Monday, December 1, 2014

IEW- Week 12 Poetry

Please share your writing from pictures assignment if you would like.

We're going to have some fun today with poetry.
To get the creative juices flowing let's start with an acrostic poem using our names. Write your name in bold letters down the side of a page, then describe yourself with adjectives starting with these letters. You may get ideas from your Student Resource Notebook.

Read the sample poem on pg 231 of USHBW.
Turn to Lesson 19 in your USHBW book on pg 137 where we will be working on a poem about America. Pick one to two adjectives for your noun (example: seahorses) and if you want to add another phrase choose that, of, or with and finish your thought, example "sunlit, sparkling seashores that speak to strangers."

Hopefully you can get a good start on this if not finish. I would love to hear your poems next year but no worries if you forget.

Merry Christmas! See you Next Year!
Week 12-EEL Almost Christmas!

Greetings all! Raise your hand if you're ready for a break.

Let's start with something fun.
This week we focus on our Compound structure, Interrogative purpose, and S-Vl-PA/S-Vl-PN pattern.
Who can tell me what a compound sentence is? A sentence consisting of two independent clauses joined by a coordinating conjunction.

Compound/Interrogative
Madie went to the store, and she went to the bank.
Is this a compound sentence? Why?

How can we change this into an interrogative?
Inflection-Madie went to the store and she went to the bank?
Interrogative pronoun-Who went to the store and who went to the bank?
Helping verb-Did Madie go to the store and did she go to the bank?

S-Vl-PN/S-Vl-PA
1)Who is holy, and who is alive?

Who can pick out our independent clauses?

Let's start with our first ind. clause.
Who is holy? Who (subject pronoun)
What's being said about who? is (verb)
Who is what? holy
Can holy replace or describe who? Yes, describe; holy is a predicate adjective, label verb linking
Label and as conjunction

Who is alive? Who (subj. pronoun)
What's being said about who? is (verb)
Who is what? alive
Can alive replace or describe who? yes, describe; alive is a predicate adjective, label verb linking

Who can diagram this?

2)Is Jesus God, and is Jesus King?
Go through the Question confirmation again, but this time we have a predicate nominatives instead of adjectives.

Who can diagram this for us?



Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Week 11 IEW Writing from Pictures

This week we will cover the prepositional and -ly sentence openers and personification while we write from pictures after we listen to students' work.

We will be using Lesson 21 in our USHBW books.
Please read version 1 and version 2.
Which version is more captivating?
What did they use to open or start their first sentence? A prepositional phrase
Where else did they open with a prepositional phrase?
Can anyone give me an example of a prepositional opener? We can use pg 6 of our Student Resource Notebook for help.

-Ly openers are simply sentences that start with an -ly word. Not to be mistaken with our -ly dress-ups. Use your Student Resource Notebook for a list of -ly words to help you.
Quickly, Suddenly, Inextricably, Foolishly, Courageously,...

Personification gives human characteristics to things or ideas. We will use Pg 151 to help us brainstorm some ideas.

The waves slapped angrily at the boat.
The trees stretched up to the sky.
The water creeped over the cement.

We will use the rest of the time to brainstorm ideas for the pictures in Lesson 21.

Happy Thanksgiving!!


EEL Week 11

EEL Week 11

Greetings all fellow travelers on the Essentials Expedition. I am back among the living and apologize for the half done lesson last week. I was just too sick to finish it. And thank you to my selfless substitute for helping out more than she should. Thanks again and blessings to you.

This week we will be covering the compound structure, exclamatory purpose, and S-Vl-PA & S-Vl-PN sentence pattern.

Example sentences:
1.Kayt is my friend.  2. Kayt is beautiful.
3. At Christmastime, Target is crowded.  4. Target is a store.
5. Casey is handsome.  6. Casey is my husband.

Can anyone tell me how to make a sentence exclamatory? Yes, add an exclamation mark. As simple as that.

In preparation for our pattern, let's first review our linking verb song. (Play song)
Can anyone tell me what a Predicate Nominative is?
A noun or pronoun that follows a linking verb and renames the subject.
What about a Predicate Adjective?
Follows a linking verb and describes the subject.

