March 23/24, 2009
Pick up your composition books.
1. Test Preparation exercise -- Reading for main idea and details. (If you were absent, see me for a copy of the practice test questions.)
2. When finished, write in your composition book: Whom do you consider a hero and why?
3. Receive Book-of-the-Month Approvals and Reading Logs.
Look for a book you could highly recommend to other students.
We will go to the media center next time.
4. Sentenced! (Here comes the Judge! Oh, Brother. . .)
Sentenced to the "chain gang," chaining together words and punctuation to create complete, correct sentences.
Tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth to yourself about what you understand and don't understand about sentences.
How much do YOU know about sentences?
Verbs -- the Core of the sentence, the most important part.
Subjects of the sentence (nouns or their replacements) -- Answer (or ask) the question who or what is the verb giving information about?
If you were absent, see me for the worksheet students filled out while watching a PowerPoint about sentences. You may ask a classmate for the answers to fill in your paper.
We played a game to practice identifying subjects and verbs.
Coming Attractions:
-- Heroes and the novel Stand Tall
Superman? Vietnam War, being different, going through hard times, helping others
Who is a hero? Why? What are the qualities of a hero? Can you be a hero?
-- What is the difference between an independent clause (a sentence) and a dependent clause?
-- More test preparation
The etymology of the word Sentence:
c.1290, "doctrine, authoritative teaching," from O.Fr. sentence (12c.), from L. sententia "thought, meaning, judgment, opinion," from sentientem, prp. of sentire "be of opinion, feel, perceive" (see sense). Loss of first -i- in L. by dissimilation. Meaning "punishment imposed by a court" is from c.1300; that of "grammatically complete statement" is attested from 1447, from notion of "meaning," then "meaning expressed in words." The verb meaning "to pass judgment" is recorded from c.1400.
