Week 2 Admission Ticket

When the students arrive Tuesday, I will ask them to tell me what five rules a sentence must meet. I'd also like them to use a straight line to divide the subject from the predicate in the following sentences:

1. Students come.

2. They attend Essentials.

3. Essentials is a class.

4. Essentials can be both fun and difficult at the same time.

5. Mrs. Erin will give her Essentials students assignments to complete.

6. Some students will call her an interesting teacher.

7. In return, she will declare her students brilliant!

Week 1: EEL Begins!

Essentials families,

I am going to adore your children this year. What a blessing they already are! Today was marvelous -- so many smiles. I just loved it. :)

When I post weekly, I will write about our EEL time first and our IEW assignment second. Always, always, always, if you have questions, please email me. For new parents especially, I may inadvertently omit information that is pertinent to you because I'm not remembering that you don't already know it! I apologize in advance and encourage your inquiries when something I do or say or suggest is unclear.

On to EEL...

In class, we focused on our 112 Sentence Classifications, which is Chart A. Our Week 1 memory work reiterates the information on this chart, and you may choose to use one, the other, or both to begin memorizing this information at home this week. In addition to loading that grammar, here's what you want to discuss:

• Sentences have structure. This simply refers to how we build our sentences. Are they simple, compound, complex, or compound-complex?


• Sentences have purpose. Our purpose tells us why we're speaking (or writing as the case may be). Are we making a statement (declarative) or an exclamation (exclamatory), asking a question (interrogative), or giving a command (imperative)?


• Finally, all sentences follow seven basic patterns. Our patterns identify how words are arranged in a sentence. Practice reciting those patterns aloud and learning the abbreviations for them.

You do not need to teach the difference between the four structures or the seven patterns this week. We have all year to cover that information, beginning in Week 3 with simple, subject-verb intransitive sentences. I believe the sentence purposes are review for most, however, so you can delve deeper into that if you wish.

Although I didn't cover it in class, the EEL guide introduces Chart B (112 Simple Sentences) in Week 1, too. While I will introduce simple sentences in two weeks, you can use this chart at home to demonstrate how structure, purpose and pattern mix and match to compose 112 different combinations. For example, play a game: Challenge your student to find the simple, declarative, S-Vt-DO sentence. Then find the simple, imperative, S-VL-PN sentence. Keep going with different combinations until you're both comfortable with the "grammar" and abbreviations of structure, purpose and pattern.

In addition, each family should determine how they want to "copy" the charts and how often to do so. You may want to do it orally some days and written others. You can copy from a chart to a blank sheet of paper, or you can study and then try to write one part from memory per day. There is tremendous flexibility. The only thing I'd warn against is burnout. We have all year, and they're going to see this information every week. Spend 20 to 30 minutes a day maximum on everything I've just written!

The IEW time at home this week should be about learning to choose valuable words when we write. Encourage them to use their style charts or a larger thesaurus to find the absolute best quality adjectives they believe describe the nouns in their America poems. If your student chooses an adjective you wouldn't -- just because it sounds neat (jumbo mountains, for instance) -- it's okay. Embrace the fact that they're developing unique style! I'd suggest brainstorming Wednesday, rough drafts Thursday, final drafts Friday, and illustration and practice reading aloud on Monday.

With such a tremendous class, it will be impossible for all students to read aloud every week. We will try to get at least half in next week. Then, for the following week, I'll let the second half choose between reading their Week 1 poem or their Week 2 poem. This is part of the reason I want them to read aloud for an "audience" at home. When they work hard, they deserve for their writing to be heard and appreciated! A note, though: Please let me know if you have a child who hates reading aloud and how you'd like me to help work through that this year.

I'll post next week's admission ticket separately. Don't forget to stick a zippered pouch or ziplock bag into their notebooks to contain their coupons til Week 12!

Thank you for sharing your school time with me today. See you next Tuesday,

Mrs. Erin

Week 1 Admission Ticket

Welcome to our 2011-2012 Essentials year! We begin in less than 48 hours... Take a deep breath!

Here is our Admission Ticket for Week 1. Students should print it, fill in the blanks, and bring it to class in exchange for their first gilded coupon.

1. Tell me your favorite thing to do in one word: I _______________.

2. What is your favorite food to eat? I eat _______________.

3. My name is _______________.

4. What kind of student are you? As a student, I am __________________.

5. For my birthday, my parents gave a _______________ to me.

6. If I had a dog, I would call my dog ________________.

7. Eating candy makes me _______________.

See everyone Tuesday!

Mrs. Erin

Week 23: Diagramming gerunds, infinitives and participles proves simple!

Wow! The kids were simply outstanding yesterday. They really hung with our completely comprehensive review of verbs, including forms, and the introduction to verbals. If you weren't able to attend class, check out the worksheets we completed together.

Continue tackling these verbs and verbals at home this week! Or, if needed for the lower level students, backtrack to where you need to be and hone skills there.

