This Week in Language Arts...

This week in language arts we'll be learning about sentence structure.  Students will learn to identify the parts of the sentence: subjects and predicates (simple and complete).  We'll unpack the structure of sentences and discuss how sentence variety can enhance writing.  Some of the assignments we'll work on include the following:
Subjects and Predicates Notes and Practice
Simple Diagrams
Sentences Writing Prompts
Adjective, Adverb, and Preposition Diagrams
Tricky Sentences
Subjects and Predicates Review
Direct Objects, Predicate Adjective, Predicate Nominative Diagrams
We'll also learn to define and identify verbals (words that look like verbs but act like other parts of speech: Verbals Introduction and Practice

Links to Weekly Assignments

With mid-quarter conferences, it's a good time to check the first half of the quarter for any missing assignments.  Specific missing assignments are listed in Power School, just click the score of "Weekly Assignments" for the date of an incomplete score, and there will be a message listing missing or incomplete assignments from that week.  Almost all assignments are available on the website.  Here are links (or the links to the links) to the various weekly assignments so far:
Weekly Assignments 8/20-8/24
Weekly Assignments 8/27-8/31
Weekly Assignments 9/4-9/7
Weekly Assignments 9/10-9/14
Weekly Assignments 9/17-9/21
All notes are available here.

Parts of Speech Review Guide

With the Parts of Speech Mastery Test coming up on Wednesday, here's a study guide:

Parts of Speech Study Guide

Nouns and Pronouns

Nouns and Pronouns are people, places, things, and ideas.

            NOUNS:

                        a/an/the   NOUN           

                        Proper Nouns= Peru, Floyd Dryden, Joe

                        Ideas & Qualities (I have   NOUN            )

            PRONOUNS;

                        can't put "the" in front of it (she, he, they, it, everyone…)

Verbs

ACTION VERBS- action, you can DO it

LINKING VERBS- in describing sentences, linking verbs link the subject to the description, state-of-being verbs

            (SUBJECT   linking VERB            DESCRIPTION)

            (common linking verbs: is, am, are, were, was, be, being, been)

HELPING VERBS- make a verb phrase (Is the following word a verb?  Is the word part of a verb phrase?

             I could run.

            You did run.

            She may run.

            Tom might be sad.

            The rabbit could be happy.

            I am running.

            I am being silly.

            I have walked.

            He does walk.

Adjectives

Adjectives modify nouns and pronouns (which noun/pronoun, what kind of noun/pronoun, how many nouns/pronouns)

Adverbs

Adverbs modify verbs, adjectives, and adverbs (where the verb happens, when the verb happens, how the verb happens, how often the verb happens)

(HOW adjective-y or adverb-y)

Prepositions

Start a PHRASE that adds information

Try putting the word in one of these blanks:

                                     the log   or                                 dinner

Examples of Prepositions: above, about, before, behind, during, over, under, up, down, with, to, through, on…

Conjunctions

Conjunctions connect words, phrases, and clauses

            FANBOYS: for, and, neither/nor, but/because, or, yet, so

Interjections

Interjections express a feeling, say yes or no, indicate a hesitation, or call attention with a single word (Oh! Hey! Yes.  Wow!  Ouch…)

This Week in Language Arts...

This week in language arts, we’ll keep talking about prepositions.  Also, we'll discuss the final two parts of speech: conjunction and interjections.  We’ll be reviewing al eight parts of speech in a variety of ways over the upcoming week, through individual assignments, projects, and games.  Students will be able to choose a Parts of Speech Project from a variety of options, including the following: creating a video teaching about the parts of speech (I've seen some great ones over the years!), writing and illustrating an instructional book about the parts of speech, making a parts of speech game, analyzing the parts of speech in the pages of a novel, and more.  Some of the materials we'll use this week include the following:

Prepositions Writing Prompts

Nouns through Prepositions Review

Conjunctions and Interjections Notes and Practice

If you're looking for some online ways to review the parts of speech, the following two sites have games to do exactly that:

Grammar Ninja

Grammar Gorillas

They're a little goofy, but they're great reviews, especially as we look ahead to next week and the cumulative parts of speech assessment.

Book Recommendation: DIVERGENT

If you liked The Hunger Games, and you're looking for a new book, look no further than the dystopian awesomeness of Veronica Roth’s Divergent.  Divergent feels like the successor to The Hunger Games trilogy; it's the perfect book for those who are missing Katniss and Peeta and Gale (while, perhaps, waiting for the movie sequel).  Like The Hunger Games, Divergent introduces readers to a futuristic world set right in the center of the present-day United States, and it follows a teenaged girl who moves into the position of hero, if sometimes reluctantly.  One of the cool things about Roth’s novel is the set up of the society, a society confined to the city formerly known as Chicago.  The society is divided into five factions, and each faction has a different strength, or value.  There’s Candor, with the virtue of honesty, and Amity, whose people value peace above all else.  The Erudite believe in the importance of intelligence; they devote their lives to learning and research.  Dressed in black with tattoos and piercings, the Dauntless show their value of bravery by jumping from moving trains.  And then there’s the faction Divergent’s protagonist, Tris, grew up in: Abnegation: those who value selflessness above all else.

