A Reminder of the March-April Book-of-the-Month Assignment
Your Book-of-the-Month Club Project is due today!Preparing for Core Testing.
Students took a brief practice test for the State Core Test
Practice for Core Test
B1 watched a PowerPoint about Main Idea. If you were absent, see the PowerPoint and other materials at http://cavemanenglish.pbworks.com/Finding-the-Topic-and-Main-Idea
All B-Day classes took notes on topic, main idea, and internal text structures (A-Day did this last time.)
Notes on Finding a Topic
Use these clues when looking for the topic of a passage :
illustrations, captions
titles, headings, subheadings
repeated words
synonyms
pronouns
Notes on Finding or Creating a Main Idea
Main Idea = topic + the idea the author is stating about the topic
Main Idea and Topic Sentence are synonyms.
We usually talk about the "Main Idea" when we are talking about nonfiction.
The "main idea" in fiction is called the theme.
The Main Idea must be a complete sentence.
The Main Idea will NOT be a question. It must be a statement.
Most Common Places in a paragraph or passage to Find the Main Idea:
1. Beginning/First Sentence
2. End/ Last Sentence
3. Middle
4. Not there! This is called Implied or Unstated (Those two words are synonyms.)
___________________________________We learned about using the verbs lay and lie and reviewed subject-verb agreement.
Subject-Verb Agreement
The verbs lay and lie:
verb meaning forms: 1. present, 2, present participle (with helping verb), 3. past, 4. past participle (with helping verb)
"lay" means "to place" forms: 1. lay, 2, laying, 3. laid, 4. laid
"lie" means "to recline" forms: 1. lie, 2. lying, 3. lay, 4. lain
Notes on Lie/Lay Confusions
Lay, laid, laid = to place -- Notice that this verb takes a direct object. That means it is acting on an object. In the following sentences the object is the book.
Present tense (happening right now): I __________ the book on my desk. (lay)
Past tense (happened in the past): Yesterday I __________ the book on my desk. (laid)
Past participle (has happened in the past and may still be happening):
I have _________ that book on my desk every day for a week. (laid)
Lie, lay, lain = to recline -- Notice that this verb does not take a direct object. It is not doing something to an object.
Present tense: I ___________ on the couch right now. (lie)
Past tense: Yesterday I __________ on the couch. (lay)
Past participle: I have ___________ on the couch every day for a week. (lain)
Using the Irregular Verbs Lie and Lay -- See this post for more information.
Attention B4:
Finding the Topic and Main Idea in a Passage/Paragraph
If you were absent or would like to review, find downloads of materials used in class at
http://cavemanenglish.pbworks.com/Finding-the-Topic-and-Main-Idea
The download for B4 is here:
Work for B4 to do at home and hand in: (Other classes may do these as practice.)
You could download and print, complete the exercises and hand it in, or complete the exercises and then attach to an email to me.
