IEW U.S. History - Week Fifteen

Week Fifteen

Put away your white boards and find a pencil.

Hand out vocab test – 10 minutes

Get out your U.S. History Student book and your SRN.

Today, we will be learning how to add drama to your report. We will be adding dramatic openers and closers to the beginning and end of the report.

These are complete sentences that will open your report. Their purpose is to grab your readers’ attention and make them want to read on.

Turn to page 46 in your SRN. We will be reading over different types of dramatic openers.

Now turn to page 95 in your History student book. Let’s read over these openers, and you tell me which type each is.

Who can give me an example of an opener that they may want to use for their report?

Just a word of caution. You may have to add another sentence or two to connect your dramatic opener to the beginning of your report. That’s ok.

Now, once you’ve chosen a dramatic opener, you should try to add a final clincher to the end of your report that reflects or repeats the general ideas or words of your dramatic opener. The opener and closer with tie your report together.

(Read the opening part of the report on page 95. Try to come up with a clincher that would reflect that – p. 96) You may also need to add some words or a sentence to transition to the final clincher.

Read “Polishing the Rough Draft” on p. 96. (Turn with me and write down our ideas.)

Penned thoughtfully

Drafted meticulously

Composed masterfully

Completed diligently

Framed painstakingly

It would also be tempting to use the word said or says in this report. But remember, it is a banned word. What are some words we can use instead? (look on p. 21 of your SRN)

Now, let’s add some –ly words to these verbs.

Also, in your rough draft, look for places to add quality adjectives to describe nouns such as colonists, King George, and the Declaration. Before you begin your final draft, try to get your rough draft as good as you can get it.

The last thing to add to your report is a Bibliography. Moms, it is up to you whether you want the younger students to do one of these or not.

Turn to p. 18 in your SRN.

Use this page as an example when writing your bibliography. A bibliography simply tells the reader where you got your information. It is appropriate to give credit where credit is due. This is especially important when you are using direct quotes.

Assignment: Write your final draft this week. Turn it in next Monday.

Also, we will start next week on our Faces of History Project. We will be taking several weeks to write a research paper on a famous person from the American Revolution. This could be a political figure or an artist, a writer, or a preacher.

This week, choose who you will be writing about and see if you can find some information about that person. You can look in encyclopedias, history textbooks, short children’s book, reference book, or Internet article. (If you use the internet, you can only use it as one source and it cannot be Wikipedia.)

IEW U.S. History - Week Fourteen

IEW – Week Fourteen

Put away your white boards and pull out U.S. History Student book and SRN.

This week, we will be learning how to add direct quotes from the source text into the report. First of all, you will be using quotation marks to set off the quotation from your own words. Turn in your SRN to page 67. This page will tell you what you need to know this week as you add in direct quotes. Refer to it in order to make sure you’re using the quotation marks correctly.

Something else that may be useful in this lesson is the use of the ellipsis. Some of the passages that you may want to quote from the D of I are quite lengthy. You may choose to quote only the key phrases of such passages. To do this, you must place an ellipsis, or three periods in a row, where the words that you are leaving out should be.

“ …all men are created equal…with certain unalienable Rights…Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Notice that you will put no space before or after the ellipsis.

Today is the day to talk about grammar, apparently. Turn to p. 63. We’ll be talking about how to use colons and semicolons.

Read 3a. In the first example, the list is disconnected from the sentence pattern. The sentence is complete before the list. Therefore, we would use a colon before the list.

In the next two examples, the lists are part of the sentence patterns, either the DO or the PN. The sentence would not make sense without them, so we do NOT use a colon.

Read 3b., 3c., and 3d.

If you feel like your child needs to work on those some more, there are worksheets in the SRN for them to complete beside each of those pages. (62, 64, 68)

Finally, you will be having a vocab test next week, so let’s go over some vocab words.

(Play game with two teams answering questions on cards.)

Declaration of Independence Paper Assignment

Level B

Week 13 Write KWOs and then fused KWOs for three topics (lessons 14/15, p. 88-91 & 94).

Week 14 Write rough draft for the three paragraphs using all elements of style learned to date, including grammar rules we’ll be learning in week 14 (lessons 14/15). Make sure you leave space to add in corrections and dramatic openers and closers that we’ll be learning in week 15.