When characters in this world turn sixteen, they get to choose to stay or leave the faction they were raised in.  The teenagers take a test that indicates which faction is the best fit, but the final choice is up to the individual.  Then again, in the world of Divergent, one can never quite be sure where a choice might lead, or if there are not as many choices as one might have thought.  That’s certainly what Tris discovers, as she not only questions the faction she signed up for, but who she is and how her world works.

I love reading books that have a rip-roaring good story—and Divergent has that, it’s fast-paced and fun—but I also love books that make me think, and Roth does exactly that, posing the questions to her readers that she poses to her protagonist: Which faction would you choose?  What are your greatest strengths?  Are they also your weaknesses?  And while she starts to answer the questions in Divergent, she promises to keep us thinking, and wondering, in the next book of the trilogy: Insurgent.

This Week in Language Arts...

This week we'll explore adverbs and prepositions.  Last week we talked about how adjectives can make our writing lush and descriptive, but they can sometimes be overused (which is probably why Mark Twain once said, "When you see an adjective, kill it").  Just as strong, specific nouns can eliminate unnecessary adjectives, strong verbs can help writers avoid unnecessary adverbs.  (I had a writing teacher who taught me to question every adverb.)  Of course, we need prepositional phrases, those phrases that show the relationship between various nouns and pronouns in a sentence.  A preposition trick I learned once was to think of prepositional phrases as anywhere a squirrel can go in relation to a hollow tree (up the tree, in the tree, on the tree, over the tree, under the tree, through the tree...).
Some of the materials we'll use this week include the following:
Adverbs Notes and Practice
Nouns through Adverbs Review
Adverbs Writing Prompts
Prepositions Notes and Practice
Your Choice Prepositions
Prepositions Writing Prompts

Due on Friday 9/7

The following assignments are due in tomorrow's Friday Packet:

Adjectives Notes…..………………...……………………………_________/5

Adjectives Practice…………………..………………………..…._________/5

Your Choice Adjectives (book or paragraph)…..………….…..…._________/10

Adjectives Review…………………..………………………..…._________/5

 

 Adjectives Writing Prompt……………………………………._________/5

TOTAL WEEKLY ASSIGNMENTS SCORE………________/30

Note: This reflects a little change from our original plan outlined in the "This Week in Language Arts" post.  We spent a little more time with the creative projects and writing, and we also went into some more details about adjectives, discussing the differences between positive, comparative, and superlative adjectives. 

Book Recommendation: THE GREAT WIDE SEA

Hatchet.  My Side of the Mountain.  Island of the Blue Dolphins.  I’ve been waiting for a great survival story to arrive, following in the footsteps of these classics.  So when I saw The Great Wide Sea on the shelves of a Bainbridge Island bookstore, I snapped it up and went for a sail.

What would you do if, in the wake of tragedy, your father announced that he's going to sell your house, get rid of nearly all of your possessions, move your family aboard a thirty-foot-long sailboat, and head out to the islands of Bermuda?  The Great Wide Sea is the debut novel of M.H. Herlong, and it follows three brothers—Ben, Dylan, and young Jerry—on a wild ride through the Atlantic Ocean, from the Bahamas to the seas south of Bermuda.  I grew up sailing, and Herlong’s passion for all things sail is evident from the first chapter.  (According to the author note, he’s sailed many of the areas where the story takes place.)

If you’re thinking that life without classrooms and cars and computers sounds pretty nice…well, the beginning of the trip does have many idyllic moments:

At one island, we gathered lobster just like the Bahamians did.  At another, we watched sharks cruising after a fishing boat.  At another, we found a coconut and ate it…Each island was small and perfect.  Each one was our anchorage for days and days.” (115)

But all the while a conflict between Ben and his father is simmering, and occasionally erupting.  Both of them are reeling from the sudden death of Ben’s mom, and Ben’s increasingly frustrated with his father’s erratic and dictatorial behavior.  But it’s the disappearance of the boys’ father one night in the middle of the ocean that really sets the novel in motion.  The three brothers must survive a wicked storm, a shipwreck, and life on an island somewhere in the Bahamas.

It’s the combination of these conflicts—the clashes with his dad, the loss of his mom, the storm, the shipwreck, the suffering of his brothers he’s powerless to alleviate—that nearly drives Ben over the edge.  But The Great Wide Sea is as much about pressing on as about the struggle.  As Ben explains,

The thing about life is that it goes on.  You wake up and there is the sun like always.  There is your own body with bad breath and bruises and a headache.  You have to pee.  You have to get a drink.  No matter what happened the day before, you wake up and there is life and you have to do something about it. (173)

This paragraph gets to the root of any great survival story.  It’s not just about surviving the elements, it’s about surviving all the other twists life might throw at you.  Maybe that’s why survival stories will always hold an important place in literature.  They remind us of our power to be extraordinary, to find courage when we feel emptied and battered, to rise above any of the storms life may throw at us, whatever form they may take.

(Herlong, M.H.  The Great Wide Sea.  New York: Puffin Books, 2010.)

This Week in Language Arts...

This week we'll be studying adjective and adverbs.  Some of the materials we'll use include
the following:
Adjectives Notes and Practice (for notes see here)
Your Choice Adjectives
Adjective Writing Prompts
Adverbs Notes and Practice (for notes see here)
Review
I hope everyone enjoyed the long weekend, and I look forward to another week of learning with you.