Week 5

I was so pleased that everyone had a chance to read a paper yesterday!  Will Reaves, we were glad to see you again this week, but we missed Aiden Ward.  Thank you, Mrs. Bate, for providing Smarties and Tootsie Rolls.  Nothing like some sugar to enliven the troops!  You are a fantastic group of kids. I enjoy your company and your enthusiasm.

EEL

In class we introduced the interrogative sentence. 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

What do I do this week?
Review memory work through week 5, and charts (A-F)

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 Task Sheet/Quid et Quo.

IEW

Vocabulary words: cunning, contemplate, gravity, persevere

This week we introduced Unit 3: Story Sequence Chart (p 69).  Unit 1 and 2 were all about understanding how to key word outline (KWO) and write paragraphs from them. With the introduction of Unit 3, we jump to creative writing. We read our source text on p. 68, "The Boston Massacre" and talked about how to take KWO notes from questions, not from each line.

On page 68, we looked at the Unit 3: Story Sequence Chart and talked about

I. Setting, Characters, Background
II. Conflict (Plot)
III. Climax and Resolution

and covered the meaning of each.

We also constructed a KWO outline for, I. Setting, Characters, Background, using the questions on p. 69 to the left of section I.  For example, we asked the first question, "What is the setting?" and our KWO answer was something like...

Boston, 1770, cold, crowded street

The second question was, "Who are the characters?" and we said,

John, Hugh, British (picture of soldier), (frowning face) colonists.

When we reconstructed the paragraphs from our KWO, we found that the writing lacked 5 sense words, so we looked at p. 70 and brainstormed words to inject back into our story to give it life.

Next, we talked about the because clause, p. 62, and saw how it demands more information. Remember that if a because clause is a the beginning of a sentence, it is followed by a comma.  If it comes at the end of the sentence, no comma is necessary.

Base sentence: Mrs. Varnell's class is clever.
Because clause: Because Mrs. Varnell's class is clever, (needs more info.)
Final because clause sentence: Because Mrs. Varnell's class is clever, she gives them candy!

This week's assignment:
KWO using question format (p.69)
Finish the brainstorming pages (p. 70-71)
Write the three paragraph paper using your brainstorming words
Check off your checklist (p. 72)

Moms, please remember that you have the option of combining Setting, Conflict, Climax and Resolution into a one paragraph paper.