "Our Mother Tongue" for help.

At home these next two weeks, begin simply with basic S-Vi and S-Vt-DO sentences. Make them compound with coordinating conjunctions. Experiment with changing their purpose from declarative to exclamatory to imperative. Add some adverbs. Then classify and diagram using the Q&A on your "Simple Steps for Solving Sentences" chart.

Turning to IEW, rather than having students read rough drafts aloud in class Tuesday, I read to them from an engaging article on the Indian monsoon. The writer engaged his audience through many of the writing techniques we're learning in class -- strong verbs, quality adjectives, varied sentence structures, etc. I believe listening to excellent excerpts will inspire their own writing, so we'll do that from time to time.

Our IEW lesson introduced prepositional phrase openers, and students need to incorporate at least one into each of their rough draft paragraphs. They are writing two rough drafts, one on the sphinx and another on mummies. They may turn these in if they wish, but it's not required. In Lesson 8, we will add these to last week's rough draft and spend all week revising, dressing up and adding an introduction and clincher.

Finally, thank you for waiting patiently for this post! Tuesday evening consisted of shuttling Maggie around, and I worked full days at furniture market Wednesday and Thursday. Life runs ahead of me during weeks such as this!

See you in 2 weeks for Week 8!