Commas -- Appositives & Parenthetical Expressions

1.6 – Appositives

An appositive renames the noun or pronoun it follows.  If omitting the appositive would change the meaning of the sentence, then do not set it apart with commas.  If the “renaming” does not change the meaning, then use commas.

1.7 – Parenthetical Comments

Parenthetical comments are those which can be left out but are included to add color or personality to the sentence.

Exercises:

Insert the commas for the appositives.

1.       Pride and Prejudice a book by Jane Austen is one of my favorite novels.

2.       Houston the largest city in Texas was named after Sam Houston.

3.       The speaker who had risen from his chair to begin his talk fell off the platform.

4.       The athletes for whom the party was given broke into singing the school song.

5.       The dog that ran under the chair was the one who had eaten her shoe.

6.       The truck that changed around the corner finally broke down across the street.

Insert commas for the parenthetical phrases.

1.       Believe it or not I haven’t been home a single night this week.

2.       I know Susan was at the party I spoke with her myself bu she may have left early.

3.       Then I thought oh dear I’ve lost my wallet.

4.       I have an idea let’s call Robert and Jill and take them out for dinner.

5.       Your mother called an oh yes she said you left your history book at home.

Misc. Sentences

1.       The clock which had been ticking very loudly burst a spring and flew off the wall.

2.       Down in the valley where the grass is greener than it is anywhere else you can see the men on tractors and other equipment.

3.       My friends Hannah and Rebecca whom I haven’t seen for six years are coming to visit me this week.

4.       The old car that sat in the driveway all winter was finally hauled away.

5.       The man who broke into our house while we were away was arrested.

Dr. Ben Carson at the National Prayer Breakfast

Many homeschoolers know who Ben Carson is.  He's one of those success stories that we love to give to our children to encourage and inspire them.  Our family has read a couple of biographies and seen the movie Gifted Hands.  We even had the opportunity to hear him speak at a college in our town.

Though this video is not about literature or writing, I felt Dr. Carson was so eloquent about values and about education that I wanted to share it my students and their families.  Follow this link to my personal blog for the C-SPAN video.

Writing 1 Class Notes -- February 6 (Week 4)

Greetings!

We began our class with a discussion about the story behind Groundhog Day.  According to folklore, if a groundhog sees its shadow (in other words, it's a sunny day), he will be frightened and go back into his hole, and winter will last another 6 weeks.  If the day is overcast and the groundhog sees no shadow, we'll have an early spring.  Of course, this is all a moot point in Minnesota where winter sometimes lasts until May!

For our Quick Write, I asked the students to choose an animal and create a national holiday that revolves around that animal.  We had days dedicated to bears, gerbils, hamsters, and monkeys.





Below are our Latin phrases for today.  Since we've done a few of these, some words were a bit familiar.  They are also getting the hang of recognizing derivatives and cognates of the Latin words.  I gave them extra credit if they knew any of the words in the phrases.

acta est fabula -- literally means "the act is the story;"  used as a "The End" for open air plays; related to the words fable and fabulous
a Deo et Rege -- from God and King;
Adeste Fideles -- literally "come faithful ones;" the Latin title for "O Come all ye Faithful."
ad gustum -- to (ones) taste; a term used in old cookbooks

I handed back the rough drafts of the Narrative Essays.  As a combined Grammar and Writing lesson, we discussed common errors in the papers.  We spent quite a bit of time talking about active and passive sentences.  Sentences written in passive form usually use more words to say the same thing than one written with an active verb.  These sentences are not incorrect, but most young writers have to be careful about bogging down their sentences.



The final drafts of their Narrative Essays are due next week.  In addition to including their rough drafts, on a separate page I would like them to write the thesis statement for this essay and the reasons for 5 corrections made from the rough draft.  IF they make corrections/improvements that I didn't mark, they should make mention of those and I will give extra credit.

We started our The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde discussion with small groups.  One table discussed the questions from Chapter 5 while the other one discussed the questions from Chapter 6.  We followed with a whole class discussion of these sections.  They were alert, involved, and insightful.  I'm enjoying their ability to think carefully about literature.  They are to read the next 2 chapters and answer 5 questions from the study guide from either or both sets of questions.

A note on assignments:  Sometimes circumstances keep students from handing in assignments in on time.  Computer and printer issues are pretty common problems.  Busy schedules and illness also play a role.  Since we only meet weekly, it's important that students not get behind, especially with assigned essays.  If a student cannot hand in a paper at class time, I would like them to e-mail their papers to me as soon as they can. In the case of rough drafts, I can then get them corrected, scanned, and returned. However, if assignments are too late, they will not be counted.


Assignments for Next Week:

-- Final Draft of the Narrative Essay

     -- Include rough draft, thesis statement, 5 reasons for corrections

-- Read Chapters 5 & 6

-- Answer 5 questions, choosing from the sets for the two chapters.

This week's blogs:

Class Notes

Passive/Active Sentence Resources

Have a great week!  Stay warm & make wise choices.

