Week 8: You can diagram S-Vt-DOs, but can you identify prepositions?

Diving right in to yesterday's EEL lesson, we discussed compound interrogative S-Vt-DO sentences, and I introduced prepositional phrases.

At home this week, stick to the lesson in your EEL Guide. Review the three ways to form interrogative sentences. Practice changing declarative statements (preferably compound S-Vt-DOs) into interrogative questions in these three ways. Then practice classifying and diagramming them.

Also work with identifying prepositional phrases. You'll want to help your student recognize two things:

1. the difference between a word functioning as an adverb or a preposition (The key is prepositions must have an object.).
2. whether a prepositional phrase is adjectival or adverbial.

Be sure to diagram a few sentences with prepositional phrases as well. Use your Simple Steps chart; it really begins to come in handy for the Q&A of classification.

Moving to IEW, I taught the Level B assignment in class yesterday, and I'll detail it below. But to cover Level A first, this week's assignment is simply to write a third rough draft paragraph, this time on Topic C. The outlines for Topic C were included in LAST week's Lesson 11. All students received Lesson 12 in class yesterday, but Level A WILL NOT use Lesson 12 at home this week. By classtime next week, my Level A students should have completed key word outlines, fused outlines and rough draft paragraphs for Topics A, B and C, for a total of three paragraphs.

Level B's assignment is as follows:

Using Lesson 12 distributed in class yesterday, brainstorm the key word outline for both introductory and concluding paragraphs. Be sure to include all the elements of an introduction and conclusion. The lesson is extremely clear, but the kids may need a bit of hand-holding and Q&A to brainstorm dramatic openers (introduction) and to determine what fact about knighthood they believe is "most significant and why" (conclusion). Don't be afraid to help them or make suggestions. I think it will benefit the kids for this to be a "hands-on" week. By classtime next week, Level B students should have five rough draft paragraphs: an introduction, Topics A, B and C, and a conclusion.

Please, if you have questions, call me at home. Have a great week! Hope to see some of you at our barbecue this weekend.

Erin