What is the purpose of these sentences? Declarative
How can we make them exclamatory? Add exclamation point

Can anyone tell me the sentence pattern right away?
Let's go through our question confirmation.
1) Who or what is? Kayt
2) What is being said about Kayt? Kayt is
3) Kayt is what? My friend
4) Can friend be used to describe Kayt or rename Kayt? Is friend a noun or adjective?
An noun- so friend is a Predicate Noun S-Vl-PN

Let's do the same with the other sentences and see what their patterns are.
2) S-Vl-PA
3) S-Vl-PA
4) S-Vl-PN
5) S-Vl-PA
6) S-Vl-PN

We'll add complexity by looking at the compound structure with these example sentences:
Jesus is God, and He is King! Exclamatory, Compound, S-Vl-PN
Jesus is Holy, for He is alive! Exclamatory, Compound, S-Vl-PA

Let's take out our pens and Task sheets and go through Tasks 1-4 with these two sentences.



Monday, November 10, 2014

Week 10 EEL-All About Adjectives!

Week 10 Overview
Compound, Declarative, S-Vl-PA, Adjectives, Chart L

Review:
This Little Noun Song
Adverb Song
Preposition Song

Teach Adjective Song

S-Vl-PA and Adjectives
We have talked about adjective in our writing class, so I think we have a pretty good idea about those.
Let's take a look at Chart L on page 420 and expand on our definition.
But what about a predicate adjective? Just by looking at its name, what can we determine about it?
1) It's an adjective. And we just reviewed that adjectives answer the questions What kind? How many? Which? Whose?

2) This adjective is located in the predicate of the sentence. What is the definition of the predicate? That part of a sentence that says something about the subject.

The old milk smelled spoiled.
What smelled spoiled?
What is being said about milk?
Milk smelled what?
Which milk?
What kind of milk?
How do we diagram this?

Jesus is holy.
Who is holy? What is being said about Jesus? Can holy be used to replace or describe Jesus? Yes, describe. We can say, 'holy Jesus.'

Jesus is merciful.
Who is merciful? What is being said about Jesus? Can merciful be used to replace or describe Jesus?
Yes, describe. We can say, 'merciful Jesus.'

Kellan is a gymnast.
Who is a gymnast? What's being said about Kellan? Can gymnast be used to replace or describe Kellan?

How do we diagram these? Just like our Predicate Nominatives!

Tasks 1-4
Using our Analytical Task Sheets we will go through our example:

The old cat looks happy, but she is nervous.

The small spotted puppy became a great guard dog, for he is hard-working.

Homework and resources:
Continue to memorize and review charts (L, C, D, G,K),  and complete Tasks 1-4,5,6 using the sample sentences in your guide or you can have your students come up with their own.
optional: OMT Lessons 3, 13-17, 23, 24


Week 10 IEW

Week 10-Writing from Pictures and the Past Perfect Tense

Today we switch from factual, non-fiction writing back to the creative writing genre. But first, we will have an activity.

(Pass out blank paper)
Turn this paper sideways and write this sentence with space between each word.
He got the paper from a spy.
1) Change the banned verb to a strong verb.
2) Add a www.asia.wub clause
3) Add a who/which clause
4) Add a quality adjective and an -ly word.
5) Add a decoration (alliteration, simile, or metaphor).

Would anyone like to read theirs?

Let's turn to page 143 in our USHBW Lessons and look at the first picture.

Sunday, October 19, 2014

Week 9 IEW

Students are welcome to read their papers

We are continuing to work on our Summarizing skills with the addition of Introductory Sentences and  Final Clinchers. We will be working on a 2 or more paragraph essay this week. Each paragraph will have it's own topic/clincher sentences, but we will be adding an introductory sentence for the whole paper and a final clincher after the last paragraph clincher, that will wrap up the whole paper.  This is one reason for more than one paragraph in our assignment this week. If we have only one paragraph, we wouldn't need an introductory sentence or final clincher. It would be redundant.

A source has been provided for us: Lessons 15 & 16 of our USHBW Lessons book (for younger students) and Lesson 17 (for older students), or as always choose your own topic.

Today we will read through the source text in Lesson 17. This is a very long source but that is for a reason. There is no way that we can include all this information, so we need to practice making decisions about what we want our paper to be about.
Read text, then make a KWO and brainstorm our Introduction and Final Clincher Sentences.

Resources:
TWSS Unit 4
SRN Pg 9
USHBWL Unit 4

Week 9 EEL

Open with prayer.

Overview of today's lesson: Compound, Declarative, S-Vl-PN, Linking Verbs, Charts K, C, D, E
optional OMT Lessons 2, 23, 42

Review
Who can tell me what a verb is?
chant: a verb, is a word, that asserts an action, shows a state of being, links to words together, or helps another verb.

