Week 18

I apologize for any advertisement links that are popping up in my text.  I didn't put them there. Please don't click on them.

EEL

We mostly focused on review.  I thought the students did a great job at asking the right questions to determine sentence patterns when we did the matching handout.  Those PA/PN, OCA/OCN sentences were the tricky ones.

Finally, we got to the active and passive voice lesson!  We identified whether sentences were active or passive by determining if the subject was doing the action.  Active, yes.  Passive, no.

To identify a sentence in passive voice, look for the following key elements.  1) a helping verb coupled with a past participle form of the verb (example: was helped) 2) the person or thing doing the action is the object of the sentence 3) there will be a stated or understood "by + object doing the action".

John bought a new puppy.   Active: John is doing the buying.

The new puppy was bought by John.   

Passive: "was bought"= helper + past participle, John is an object, "by John"

More examples:
A= I admire her voice.
P= The voice was admired by me.

A= The tornado ravaged the town.
P = The town was ravaged by the tornado.

This week, continue to review your part of speech charts and work on memorizing any questions that help identify adjectives or adverbs, nouns or verbs.  This memory work comes first.  Only after the memory work is solid will the understanding come.

IEW

We began unit VIII today, the Library Research Report.  We will really begin this type of report next week, but will warm up to it this week by adding an introductory and concluding paragraph to body paragraphs that the students have already written.  So, pull out the apple reports or a previous paper that has more than one paragraph and use the outline guide given on page 197 in the student text to write these extra, short paragraphs.

The goal in this assignment is to gain understanding of the structure of the coming paper.

Introductory paragraph

topic one, two, and three paragraphs

concluding paragraph

This paper is technically an essay because it asks for the writer to state his opinion in the closing paragraph.  The prompts "Most significant" and "Why?" create this distinction.  When answering this question, please make sure that the student does not use "I" or "We".  

I think that apples are important because…

Rather, have them simply state their opinion as a fact.

Apples are important because…

Like my passive voice sentence example about Mrs. Apple inventing the apple pie, feel free to make up facts if you wish.

Please contact me with any questions you might have regarding the assignment.  Have a blessed week, and Happy Valentine's Day!  

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.

Week 15

EEL

Today we...
1. Reviewed S/Vt/IO/DO sentences, but made them interrogative and added an interjection
2. Examined verb anatomy (bottom of chart C)
3. Walked through tasks 1-6, including Quid et Quo.

Verb Anatomy

Verb tense is made up of time + form.  

Time = past, present, and future.
Form = simple, perfect, progressive, perfect progressive.

For students who are not ready for this, please stop there.  Just memorize the above facts and leave understanding to a future time.

Determining time can be tricky when combined with form, so, if you are ready to tackle this, attack these two separately before studying them together.

A couple of memory tricks

When thinking about the perfect tense, the verb anatomy includes a form of "to have" + past participle verb form.  So, play would be have played in perfect form.  To remember that perfect goes with a form of "to have", think, "I have to be perfect!"

This also applies to perfect progressive form because the verb anatomy includes a form of "to have" + been + present participle.  So, when you see perfect, think I have to be perfect.  But you can stretch this word imagery a bit further with perfect progressive and say, "Ben and I have to be perfect as we progress."

When you have practiced with time and form separately, put them together with chart N or O.
Start with the filled in chart and give example sentences.  Have your student identify the right forms and times (tenses) represented in the sentence.

Take it to the next level by using the blank form.

Then take it to the next level by giving the student a time and form and number (singular/plural) and person (1st, 2nd, 3rd) and having them come up with a sentence that fits the description.

Quid et Quo

We finally made it to task six!  Please spend time this week exploring the Quid et Quo form.  It's strength is that it makes the student think through everything there is to identify about each word in a sentence.  Have fun with it!

Grammar

Keep plugging away at basic memory work.  They should know the questions they need to ask to find the direct object and indirect objects.  They should know the questions to identify an adjective, an adverb, etc.  Really work on the subordinating conjunctions and relative pronouns too.

