These are for you to play over break.

http://www.harcourtschool.com/activity/sensort/index_pre.html

http://www.quia.com/rr/126726.html

In case you need to study the sentence types, click here for a KEYNOTE presentation.

Have a GREAT CHRISTMAS and a Happy New Year!!!!

-Mrs. Coller

Yesterday---
Direct Object: SUBJECT acts on this
    Example:  Turner cut the mullet.
                    (Turner is the SUBJECT, and he acts on the mullet.)

Indirect Object: Receives the action
    Example:  I threw Fluffy the ball.
                    (I is the SUBJECT.  "I" is acting on "ball".  Fluffy receives the throwing.  -->Fluffy is the IO.)

Object of the Preposition:  Noun that goes with the preposition.
    Example:  I gave the ball to Sophie.
                    (The only preposition here is "to".  "Sophie" goes with "to", so "Sophie" must be the OP.

Today---
QUIZ on nous, verbs, prepositions, objects.

Have a great weekend!!
-Mrs. Coller

To simplify your life:
Action Verbs:  Depict action of the subject
Examples:  I ran to the store.  After the rain stopped, I jumped in the puddles.

Helping Verbs:  Paired with a verb to help the verb in a sentence.
Examples:  I am planning a party.  Those nasty squirrels have eaten my garden.  The dogs were chewing their toys.

Linking Verbs:  Join the subject and predicate of the sentence.
Examples:  The boy is scared.  That was a delicious pie.  The hallway is muddy from the students' wet boots.

Does that help clarify??

-Mrs. Coller

Hello, Folks.

I am excited about reading your MOMENTS, but a thought keeps nagging me in the back of the head.  Mid-Terms are coming up!  What do we have to study, you ask??  Here it is:

1. Terms - allusion, resolution, convention, figurative language, metaphor, simile, apostrophe, pun
2. Study Sheet for Grammar on the mid-term
3. (I will work with you all about these when we are finished with TFA.)
   

In class today, we are going over the TFA questions from chapters 16-20.  (Remember, you did these in groups.)

Today we were in literary circles discussing chapters.  Click here for the questions.  Make sure you get the info from another students if you were absent.

Tomorrow, Mrs. New, Mr. New's mother, will be your teacher.  She will remind you that there are more chapter summaries due Monday, and she will give you time to write your MOMENT, also due Monday.  If you need an example of a moment, see below for mine; I wrote it a couple days ago.

-Mrs. Coller

Most of the students will be going to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe today at Syracuse Stage.

TOMORROW:
**Up through the end of chapter 20 is due.  Tomorrow, there will be a discussion day where you will be working in groups.  You need to know the story so far in order to do this.

-Mrs .Coller

"Those who have stories written about them should also participate in the making of their own stories." -Chinua Achebe

Today in class, we discussed our stories, or rather our moments.  There are pieces of our lives that, if explained properly, give an in-depth look at the life we chose to live.  This is one of my stories:

When Mom and Daddy went to play cards with their friends, their two little blonde girls would be put in the car and driven across Durhamville to spend time with our grandparents .  On this day, they debated whether to leave us or not because I had been ill during the day, probably a winter-time cough.  Normally, I would be fairly bored at Grandma and Grandpa's house because the toys we had to play with had been the exact toys my cousins and my sister and I had played with for the last ten years, but today I was content, in my feverish stupor, to sit on the green 60s carpet that covered the hard wood floor in front of the fire place.  I stared into the flames, feeling the warmth heat my cheeks.  If anyone had touched them which I am sure my grandmother did several times to check my temperature, they would have felt like flames.  Too lazy to stand up from my cozy spot, I crawled the five feet to the couch and pulled my pilled pink blanket toward me; I knew it would serve as a barrier against the cooler air on my back.  My red and pink flowered rectangle of a pillow lay tattered at the couch's feet, so I dragged that over toward the fire, too.  In time, I fell into a sort-of sleep.  I probably dreamed something, but I never have remembered my dreams.  It could have been an hour or three hours, but enough time for a card game must have passed.  The chime of the silver bell on the back door brought me back to the present.  I breathed in my dad's voice, in its low tones, as he and Mom spoke to grandma about my sister and I.  His footsteps came close and I could feel the movement of the floor under me as he stood above me.  I knew he was looking down, but I kept my eyes closed so that he would think I was still sleeping.  Maybe he would believe me since my breath was still coming deep from my belly.  He knelt beside me.  I felt the familiar scratch of his hard working fingers gently touching my forehead as he brushed aside stray yellow strands from my face.  If I stayed still, I knew he would keep doing it.  "My pretty girl", he whispered.  Minutes passed before he carried me to the car still wrapped snugly in my kindergarten blanket.  The pillow would probably stay on the floor next to Grandma and Grandpa's fireplace as Mom and Daddy talked softly on the way back to our house, a whole three minutes.  I hoped I would be carried inside and to my bed, too.

Hello, Folks!

Today we focused again on NOUNS for a bit, finding nouns in our text again together.  The class did pretty well, so I hope they do just as well with the rest of the parts of speech when we get there.  We also discussed SUBJECT and PREDICATE.

The SUBJECT of a sentence is what or whom the sentence is about.

The PREDICATE tells something about the subject, possibly what the subject is doing or what is happening with the subject.

Example:

The cow  walked into the barn.  Subject: "THE COW"  Predicate: "WALKED INTO THE BARN"

You could even make the subject MUUUUCH LOOONNGGERRR.

Example:

The purple cow that escaped Mr. Farmer's field last year during the really dark summer night in the middle of August walked into the neighbors barn to get some undeserved but great tasting hay.

Subject: "The purple cow that escaped Mr. Farmer's field last year during the really dark summer night in the middle of August:

Predicate: "walked into the neighbors barn to get some undeserved but great tasting hay"

See if you can figure out the subject and predicate for the following sentences.

Once upon a time, a little provincial girl from a little provincial town found her lost father in the middle of the dark woods.  She bravely tried to rescue him by bringing him to a nearby castle, where she thought that they could get shelter from the storm and possibly a warm bed to sleep in until her father recovered.  Unfortunately, the bitter and violent owner of the palace, a dark and sinister beast, would not allow her to utilize his wealth and riches without payment.  She was forced to stay as a prisoner in the castle until the Beast had determined that the price of his hospitality had been duly paid.

I will not be here tomorrow, so you will have to bring your ORBs.  Don't forget!  (Put it on Facebook; tell your friends.)

-Mrs. Coller