What are the four verb types?
Intransitive, Transitive, linking, helping
Who can define intransitive? transitive? linking? helping?
Can sing linking verb song with definition and list and helping verb song with list

Today we focus on the S-Vl-PN pattern in the Compound structure
What are the linking verbs again? (Write on board)
What is a predicate nominative? A noun or pronoun that follows a linking verb and renames the subject.
Example:
Bob is a ball hitter. Hitter renames Bob. We could also say: The ball hitter is Bob. Bob = ball hitter

So wait a minute: How can we sat that 'is' is a linking verb when it's not on the list?

'Is' is a form of 'to be.' Review conjugations on the board
Infinitive                    to be
Present                       am, are, is
Past                            was, were
Pres. Participle          being
Past Participle           been

How about: Lucy became a queen.
Go through identifying jobs, making sure students clue in to the fact that even though queen answers the question 'what or whom?' after the verb, it would not be a direct object because no action is being transferred. Here is a good place to point out the importance of memorizing the linking verbs.

Now how do we diagram such a sentence?

Subj | verb\ PN

Can we come up with some of our own sentences?
Lilly feels upset so Madie becomes sad.
The cupcakes taste disgusting and they seem old.
(These are just some examples I came up with.)
Have students practice diagraming these as well.

Homework:
Charts K,C,D, E
Tasks 1-4,5,or 6
OMT lessons 2, 23, 42
Spellingcity.com




Saturday, October 18, 2014

Week 8- EEL-Fun with Prepositions!

Greetings fellow Essentials families.
 Found here is an overview of our class together.

Our focus this week is: Compound Structure, Interrogative, Prepositions, S-Vt-DO, Charts J, E, G, I

After prayer we went over the 8 parts of speech. We have covered almost all of these in class.
Since our focus is prepositions, who can define a preposition for me? (La Cucaracha)
Sing Preposition Song from Cycle 1. Refer to Chart J.

Compound Interrogative Sentences
What is an interrogative sentence? Asks a question.
What is a compound sentence? Consists of two independent clauses joined by a coordinating conjunction.

We took a compound sentence and reviewed the three ways to make a Declarative sentence into an Interrogative sentence.
Example: Jesus loves me and He loves you.
1) Add a question mark: Jesus loves me and He loves you?
2) Use interrogative pronouns: Who loves me and who loves you?
3) Use helping verbs: Does Jesus love me and does he love you?

Let's take out our Analytical Task sheets to label and diagram #3 above.
One help we discussed was rewriting an interrogative into a declarative. This puts the verbs together making it easier for the students to handle them.

Prepositional Phrases
We then defined a prepositional phrase: consisting of a preposition, its object, and any modifiers that may exist between them and functions as an adverb or an adjective in a sentence.
Remember with prepositional phrases you always have a preposition and an object of the preposition.

In these examples, let's identify the preposition and it's object.
Through the window
Over the hill
Under the tree
We recalled, using our song sheets, what adverbs and adjectives were and what questions they answered. Then we worked with examples.

The boy hugged his mother in the morning.
Do you see a prepositional phrase here?
What is the preposition? What is its object? In what?
Is this phrase acting as an adjective or an adverb? Adverb

The boy in the blue striped shirt hugged his mother.
Do you see a prepositional phrase here?
What is the preposition?
What is its object? In what?
Is this phrase acting as an adverb or an adjective?

How do we diagram these?



Week 8 IEW-Reports

Students read their Borrowing a Conflict paper.

Today we are going to start  Unit 4 on Summarizing or Report writing. In the beginning of the year,  we started writing our KWO sentence by sentence, choosing three words. We will not be doing that again for the rest of the year. In this Unit, we are going to be writing key words based on facts, not sentences. We will take what we think is important or interesting. We can't take everything, so we need to make some decisions about what to include.

Our mission is to write 1-3 paragraphs on a topic, include a topic sentence, a clincher and dress-ups. A source is provided for you in our USHBW book on pg. 104 Lesson 14: Colonial Life: Church,  or you may choose your own topic.

Please also reference the summarizing outline guideline in TWSS Unit 4 and/or USHBW Lesson 14.

We have been using our clincher sentence to come up with our title. Now we are going to learn about topic sentences and clinchers. A topic sentence tells the audience what the paragraph will be about.  Your clincher sentence reflects the topic sentence without repeating it exactly. It reminds the audience what the paragraph was about.

Let's take a look at this in action. Please turn to page 102 in your USHBW book. We will read this selection and pick out the key words from the topic sentence that are reflected in the clincher.

Now we will try one on our own.
Use source text (pg. 104 USHBW) to create a KWO with the class. Begin writing paragraph and review Topic/Clincher skill.

Please remember to include the dress ups we have learned in your report. A checklist is provided on pg. 107. First years feel free to complete one paragraph. Second and third years please challenge yourselves by completing 2-3 paragraphs.