Memory work is the foundation of this course.  If you do nothing else, do this.

Dialectic

Much of task five (back of task sheet) is easy to do orally.  This is great practice for practical application and can be tied to IEW sentences.

Examples:
If the paragraph is too choppy, make them combine two sentences by forming a compound sentence.
Have them use a word other than because to begin their subordinate (www.asia.wub) clause.
Add modifiers, like -ly adverbs, quality adjectives, or prepositional phrase openers.

IEW

We are finishing up our multiple source research papers this week. We are on Lesson 25, Benjamin Franklin continued. We examined another topic and created a fused KWO in class.

You may be opting for 1-3 paragraphs.  Quality is better than quantity.  Don't be afraid to limit the number of paragraphs but really do a thorough job. Use the checklist and thoroughly think through each element.  Finish well with a strong introductory statement (p.45 of the Student Resource Notebook--gray pages.  These give ideas for dramatic paper openers). Finally, add a final clincher that repeats and reflects the introductory statement and title.

Also, feel free to push your child to the next level if they are ready.  A full blown paper for the third year student would be five paragraphs (introductory, three topics, concluding with bibliography and illustration--whew!).

Have a great week!  Sigh! I was so sorry to see that several faces were missing today.  I hope that it wasn't sickness.  If so, take care and God bless!  If not, take care and God bless!  

I would appreciate your prayers for our family this week. My grandmother died on Monday and I will be traveling alone to Indiana to attend the funeral.  My traveling is not the struggle. My husband, Jon, will be home Friday evening-Sunday afternoon with all 7 kids and he just tore his Achilles tendon in his right foot and has surgery scheduled for next Wednesday.  He is able to hobble but please pray that all children would sleep through the night each night so he doesn't have to get up and attend to them.  During the day the big kids are easily able to help and my oldest daughter cooks so they are good there.  Thank you for prayer support!

Week 14

EEL

We reviewed how to make complex sentences.  I was also supposed to go over active and passive voice but I really felt that we needed to camp out at complex sentences.  The explanation about active and passive voice is covered thoroughly in lesson 14 of the EEL Guide and also in the Our Mother Tongue lessons that go along with this week.  Feel free to visit that info.  I will cover it if we have time next week.  Understanding this concept can really help transform writing.

Complex Sentence
Moms, if your child is not getting the subordinate (dependent) clause, please spend some time doing the exercise we did at the beginning of class.  I gave them an independent clause and they had to provide the subordinate to make the complex sentence.  A good way to do this is to split a whiteboard in half and put independent on one side and make them write the dependent on the other.  Or put dependent and make them write the independent.  This makes a good visual separation and hammers in the idea that an independent plus a dependent (subordinate) clause equals a complex sentence.

Remind students that a dependent clause always has a subject and a verb.  

This separates it from the phrase.

If your child already understands the dependent clause, move on to identifying whether it is adverbial or adjectival and have them diagram.

Memorization

Memorizing the list of 
relative pronouns (adjectival sub. clause openers), and 
subordinating conjunctions (www.asia.wub--adverbial sub. clause openers)

If your student is a first year student and is just trying to grasp first semester still, feel free to camp out there.  Second semester information can just wash over them and they can absorb whatever they pick up here and there. Moms, this semester may just be for you to learn.  Next year will be the year to hammer away at second semester.  No crying in Essentials!

IEW

This week we started a two week paper.  We are in Unit VI, Lesson 23. Our source texts are about Benjamin Franklin and we are creating paragraphs by pulling like information from the different sources and then fusing the outlines.

So, we started by identifying the topics in each paragraph of source one.  The first paragraph was Ben Franklin as printer and writer.  The second paragraph was Franklin as community helper.  The third paragraph was Franklin as statesman and diplomat. Next, we identified the topic of each paragraph in source two and three.

