Week 2 - Unearthing Valuable Verbs

This week at our Essentials Excavation site, we reviewed structures, purposes, patterns and the eight parts of speech. Keep working through these lists and grammar with your students.  Each week we will have a part of speech focus...  This week is the valuable verb.

Week 2 in your EEL Guide contains in-depth information about this important and loaded part of speech - the verb.  This week's information will be your reference.  Throughout the year, we will peel back more and more layers of verbs and therefore will be visiting week 2's information for more understanding and details.  You'll also find the "grammar" of verbs listed in appendix B and C. Students (and parents) should work on memorizing this information. More information on understanding the EEL Guide click here.

Parents with younger students should be sure to consistently review the components that make up a sentence - subject, verb (predicate), first word of the sentence has a capital letter, the end of the sentence has an end mark, and it must make complete sense. 

Do it! Have students come up with a subject and a verb, then make their very own sentence.  A little more?  Have students classify the sentence by structure, purpose and pattern.

i.e. Subject = dog        verb = jump (any tense)    
sentence --> The dog jumped.
Classification would be....
Structure = Simple
Purpose = Declarative
Pattern = S - Vi

Another twist:  Have students take a sentence from this week's IEW poem or writing project and find the subject and verb.

Advanced or older student idea:  Use this page from the John 1 passage and edit this passage, located subjects and verbs, and more... go as deep as you would like as there are many language layers.  As you move throughout the Essentials/EEL year, you'll find you can pick up any sentence, from your favorite read-aloud to a classic to my personal favorite - a scripture passage, and analyze sentences and paragraphs.

In the EEL portion, we are analyzing  through a deconstruction process of sorts while in writing (or IEW), we are constructing ideas through paragraphs and sentences. 

Next week, we start using the EEL Guide's Teacher Sheets, which will model and lead us through the signature EEL Analytical Tasks... so stay tuned!

Dig as deep as you'd like this week and have fun!