Friday, October 17, 2014

Week 7 EEL

We started out with our prayer then went on to cover Adverbs, S-Vt-Do in the Imperative, and the Compound sentence structure.

Review
We reviewed Chart A by handing out a blank piece of paper and challenging the kids to write down as much of Chart A as they could.
Volunteers come up to diagram.
Julia loves animals.
Elijah studies grammar.
Calli feeds Presley.

Compound, Imperative, S-Vt-DO
We know what a compound sentence is, right? What is it?
What about an imperative?
And tell me about S-Vt-DO.
Today, we are going to put all of these together.

Let's start with the imperative. How would we change our 3 example sentences into imperative?
Love animals. Study grammar. Feed Presley.
*Remember the understood you!
Who loves? Loves what?
How would we diagram these?

Compound
Let's make these into compound sentences.
Example: Love animals and study grammar. Feed Presley but...
.....so......(students give examples)

What if we want to make sure that the person we are addressing understands that we are talking to them?
Julia, love animals. Elijah, study grammar. Calli, feed Presley.
What do we call this term? Noun of Direct Address.
How would we diagram these? *Remember NDA's hover like UFO's

What about an appositive? An appositive is a noun (or pronoun) directly beside another noun which explains or identifies it.
Example: My dog Rover eats biscuits.
Rover is identifying the noun dog and it's beside it.
How do we diagram this?
We put the appositive in parenthesis next to the noun.

Adverbs:
Now let's talk about adverbs. Who can tell me what an adverb is?
Let's get out our song sheets and review this a few times.
An adverb is used to modify a verb, adjective or another adverb
It answers the questions How? When? Where? and Why?
How often? How much? and Under what condition?
Don't forget To What extent?
(sung to the tune of the I Love You song from Barney)

So adverbs answer the questions:
How, When, Where, Why, How often, How much, To what extent, and Under what condition?
Let's look at Chart I. Review Chart.

Most of the time adverbs give themselves away with their -ly but they can be phrases or clauses.

Let's add some adverbs to our sentences.
Have kids pick adverbs to add to example sentences such as:
Julia loves animals continually.
Elijah studies grammar reluctantly. etc.
How do we diagram adverbs?
Show that the adverb is written on a slanted line hanging off the word it modifies.

Homework:
Tasks 1-4, 5, 6 depending on experience
Chart I
Continue to work on memorizing Chart A
optional-Our Mother Tongue Lesson on Adverbs

Games: Around the World (flashcards) and Four in a Row

Week 7 IEW

I am so glad everyone wants to read their papers. I enjoy watching them try out the things they have learned each week.

Today we are going to be making up our own story, but borrowing a conflict from another and learning alliteration and the www.asia.wub clause.

Alliteration
Before we get started on our story, let's talk about our dress-ups.
Can anyone tell me what alliteration is? Two or more words that start with the same sound.
Give me an example.
Thunder and tornado start with t but not the same sound, so they wouldn't qualify as alliteration.
Let's play a game. Divide into teams. I will give you a sentence and a sound and you are to come up with examples using the sentence. You will receive one point per word that qualifies as alliteration.
Example: Young rabbits hop. (B)
Baby bunnies bounce behind buggies because blueberries bobbed on bushes.

The wind swept through the city. (T)
The warriors saw the enemy walk away. (S)

www.asia.wub clause
Can anyone tell me what this stands for? When, while, where, as, since, if, although, whereas, until, because
Can anyone tell me what part of speech these words are? Adverbs!
We just talked about those. When we make a phrase using these words it is an adverbial clause.
Can anyone give me an example?
Are there any in the sentences that we made?

Borrowing a conflict
A good example of this in our USHBW book on page 228. This story take the conflict from "The Ugly Duckling," changes the characters and setting and creates a whole new story. It's actually pretty good.

So in our USHBW book using lesson 13 as a guideline, we can start brainstorming some ideas for our story. They list 'The Tortoise and the Hare,' 'The Boy Who Cried Wolf,' 'Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer,' and 'The Three Bears' as all good places to start.

If you'd like to challenge your student, get them thinking about putting this story in the setting of pre-revolution America with characters that could be from that time. But no worries if that doesn't get them fired up.

Let's pick a conflict from one story, change the characters and setting and rewrite it.

Remember to use the Story Sequence Chart
I. Setting, Characters and Background
II.Conflict-what do they want/need
III. Climax and Resolution

Homework:
Choose a conflict from any story (any Aesop fable works) and rewrite it with your own characters and setting.