Next, we looked at only the two paragraphs about Franklin as a printer and writer.  The first paragraph was from source one, paragraph one.  The second paragraph about Franklin as a prater and writer was found in source three, paragraph one.

At home this week the students need to Key Word Outline (KWO) these two paragraphs then set aside the source text and fuse the outlines into a 5-7 line KWO and write their paragraph from that.

Next, they need to take out their rough draft checklist and brainstorm sentence openers, and other dress ups.  This makes the actual writing much easier.

Finally, write the paragraph, underline dress ups and add a picture if you would like.

For students who do this with little effort, please tackle a second topic and at least have the fused outline done.  That will put you in a good position to finish a second and third paragraph next week.

I will not be collecting paragraphs this week.  We will turn in final work the following week.

Week 13 - Warning: Massive Blog Entry

Welcome back and Happy New Year!  It was wonderful to see your faces again this afternoon. I hope you had a wonderful break, especially considering that we packed the day full of new information.

EEL

Not only did we introduce a new sentence pattern, we also dove right into a new structure.

If you own them, your Our Mother Tongue lessons from the checklist will really help you this week because they will hammer away the information we learned.

Sentence pattern S/Vt/IO/DO

What is an indirect object?
1) a noun
2) only occurs in sentences with direct objects
3) located between the verb and the direct object.
4) received indirect action of the verb
5) answers the question "(subject) (verb) (DO) to/for what/whom?

Examples:

Lisa gave Hank a shoe.
Gave (Vt) + shoe (DO) . . . to or for whom or what? Answer = Hank (IO)

The present gave me joy!
Gave + joy ... to whom? = me

To see a diagram of the S/Vt/IO/DO, please look below at the Complex, S/Vt/IO/DO diagram.

Complex Sentence

Simple sentence = independent clause
Compound sentence = independent clause + independent clause
Complex sentence = independent clause + dependent (subordinate) clause

Dependent (subordinate) Clause vs. Phrase

Dependent clauses and phrases both cannot stand alone in a sentence.  The big difference is that a dependent clause will have both a subject and a verb.   The phrase will not.

While I wandered the desert . . .
In the desert . . .

The first is a clause with a subject (I) and a verb (wandered).
The second is a prepositional phrase and has no S/V.

Adjectival vs. Adverbial Subordinate Clauses

Adjectival subordinate clauses are those clauses that are used as an adjective in a sentence.
When trying to determine whether a clause is adjectival, go to the questions that you memorized to determine if a word is an adjective (What kind? How many? Which? Whose?)  If the clause answers one of these questions, it is adjectival.

Another quick way to identify whether a clause is adjectival is to see whether it begins with a relative pronoun (have to be memorized).  The list of relative pronouns is in the memory work.  It begins with the word who.  As a possible memory help, I always think of describing a relative, who is a who (a person).  The word describing helps me think of adjective.

These are already familiar to us through IEW in the Who/Which clauses.

The adverbial clause works the same way, except it answers the adverb questions, (How? When? Where? Why? To what extent? How often? How much? Under what condition?) and the adverbial clause begins with subordinating conjunctions (www.asia.wub).


The Subordinate Clause and Comma Use

In most sentences, the subordinate clause will be separated by commas.  The exception is when the clause is necessary to the meaning of the noun it modifies.

The family that lives around the corner has eight kids.

We will be practicing this in class.

Try to find the subordinate (dependent) clauses in the following sentences. I didn't put in commas.

When we took a break from school for Christmas I forgot all my memory work.
We love because he first loved us.
My parents who like to surprise my sisters and me won't tell us where we are going for our family vacation.

Diagramming a Subordinate Clause (and S/Vt/IO/DO)

The teacher, who read the class a story, sent me a recording.

We follow the diagram examples from the Essentials guide.  Most sentence diagramming sources prescribe a different way of diagramming the IO.  Please feel free to choose one and stick with it.  We will be using the way it is presented in the guide.  The important thing is that the kids are able to identify the usage in the sentences.

