Week 5, Did we introduce interrogative sentences?

Class Overview

In class we introduced the interrogative sentence.  Our crime scene, chalked out and roped off, on the sanctuary floor, drew lots of questions as students went by on the way to science and lunch.  I heard, "Who did this?" and "Did someone really die in here?" and "What's going on?"  And you found out the answers when you came to class.  Mrs. Varnell did this.  No, no one died here.  Mrs. Varnell was just trying to illustrate that when there is a crime scene, police ask questions and interrogate suspects to find answers.  Interrogate reminds us of interrogative, which is the name of the type of sentence whose purpose is to ask questions.

We talked about the three ways to change a declarative sentence into an interrogative:

1) Inflection, "Robert talks." vs "Robert talks?"

2) Interrogative pronoun
(who, whom, whose, which, what--9th song on sidebar in Cycle 2) replaces the subject,
"Robert talks." vs "Who talks?"
 This form is labeled (SP) when we are labeling sentences in task #2 on the task sheet.

3) Helping verb introduces the sentence, "Robert talks." vs "Did Robert talk?"
The helping verb is labeled (Vh) when we are labeling sentences in task #2 on the task sheet.
We will memorize the list of helping verbs in Foundations this year, after we finish prepositions.

We spent time working through the task sheet with each of these forms and focused on diagramming the helping verb sentence, which students have to switch around in their heads to the declarative form in order to diagram.  For example, "Did Robert talk?" becomes "Robert Did talk." (Did capitalized to remain the first word of the sentence).  This is much easier to work with when diagramming.  Remember to put both the helper and main verb together to the right of the bisecting line.

Robert (line) Did talk

Grammar (Drill Section)

Review memory work through week 5, and charts (A-F)

Grammar Rule (Rule 5, page 69)
This week we talked about the difference between its and it's.  Remember that its is a possessive pronoun, it's is a contraction.  Easy way to check--ask yourself, "Can I replace the two words it and is in the sentence?"  If you can, it's a contraction.  If you can't, it's not.

"It's not its problem," is the same as, "It is not its problem."

Dialectic (Understanding Section)

Work with your student to make up interrogative sentences using all three forms: inflection, interrogative pronoun, and introductory helping verb.  Then "task" a few sentences as far as your student can go.  Remember, new students, if you make it through task 2, you've accomplished big things.  If you can go all the way to task 4, you've arrived.

Moms, please remember that quantity is not king.  Quality is the focus of EEL.  We take one sentence and tell everything there is to know about that sentence before setting it aside.  We don't just identify all the nouns in 20 sentences, we go much deeper because we identify nouns in every sentence throughout the entire year.  There is a cumulative effect.

Special Note for those using the checklists
You will see the Quid et Quo introduced this week in Thursday's lesson.  This tool is a separate page from the task sheet, but is task six.  There is a basic and advanced form.  If you would like to do this, please have at it, but don't worry about it if you have never used this tool before.  Remember that the checklists were written with year two and three students in mind.  If you have no idea what the Quid et Quo is, just skip that part.  Year two students, it's time to try this.  Year three students, advanced form as far as you can.

One other thing about checklists.  This week and last you may have noticed that it just says "forum sentences" and then gives the numbers you are to cover.  All this means is that your student should parse these sentences with you.  This is meant to be an oral drill instead of the formality of the task sheet.  This is task sheet without it in front of you--very dialectic.  Just look at the sentence and tell everything you can about it:  part of speech, gender, number, person, tense, talk about what kind of verb it is, what kind of noun, what purpose, structure...  Talk about the sentences and identify.  This is like a mini Quid et Quo.

If you can not be there, Mom, have your child label the sentence with parts of speech/usage.