Mrs. Prichard

Active and Passive Voice

As young writers work to make their thoughts into sentences that combine into clear essays, they often have a tendency to use too many words in the process.  A common mistake that they make is using passive verbs and writing weak, wordy sentences.  Briefly, in an active sentence the subject of the sentence performs the action of the verb.  In a passive sentence, the subject of the sentence receives the action of the verb.




Examples
Active:  Mrs. Prichard ate lunch.  (The subject is doing the action of the verb.)
Passive:  The lunch was eaten by Mrs. Prichard.  (The verb is receiving the action of the verb.)

Active:  The dog chased the cat.
Passive:  The cat was chased by the dog.

Below are some other on-line resources for further explanation
Purdue's Online Writing Lab
English Club --- has some nice charts
Grammar Girl -- a longer article which addresses stylistic characteristics of active and passive voice.
Wheaton College Writing Center --- includes a section on when to use passive voice.

Writing 1 Class Notes -- January 23 (Week 3)

Greetings!

We had a good, productive class this week and covered a lot of ground.  For our Quick Write, the students were to choose 1 literary character, 1 real person, and 1 place besides Minnesota and write a brief story.  Following their short writing exercise, we had some Latin phrases:  acta sanctorum (acts of the saints), ad astra per aspera (to the stars through difficulties), ad augusta per angusta (to the majestic (the holy place) through grief (the narrow place)).

Continuing with our study of commas, our Grammar lesson concerned introductory elements.  After doing a couple practice sentences, the students were assigned to do the rest as homework.  

We're discussing forming good sentences as a part of the Writing portion of the class.  Given a worksheet, they are to write a bad sentence and then improve it.  On the second half of the worksheet, they're assigned to choose 5 sentences from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and to rewrite them in a different style.  They handed in their rough drafts which I will go over this week and hand back next week.

We discussed chapters 3 and 4 of our book.  We looked at some of the descriptions of the characters and the setting.  They are to continue with chapters 5 and 6.  A reminder:  As they read the book, they are to be filling out the charts for a character and for a theme along with the first page of the vocabulary chart.

Assignments for Next Week:

-- Finish the Grammar worksheet

-- Exercises 1 & 2 of the Building Sentences worksheet

-- Read Chapters 5 and 6 of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

-- Answer 2 questions for each chapter.

This week's blog entries:

Grammar Worksheet

Building Sentences Worksheet

Class Notes

Have a great week!  Stay warm!

Mrs. Prichard

Building Sentences (Rewriting Sentences)

“Sentences are alive.  We experience them in time, and we react to their unfolding as they twist and turn, challenging us, teasing us, surprising us, and sometimes boring or confusing us as we read them… Style is what the writer uses and/or what the reader reads.”

Effective writing anticipates shapes, and satisfies a reader’s need for information.  Sentences that bring ideas and images into clear focus by adding more useful details and explanations are generally more effective than those that are less clearly focused and offer fewer details.

EXERCISE #1

·         Write a vague, unclear sentence about your family’s mealtime.  Don’t worry, this can be a very bad sentence, if you like. 

·         Re-write the sentence in a simple, uncomplicated form with the least amount of details.

·         Now, add some specific words and phrases to describe the situation.

·         Finally, write 2 more sentences to accompany your rewritten one that expand the reader’s understanding about your family’s mealtime.

  

EXERCISE #2

Pick 5 sentences from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  Rewrite it in a completely different style – try making it bare and sparse, or formal and ceremonious, or lushly flowery and descriptive, or emotional.  Write the original sentences with the rewritten version following it.  Include the page number of the original.

Week 3 Grammar Lesson

WEEK 3

1.4 – Introductory Elements

·         If a sentence does not being with the subject, it may open with an introductory element that tells when, where, how, or why the main action of the sentence occurs.  Separate that introductory element from the main part of the sentence with a comma. 

·         Use a comma following phrases that begin with if, when, although, because, and similar words.

·         If the introductory element is short, and the sentence cannot be misread if the comma is omitted, you can omit the comma.  Introductory prepositional phrases are not set off by commas unless it is necessary for a clear understanding of the sentences meaning.

EXERCISES

Underline each introductory element and punctuate the sentence with the appropriate commas.  Be careful to look also for other places in the sentence that require commas. (Hint:  Not all sentences have introductory phrases, and some are compound sentences.)

1.      Discovering the book under the chair she went to the den and read until dinner time.

2.      When I couldn’t find the cookies I ate an apple but my brother ate some candy.

3.      Driving home from the party Paul and I got lost.

4.      Feeling sick Debbie complained about going to school and her mother let her stay home.

5.      Before my aunt came from Chicago we bought tickets to the community play because I was in it.

6.      Agnes gets out her skis whenever it snows.

7.      I think I will go out for dinner when Tom finishes his chores.

8.      After they finished their breakfast they took the dog for a walk and I did the dishes.

9.      Because the road was glazed with ice many cars slipped on the highway and ended up in the ditch.

10.  When I looked through the newspaper I couldn’t find the article she told me about, but I had already seen the information online.