Grammar (Drill)

Memorize this week's memory work.

Review the questions used to determine if a word (or clause) is an adverb or an adjective. (Charts I, L)

Dialectic (Understanding)

Work through the task sheet to diagram some S/Vt/IO/DO sentences.  Come up with three or four per day that fit the pattern then task one of them.  Here are some to get you started.

I bought my friend a birthday gift.

The boy read his sister a book.

Mom baked the kids a cake.

The pirates gave the prisoners a choice between being marooned or walking the plank.

Lucky gave me the pot of gold from the end of the rainbow.

Next, work through some complex sentences.

OVERLOADED? If this is new to the student, please just drill the idea that a subordinate clause + and independent clause = complex sentence.  Next, get to what a subordinate clause is.

IEW

Vocabulary words: incessant, zealous, trepidation, exemplary, prominent, privily, affirm, espouse
Some kind of treat for anyone (yes, moms, you too) who brings in a complex sentence containing a vocabulary word from this week's vocabulary list. Underline your subordinate clause.

Here comes mine. Because she is zealous for complex sentences, Mrs. Varnell, a prominent tutor in the Essentials class (ok, the only one), overcame her trepidation about overwhelming everyone and insisted on incessantly affirming the exemplary virtues of the subordinate clause for a full fifty-five minutes without taking a breath. Bam!

Try two: Because she loves her exemplary students, Mrs. Varnell rewards with candy.

IEW Lesson 22
We began a new unit today, Unit 6: Library Research Report.  The first lesson in this unit (Lesson 22) focuses on the skill of taking information from two sources and making it into one paragraph.   The result is a paragraph written from a fused outline.

There is a chart across from the Unit 6 outline in the IEW Charts section of the student notebook that helps illustrate this process of creating a fused outline.

We used the source text on page 156 about Thomas Jefferson.
We did a KWO of source one (remembering to start with a topic sentence).
We did a KWO of source two (remembering to start with a topic sentence).
Next, we put aside our source texts and just looked at our two key word outlines.
We ended up with 5 facts from the first outline and 7 from the second.

Next, we began a fused outline.
We created a fused topic sentence, looking at the source 1 and 2 topic sentences and combining info.
From there, we eliminated redundant information, merged like information, regrouped information, reordered information, and cut information.
We whittled down the information until we had only 5-7 (not 12) lines of KWO.
Finally, we added a clincher that repeated and reflected the topic sentence.
This was our fused outline.

I leave titles up to each of you.

Since we did this in class, I hope you copied well.  If you wrote down the fused outline, you only have to write the paragraph! Make sure you use your IEW checklist to be sure you include all the dress ups and decorations.

Whew! You made it.  Go eat a piece of dark chocolate. Reward yourself.

Week 11

EEL

Big review today.  The only thing that changed from week 10 was the sentence purpose.  We moved from declarative to exclamatory.  Keep practicing the difference between a predicate nominative and predicate adjective.

This is a great time in the semester to memorize the questions that correspond to adjectives and adverbs.

Adjectives: Which one? How many? Which? Whose?
Adverbs: How? When? Where? Why? To what extent? Under what condition? How often? How much?

IEW

Our vocabulary words were--solemn, tyrant, adept, enthrall

I introduced two new dress-ups and a decoration that will be on the checklist this week.  The dress-ups were both sentence openers.  This means that the first word of the sentence will be a certain type.

The #2 sentence opener is the preposition opener.  Example: In the cold house, the family could barely sleep.

The #3 opener is the -ly (adverb): Thankfully, the repairman came the next morning and fixed their heater.

The decoration that we learned was personification, giving a human characteristic to a thing or idea.  We looked at the explanation of this on page 48 of the student resource notebook (gray pages). Example:

The pine trees bowed mournfully under the weight of a heavy snow.

