Week 15: Can you find me an indirect object yet?

Morning, everyone. Sorry for posting later than usual. I trust you all made progress yesterday without me! :)

In EEL on Tuesday, I introduced verb forms using the verb "have." When we talk about verb forms, we are referring to the combination of a verb's principal parts with the appropriate helping verbs to express when action takes place. Each form -- simple, perfect, progressive, perfect progressive -- occurs in past, present and future tense. Essentially, you end up with 12 different combinations, each of which you can drill out in 1st, 2nd and 3rd person singular and plural.

Although this sounds confusing, there's actually a simple formula for each form, and our charts do an excellent job of demonstrating how to "construct" each one. Because each form repeats the same patterns over and over, the kids often catch on to it faster than you'd think. So if you have time, give it a try this week. I only covered the simple and perfect forms on Tuesday; I'll overview the last two next week. I would recommend to parents that you look over this information by yourself first. Start on page 446 with Chart BB.

The other new information for Week 15 is Tasks 5 and 6 for your Analytical Task Sheets. We have informally covered Task 5, modification, before now, and I actually didn't cover it in class Tuesday. I plan to do so next week. I did, however, introduce Task 6, Quid et Quo, which means "What and Why" in Latin. Task 6 is one of my favorite EEL activities, because it incorporates everything we learn in EEL into one final ATS exercise. For a full explanation of Tasks 5 and 6, refer to the special "Analytical Tasks in Detail" section in Lesson 3 of your EEL Guide. It begins on page 49.

Also remember that you will find a master list of the guide's practice sentences on page 433 and your ATS masters on pages 435-439. After discovering on Tuesday that the basic format of the QeQ sheet does not include descriptive adjectives, I'd recommend using the detailed format only (page 439) and drilling a word out only as far as your student's understanding allows. For example, the detailed format asks for verb form, which you and your student may not yet understand. My advice is just skip that part, knowing you'll get to it later! Finally, those of you who purchased the laminated Trivium Tables, remember that the QeQ is included.

Now, for those of you with first-year EEL students who will be with me again next year, which is most of our class, you may want to focus your efforts on previous material. We are reaching the point in the year where new material is more advanced, and at home, you may need to stay simple. It's important to me that you teach to the level of your child's understanding and not try to keep up with every little new thing. Because every sentence begins with the foundational subject and verb, during class, there will ALWAYS be something your student can identify in EVERY sentence. And it's good for the newer students to follow along as our more advanced students keep up with the harder ideas. But at home, you may need to stick with simple and compound sentences and only identify nouns as common or proper and verbs as past, present or future on the QeQ. That's perfectly okay. Both you and your students will have time and opportunity to dig deeper next year.

Finally for EEL, this is our last week with the indirect object sentence pattern. Hopefully you've become comfortable identifying them in sentences. Next week we'll move on to object complement nouns! Whew! That's a lot of information. Thanks for reading!

IEW is much simpler. We introduced dramatic hook openers, and the students need to add a hook opener and closing sentence to their Declaration of Independence research reports. They should also revise and dress up their reports and complete a bibliography and the final checklist. I will try to allow as much reading time as possible in class next week, but I know we won't get to every student. In future weeks, when we do not have papers due, I'll plan to give them the option of reading from this or another assignment.

Please let me know if you have questions. Have a safe, healthy and restful week working together!

Erin