Our IEW assignment is Lesson 23. Once again, we are responding to a prompt. This time, however, we are responding to literature, particularly a rewrite of the story "Seven in One Blow." The students' job is to decide and write whether the main character is admirable or not and to support their opinions with three examples from the story. I only assigned Level A, given that we only have one week and many are still working toward Memory Master.

Only one week left! Amazing! I will review all papers turned into me this week and return them next week with tickets. Please remind your student to bring the tickets he or she already has to class on Tuesday. Whereas we redeemed them in the fall for money to give, this time the kids get to receive cash for every ticket they've earned. They love this part!

See everyone Tuesday.

Erin

Week 22: EEL may be work, but it is fun when we learn it together!

I believe the kids had a great class day today. They classified, diagrammed and QeQ'd our sentences SO well. I am quite impressed!

During our EEL time, we worked with the sentence pattern of the week: compound-complex S-Vl-PN & S-Vl-PA. In your time at home, you can continue working this pattern at your student's level, or you can backtrack to wherever you need to be. I believe next week we'll tackle verbals. Believe it or not, they will have much fun with these.

Because our IEW assignment is straightforward and not due until next week, we devoted almost our entire IEW time (and drill time, for that matter) to vocabulary review. The kids completed a matching worksheet, and then we played a game where we split into teams and they could either draw or dramatize a vocab word chosen from a bag -- basically pictionary and charades with IEW vocabulary. They seemed to relish it!

If you have any questions about EEL or IEW, please let me know. Otherwise, have a fantastic week and I'll see everyone Tuesday. I can't wait to hear their "Middle Age" perspectives on our 21st century!

Erin

Week 21: While home this week, build a compound-complex sentence and diagram it.

Hi moms and students,

Forgive me if I seemed harder on the kids than usual today to PLEASE be quiet while I'm talking -- it's the excitement of spring fever, I'm sure, that's eliciting so much conversation amongst themselves. I love them dearly -- they're so smart and thoughtful -- and I hate fussing, plus I'm glad they're happy in class. But I'd appreciate a reminder from mom at home not to talk while I'm speaking. We've got so much material to cover, and it gets tiresome talking over multiple voices.

Despite the chatter, we had an all-around great day. In EEL, we introduced compound-complex sentences. I chose to do this in three steps:

1. Start with a simple sentence.
2. Add another simple sentence and join the two with a coordinating conjunction (FANBOYS).
3. Add a dependent clause that begins with either a subordinating conjunction (WWW.ASIA.B) or a relative pronoun (9Ws + T).

The kids handled these steps pretty well as long as we worked together. But when I asked them to create their own sentences and gave them one simple sentence with which to begin, they all tended to make the same mistake. Instead of combining two simple sentences that could each stand alone, they combined the same subject with two verbs, resulting in a compound verb but not a compound sentence. Most of them added a subordinate clause without fail, but a couple continued using coordinating conjunctions to just "add on" to their sentence.

Once we finally settled on a true compound-complex sentence, everyone did extremely well with diagramming. That was encouraging!

So, given classtime today, I'd encourage families to work on building those compound-complex sentences at home this week using the three steps above. Start simple, go compound, THEN change to complex. Continue asking them, "Is your coordinating conjunction joining words, phrases or clauses?" And, of course, it needs to be joining independent clauses rather than two dependent clauses. If it helps, you can even give them two simple sentences to join with a CC. Here are some ideas:

• The team scores. The crowd roars.
• Taxis swerve. Horns honk.
• Cake is good. Ice cream is better.
• The dog scratched. His owner bathed him.

Our IEW assignment is to write a creative essay from a prompt. Just so the kids understand, remind them they are NOT writing about Marco Polo. Marco Polo and his travels to Asia are the PROMPT from which their assignment stems. They are to pretend they are peasants from the Middle Ages who have traveled through time to the 21st century and back and are trying to describe to fellow peasants what the 21st century is like. Level A writes one paragraph; Level B writes three with an intro and clincher.

I've allotted two weeks for the assignment, so I think most everyone could complete Level B. See the lesson, which I distributed in class, for the details. You may want to help them (or at least check up on them) during the brainstorming process. But this should be a blast. I can't wait to read the final papers!

Let me know if you have questions. Have a stupendous week.

Erin

Week 20: Can you QeQ, too?

Good morning. Running the math relay outside on Tuesday afternoon felt invigorating. Spring fever is hitting both me and the kids!

We had a good EEL day with a review of prepositions and our S-Vt-DO-OCN sentence pattern and the introduction (at last!) of QeQ. The students did GREAT! At home this week, keep working at your child's level on dictating, parsing, diagramming and modifying sentences. Then QeQ them to the extent you can using the basic format. I'll introduce the detailed QeQ format next week.

Your IEW assignment is revise and polish the "Ghengis Khan and His Hawk" critique. We discussed critique vocabulary in class and also looked at the Level B example critique together. I can't wait to hear the kids read these next week. They'll be fantastic, I know.

See you Tuesday,

Erin