DAY 15: Sentence Diagramming

NOTICE: I will give extra credit to those who find typographical errors in my blog posts. The first person to find an error should post a comment at the end of the entry. In the post, please explain what the error is and how to correct it. To receive the credit, your own comments must be error free.


Today, we came back after a weekend and two alternative learning days where you heard all about water and built community with our second and third graders. Exhausting, yes, but I hope interesting, too!

You turned in your revised paragraphs to me.



So, we had a lightweight day, covering the last five words of Unit 2 in the vocabulary book, doing the review exercises for lessons 1-3 in the Sentence Diagramming Workbook, and going through lesson 4 on attributive adjectives.


See if you can answer all of the following questions. If you cannot, you still need to review:

• What's a modal auxiliary?
• What gets capitalized in a sentence diagram?
• What is an indefinite article?
• Where do articles appear in a sentence diagram?
• What is a predicate nominative?
• How far down does the line separating subject and verb extend?
• How do you indicate a predicate nominative?
• If there is more than one attributive adjective, how is that handled?

Now, the syllabus said that you would be given an MLA worksheet today and would take a quiz on MLA formatting tomorrow. THAT IS NO LONGER TRUE! That has been postponed.


HOMEWORK
1. Write five new sentences on the wikispace.
2. Choose ONE of the questions (1-8) handed out in class, and write a paragraph in response. Your paragraph must be a minimum of six sentences in length, and must contain at least two pieces of evidence.

OVERARCHING QUESTION: Why doesn’t Sponono ever learn to change his ways?

1. Why can Sponono be an excellent gardener on his own, but get into trouble whenever he has to work with someone else?
2. When Sponono quarrels with someone, why he is quick to point out the other person’s faults, even though he has many faults of his own?
3. Why isn’t Sponono able to conceal from the principal the fact that he stole the Anderson’s money? Why can’t he keep his eyes off the stone?
4. Why does Sponono keep asking to work in the principal’s garden?
5. Why does Sponono think that being near the principal will keep him out of trouble, when it has not helped him in the past? Why does he regard it as “unethical” for the principal to remind him of this?
6. Why does Sponono expect the principal’s conduct toward him to surpass “in super-human degree” his own conduct toward the principal?
7. Why does Sponono take it on himself to try to talk him out of sending Johannes Mofoking to prison? Why is he able to make the principal change his mind?
8. Why does Sponono tell the principal that he doesn’t think it is wrong to lie in order to save a person?