IEW U.S. History - Week Two

Hangman on board while on break…

How were writing assignments?

Two volunteers to read poem?

Remember that our first way to “dress up” our writing is with adjectives. Not just any adjectives, quality adjectives. Do you remember the adjectives we banned?

Hangman game.

Today, two more dress-ups. There’s a complete list of dress-ups on page 5 of SRN.

We’ve learned about quality adjectives. Today, we’ll add strong verbs and –ly words.

First strong verbs. Just like there are boring adjectives, there are boring, overused verbs, as well. The very best verbs show action. Look at this sentence:

The boy came into class.

Does “came” show much action? Can you picture “came”? On its own, it doesn’t communicate very much. How about this one?

The boy dashed into class.

Can you picture “dashed” better than “came”? What does it communicate that “dash” doesn’t?

Let’s look at banned verbs on page 6. Here are the verbs that you may not use during this writing course: go/went, come/came, say/said, get/got, see/saw/look.

However, there are lists of replacements on pages 20 – 23 of your SRN. Turn to page 20 and let’s do some brainstorming. Looking at our sentence on the board. What words could you use about the boy’s coming to class if he was: (write on board)

Excited?

Dreaded coming?

Late for class?

Trying to sneak in?

Those are great examples of strong verbs.

You can really see how using strong verbs can best communicate what you want your reader to picture.

There is another type of verb that we want to avoid. Read the poem with me on page 14.

What type of verbs are used in that poem?

Is and are are do not show any action. They are state-of-being verbs. The other state-of-being verbs are: am, are, is, was, were, be, being, been. We can’t cut these completely out of our writing. We just want to make sure that we don’t over-use them. If you can replace them in your sentences, you should. Read new poem.

What type of verbs are these? Action. They tell what the subjects are doing, not what they are.

OK. For our second dress-up, we’re going to look at –ly words. These are called adverbs. We can make your verbs even more interesting by using words that describe them.

Look at page 25. Let’s see if we can find some words to describe the verbs in our poem.

Write on board.

For our assignment this week, we’re going to write two poems that both have an action verb in every line. Let’s look at our samples on p. 185-186.

So, let’s do some brainstorming of strong verbs for your poems.

First, picture Native Americans on the shores of America watching the ships of the European explorers coming or watching the explorers stepping onto their new land. Picture the explorers either standing on their ships or landing on the New World.

Brainstorm. Add some –ly words, too.

This week at home: Use the model on p. 15 to write your poems. For first year students, you may write only one poem, if your mother says so. Everyone else will need to write two. Remember not to use the banned verbs. Also, do not use is or are as the main verb. Make sure you use the checklist on p. 17.

Questions?