Finally, we covered Unit 5, Writing from Pictures.  The assignment is a three paragraph paper, but, moms, you can make it one paragraph if you choose.  The idea is to start with a picture and then to ask a series of questions in order to pull a story from the brain.  Our key word outline is pulled from the imagination, but it begins with the central fact of the picture.  So, though we take the story where we wish, it starts with the observable.

On the pictures corresponding with this lesson (p. 143), we stated the central fact of the first picture this way:

boy, riding, message, urgent

From there, we asked the questions found on the bottom of page 142 and also the questions on the left-hand side of the Unit V chart to pull out more information.  Finally, we tied it up nicely by making our paragraph clincher repeat and reflect words from our picture's central fact.

Have fun with this story.  We suggested various plots to go with the picture: we proposed that he was delivering a birthday invitation to General Washington from General Green, also that it was a game of chess and the message was General Green's next move.  Perhaps he was actually running from a lion. Maybe the soldier in the second picture is his best friend and turns away.  Maybe the horse is under him in the water, maybe….maybe… you fill in the blank.

Also, students can use any picture as a source.  If there is only one picture, have them think about what happens before and after.  Also, students can use the pictures on page 149 if they would rather.

Have fun!  Can't wait to hear your stories next week.  We will enjoy doughnuts and there will be plenty of time for reading papers.

Week 10

EEL

This week's focus was the compound, declarative, S/VL/PA sentence.  In order to learn what a predicate adjective is, we must first understand the adjective.

Adjectives

 We went over Chart L (Adjectives).  Remember, the first focus for a good foundation in Essentials is always the memory work in gray.  So above all, memorize the definition of an adjective and the questions that an adjective answers.

Definition: An adjective modifies a noun or pronoun by describing, qualifying or limiting.
Questions: What kind? How many? Which? Whose?

S/VL/PA

The predicate adjective (PA) follows a linking verb and modifies or describes the subject.
To proof whether or not you have a PA, first ask,

"Do I have a possible linking verb?"
(If the list of linking verbs is not yet memorized, look at the linking verb list located between Chart C (Verbs) and Chart D.

If you have a possible linking verb, next ask,

"Does the word following the linking verb modify or describe the Subject Noun?
If yes, PA.

So…
The rose smells sweet.

Do I have a possible linking verb?
Well, smells is my verb.  Yes, it is on the linking verb list.

Does the word following the linking verb modify or describe the Subject Noun?
Yes, sweet describes the subject rose. Rose smells sweet. Sweet smells rose.
Sweet is a predicate adjective.

Watch out for verbs on the linking verb list that are used as action verbs.
She smells the rose.

In this sentence, smells is an action verb, transferring action to the rose.  So this is an example of a S/Vt/DO.

An action verb can never be a linking verb.
You should be able to replace a linking verb with is and the sentence still make sense.

IEW
We had fun with vocabulary memory for a good portion of the class. We also were able to read some papers!

Vocabulary: compliant, obstinate, compel, deliberate

Writing assignment:
The assignment is an extension of what we have been working on the last two weeks.  The source text for the final paragraph of the three paragraph paper (due next Tuesday) is on page 116, "Colonial Life: Care of the Sick."  Your student will need to key word outline the text, pulling only 5-7 interesting or important facts.  They will have to include a topic sentence in the beginning of the paragraph and then end the paragraph with a clincher.

Please remember, students, you are not key word outlining every sentence.  You are going to have to skip some information, limiting the facts to the ones you think are the best. This exercise is good for practicing pulling out pertinent information (Like my alliteration?).

In addition to this final paragraph, they will have to add an introductory statement as part of the first paragraph.  This introductory statement will introduce the entire paper, previewing the topics to be discussed. (Tell them what you are going to tell them). Next comes the body paragraphs (Tell them).  Finally, attached to the end of the final paragraph, add a final clincher--a sentence that restates the topics covered in the paper (Tell them what you told them).

As always, if you have any questions or need help scaling this assignment (or any other) for your student, please email, text or call me.  After this, only one more short and fun paper to write this semester! Yea!