Week 17

We are beginning to wind down for the year.  It may not feel that way as we tackle more difficult sentences, but really, we only have one more structure to introduce.  One great thing to recognize is that each of us is a student of our language our entire life.  The ultimate goal of language is to convey truth, beauty and virtue, and since these flow from God, the ultimate goal of language is to convey what we know of God.  And because God is infinite in his truth, beauty and virtue, we will always be students, forever learning, forever expanding, forever penning new understanding. So, with that perspective in mind, this is just one little stop on a much longer journey.  Learn a bit now and look forward to comprehending more about God and language in the path ahead.  This class is just one blip of time, one year, one piece of the puzzle.

EEL

Yesterday, we introduced the last sentence pattern, S/Vt/DO/OCA.  We also identified all the adjectives in a very long complex sentence, (pp. 268--269 in EEL guide) diving deeper into understanding adjectives.  We referred to Chart L to determine if each adjective was descriptive, possessive or limiting.

S/Vt/DO/OCA

Determine the object complement adjective by asking the following questions:
1) (V) (DO) whom/what?
2) does it follow the direct object?
3) is it an adjective?
4) does it describe the direct object?

Some examples from class...
Jon painted the car green.
Hank calls her beautiful.
God called the ground good.

Here is a good one for a complex sentence with an OCA.
As long as he treats the horse badly, consider the horse wild!

Adjectives

Using Chart L (adjectives chart) we determined if adjectives in our example sentence were descriptive, possessive or limiting.  The sentence (pp. 268-269 in the EEL guide) was

Old farmer John painted some parts of his barn bright purple, although he was color blind and thought it was red.

From there, we determined that old was a descriptive, positive degree adjective, and farmer was a noun acting as a descriptive adjective, and some was a limiting, indefinite pronoun acting as an adjective...

Pegging adjective types was not the challenge as much as wrestling with identifying each part of the complex sentence.  We even found a noun clause acting as a direct object.

Here is a clickable link to the English Grammar Revolution page (always on the blog sidebar) where I find all kinds of diagramming answers.  Fun! Fun!

Grammar

Drill Chart L grammar, further than you went with your student last semester.
If you have memorized www.asia.wub, try adding to that list.  Many more subordinating conjunctions are on the conjunctions chart (Chart H).  More importantly, ask the right questions to determine if the clause is adverbial or adjectival.  Remember that adverbial are subordinating conjunctions, adjectival are relative pronouns.

Dialectic

Wrestle through some complex sentences that you find in a favorite book.  Identify adjectives and whether they are descriptive, possessive or limiting.

Compose some S/Vt/DO/OCA sentences of your own.  This is a much harder task than identifying.

IEW

We moved on to lesson 26, The Star-Spangled Banner.  This is our last assignment in Unit 7, Inventive Writing.  We are writing from a prompt (pp. 185) and pretending to be the flag and give its perspective.  Students may use "I" or "We" in this assignment.  On page 186, we worked through brainstorming ideas, but before that we came up with so many examples of places that we see the American flag.

Here is our list: schools, Capitol, White House, wars, sporting events, homes, court, churches, parades, 9/11, cemeteries, emergency personnel, Olympics, military weddings, funerals, airplanes.  One we picked up later was on the moon.

We picked four of these and worked through the brainstorming page.  Our notes (and any additional notes that the student creates) should be used to help write a paragraph, using the outline on page 187.  Ask the questions in the left hand column to piece together your paragraph.  It doesn't have to strictly adhere to the list of questions.  They are just there to guide thought.  Feel free to look at the example paragraph in the back of the textbook (pp. 235) to better understand where this assignment is going.  Focus on writing good descriptions with five sense words.

We also looked at the sample paper from the back and demonstrated how to label a paper so that the student can keep track of checklist requirements.  This labeling makes it easier for me when I'm reading through final papers.  I like to see where each student stands in his/her understanding of the checklist.  If a paper is labeled, it saves me tons of time.


Personal Note:
Thank you for your patience and help with getting my house key to my locked-out husband.  Amy Conrad, next time I'll call on you to teach the class if I suddenly have to leave. :)  Patrice, it's a delight to live around the corner from you.  Such a comfort knowing you can bail me out too.  Also, if anyone has footage of our leap frog relay, feel free to send it my way and I can post it on this blog for all to enjoy.  I absolutely love knowing all of you ladies.  You bless me.