Week 15 Add dramatic openers and closers to rough draft. Polish your rough draft. Write final draft; include bibliography. Follow checklist on p. 99. Label your paper appropriately.

Level A (It is up to your mother which you choose to do.)

Week 13 Write KWOs and then fused KWO for paragraph about Thomas Jefferson (substitute texts ebook handout).

Write rough draft, using all the elements of style that you have learned (according to mom).

Week 14 Write KWOs and then fused KWO for paragraph about The Contents of the Declaration (lessons 14/15, p. 94).

Write rough draft, same as above.

Week 15 Add dramatic openers and closers to the two-paragraph rough draft. Polish your rough draft. Write final draft. (Include bibliography if your mom wants you to.) Follow checklists on handout

IEW U.S. History - Week Twelve

IEW – Week 12

Turn to page 67 in your SRN. (Go over quotation marks)

At home, this week, before you add any dialogue to your story, go over the practice section on page 68. There are answers in the teacher’s guide.

Now, look at page 75 in your SRN. (Go over invisible who/which)

Try to include at least one invisible who/which in your assignment this week. Just be sure to mark it, or I won’t know it’s there (it’s invisible).

Now that we know about our new Elements of Style, let’s look at our assignment for this week. Just a reminder, this new assignment is for the older students, only. Younger students, continue to work on your Boston Tea Party story. Just include these new stylistic techniques that we’ve studied today. However, please listen as I teach the older students. You might learn something, too.

(Read through p. 72 – 74. Fill out as much of the outlines as possible.)

IEW U.S. History - Week Eleven

IEW – Week Eleven

Vocab quiz.

Grade it.

Decorations

So far, we’ve learned about once kind of decoration – alliteration. Can anyone give me an example of alliteration?

This week, we will be adding three more decorations – 3sss, similes, and metaphors.

The 3sss

3sss stands for three short staccato sentences. (You could also call this a 3 VSS.) Each of these three short sentences will not have more than five words. They will also be right next to each other.

Turn to page 43 in your SRN. Let’s read over the section about 3sss together. Give Caesar example.

I would like to hear an idea of a place that we could add a 3sss in our Boston story.

Similes and Metaphors

OK, now turn to page 44 and 45 in your SRN. We will look at similes and metaphors.

Who can give me an example of a simile and a metaphor in our Boston Tea Party story?

Assignment

Younger students, you will be adding two decorations to your entire paper. You don’t want to over-use decorations. You’ll be writing paragraph two of the Boston Tea party. Don’t forget, you also only have to use each element of style once in your entire paper. And don’t forget to include words that appeal to the senses.

Older students, you will be adding three decorations to your paper this week. You will also be writing your final draft of this paper and handing it in on Monday. Don’t forget to mark your elements of style and to include a final checklist.

IEW U.S. History - Week Ten

IEW – Week Ten

Narrative Stories

(Collect papers)

This week we get to do something that is very fun. We are going to learn how to write a story. The best way to learn to write a story is to read what someone else has written, break it down into its essential elements, and rewrite it in your own words. After you’ve done that a few times, you’ll get the feel of how a story should be written, and you can write your own.

So far, you’ve learned two methods for note-taking – taking keywords from every sentence, and choosing and picking interesting facts from a source text to write a report. Note-taking for a narrative story is a little bit different.

Look at page 9 in your SRN. You’ll notice that there are no topic sentences or clinchers. This is because narrative stories happen through time. You progress through the story. Topic sentences and clinchers would make the story seem choppy and unnatural.

However, even though the paragraphs don’t have topics, they do have purpose. This is what is indicated on the story sequence chart. The three parts of any narrative story are: setting and characters, conflict or plot, and climax and resolution. For now, we are going to write one paragraph for each purpose. After you’re used to that for a while, these can be expanded. If you notice, every novel or movie you watch has these elements. They may be presented differently each time, but they’re always there. The story would make sense without all of these elements being present.

Part 1: The first elements of the model are setting, characters, and background.

Stories usually begin by introducing their readers to the time and place of the story. This is called the setting. Is the story taking place in present-day America, in medieval Europe, or on a distant planet in the future? It’s important to let your reader know the setting early in the story.

It is also important to let your reader know whom the story is about – or the characters. Spend some time at the beginning of the story describing the main characters so that the readers will feel as if they know them.

