Week 14: Can you diagram complex sentences while you are at home?

Good morning!

Class was super yesterday, I thought. I just love the kids' different personalities! For me, Essentials IS among the highlights of my week, so thank you for being there!

Once again, we covered loads of material in EEL. The kids seemed to absorb and understand it, and I was pleased that they stayed engaged in our diagramming! They did SO well!

At home this week,

• Review memory work for Weeks 12-14.
• Review active and passive voice verbs. Work through changing a couple of active voice sentences to passive voice sentences and vice versa.
• Practice diagramming sentences. Spend a bit of extra time on dependent clauses and the S-Vt-IO-DO sentence pattern.

PLEASE USE THE REVISED SIMPLE STEPS CHART I HANDED OUT IN CLASS YESTERDAY. I'D REALLY LIKE TO KNOW WHETHER IT HELPS YOU AND YOUR STUDENT TO PROPERLY CLASSIFY SENTENCES. I'M OPEN TO SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPROVING IT, TOO!

• IF you have time (and a more advanced student), take a look at the Verb Anatomy Building Blocks and Verb Anatomy Explanation charts, along with the Verb Anatomy: TO HAVE chart. Look to learn how we use time (past, present and future) and form (simple, perfect, progressive and perfect progressive) to express tense. Although it's overwhelming to look at initially, the explanation chart really explains well how to take one of a verb's five principal parts and pair it with a helping verb to form the appropriate verb tense.

IEW is pretty straightforward. The kids need to finish outlining Source 2 from Lesson 14, then complete their fused outlines. When you're tempted to tell them to choose one piece of information over another for their fused outline, stop! (I know it's hard!) Let them choose to include what they find most important or interesting and leave the rest. As they write their paragraphs on the Olympics, encourage them to include their dress-ups and incorporate their sentences openers. Their writing as a class has been great -- I'm impressed with their skills and success!

Please let me know if you have questions. Thank you for doing such a great job at home!