Class Update 9/25 - Prepositions!

Yesterday in class, I covered all of the information about prepositions listed on the syllabus.

Prepositions, Object of the Preposition, Prepositional Flow, An adverb, a helping verb or prepositional phrases at the beginning of a sentence, All Preposition Jingles

We then labeled several sentences as a class together using the Question and Answer Flow for the different parts of speech, and placed the prepositional phrases in parenthesis. I introduced prepositions with the Christmas song, "Over the river, and through the woods..." :-) Our class was blessed to hear JC sing a Prepositon Jingle that he wrote himself! It is posted below! Way to go, JC!

After returning the students' writing assignments, I went over three points.

1.) The students should avoid using "frivolous" words. These are words that are not needed in the sentence or words that restate points verbatim. Encourage them drop unnecessary words and to use synonyms to restate points.

2.) The students (especially the older ones) need to use quality adjectives and adverbs to make their writing interesting.

Example of the two points stated above:

I like my cat, because, well, he is black.

Rewritten -

Drop - well -because it is not needed.
Use more descriptive words - change like to enjoy, add intelligent as an adjective to describe the cat, and give a reason why you enjoy the cat. Use a descriptive adverb to modify the verb - "aggressively chases" instead of "chases."

I enjoy my intelligent black cat because he aggressively chases balls.

These points were introduced based on the writing assignment from this past week. These are areas where the students can improve. Their current papers are "good," but I am striving to help them become excellent writers! :-) The "key" is not to be wordy, but to be descriptive!

3. Capitalization Rule #8 (from Reference 31 on workbook page 27)
Rule #8 - Family names are capitalized when used in place of or with the person's name.
(Grandmother, Auntie, Uncle Joe, Mother - Do NOT capitalize my mother or my mom.)
I noticed this on several papers this week. I decided not to mark it because we had not gone over it in class, and it was a frequent error on the papers. Please watch for this in the future.

We ended the class with a fun game to reinforce their weekly vocabulary. After finding the synonyms and antonyms students then had to think of their own synonyms and antonyms for the pairs of words. Very soon, I will be asking students to implement some of their vocabulary words in their writing assignments.

HOMEWORK COUPONS - For clarity, completed homework coupons may be turned in to replace one journal entry, one exercise or one set of sentences to be labeled. Homework Coupons do not replace all of the weekly homework. (I know your children wish otherwise!) Homework coupons may never be used for a writing assignment. (Although I am planning to have two writing assignment coupons available at the silent auction for TC!)

I hope this blog is helpful to you. Please let me know if you are reading this, and if you find it beneficial at home. It takes me some time to communicate all of this to you, and I want to be sure I am not wasting my time. :-) Thank you in advance for e-mailing me your comments and/or suggestions.

Your children are a blessing to teach! I enjoy them tremendously!

We have now reviewed References 1-17, and introduced Jingles 1-9 in class. Use these for review at home.

Assignments Due 10/3
Workbook Assignment: Ch. 5 Vocabulary, (there are NO exercises for Ch. 5) Ch. 5 Sentences Labeled in Practice Booklet, Ch. 5 Test p. 101, (optional! You may wish to wait until after the next TC), and at least THREE entries in your Journal.Writing Assignment: NONE this week. Use your extra time to understand prepositions. Work on memorizing all 49 in the jingle! You can also play online games, or make-up sentences with prepositional phrases.