Then, before you dive into the problem in the story, give a little bit of background information.

These three elements – setting, characters, and background – will be found in some form at the beginning of any well-written story.

Part 2: Conflict and Plot

For a story to be interesting, you must move into the next crucial element – the conflict. This is the problem, want, or need of the main character(s). Stories without some sort of problem to overcome or need to be met are not very interesting.

Most of the story is spent on how the conflict is dealt with: what the characters do, say, think, or feel with respect to the conflict. This is known as the plot.

Part 3: Climax and Resolution

If there is a conflict or problem, there must also be a way to solve it. We call the event that leads to the problem being solved the climax of the story. It is often the most exciting part of the story.

The result of the climax, or how the problem gets worked out, is the resolution. This usually includes life getting back to normal, or to a new normal.

There is one more element of any well-written story. It is the theme or moral. The characters and/or the readers should have learned something from the events of the story. A theme or moral gives the story a sense of purpose. Without it, a reader may feel that there was no point to the story. In a fable, morals are stated, but in most stories, they are simply implied.

This week, we are going to practice noting the key elements of the story sequence chart from source text stories. We will do this by answering specific story sequence chart questions, and putting those answers into a KWO. We will then use our KWO to write our own version of the same story. There is freedom in stories to add originality. You can change some of the details, such as the characters. However, the story must still be about the historical event described in the text.

Turn to page 64. We are going to go through this story and fill out the story sequence questionnaire. We may use more than one line for an answer, or we may combine two answers onto one line. Also, the answers can be in any order.

Go over page 64. Give time for students to fill in the answers.

When you are rewriting this story at home, you may change the characters and background information, if you wish. The setting must stay the same, though, because the story is about the Boston Tea Party.

Outline pages 66 and 68.

Brainstorm just a little on each page. (If there is NO time, tell moms to brainstorm with their kids at home, using their teacher’s manual for a guide.)

Assignment

For younger students, I am going to make this a four week assignment. They will write one paragraph a week for the first three weeks, and write the final the last week. I am doing this because this is a lot to write, and I don’t know how to shorten it and still make it make sense. Also, the next assignment follows the same pattern, but with a different story. Now, I would like them to include the new elements of style that we study the next four weeks. However, and this is important, they only have to include each element of style once in the whole paper, not once in each paragraph.

Older students, your assignment will be to write all three paragraphs in a rough draft this week. The next week, we will be adding some new elements of style and writing the final draft.

Examples of setting, characters, and background:

Lord of the Rings –

S - Set in middle earth (much like medieval times).

C - There are many characters, but only the main character and his friends are introduced at the beginning of the story (Frodo).

B - As the story unfolds, you find out the history of the ring of power.

Cars –

S - Set in modern America with a twist (all people are cars).

C - Main characters are Lightning, two other race cars, and Mater.

B - You find out pretty quickly that Lightning is a rookie who’s winning a lot.

The Incredibles –

S - Set in America in the 50s? Hard to tell exactly when.

C - Main characters are introduced immediately – Mr. Incredible, Elastagirl, Frozone, and Syndrome.

B - Background is the first 5 – 10 minutes of the movie and shows Mr. Incredible marry Elastagirl, then have to go into hiding.

Pride and Prejudice –

S - Set in England in the early 1800s.

C - Main characters are Elizabeth and her family, Darcy and his friend.

B - Background is established right away as Elizabeth’s mother begs Elizabeth’s father to go and meet the new bachelor in town. You find she has five daughters, no sons, and that, when her husband dies, she must move out of her home. So, her daughters must marry rich men.

Examples of conflict:

Lord of the Rings – The evil lord wants to take over and destroy the earth.

Cars – Lightning McQueen needs to get out of Radiator Springs.

The Incredibles – Syndrome wants to destroy all the supers and take over the world.

Pride and Prejudice – Elizabeth needs to marry for love.

Examples of climax:

Lord of the Rings – The final battle at Mordor, while Frodo and Sam climb the Mountain of Doom.

Cars – The final race for the Piston Cup, in which there is a terrible accident.

The Incredibles – The Incredibles family, along with Frozone battles the giant robot.

Pride and Prejudice – Elizabeth tours the home of the man she rejected, only to find that he’s actually at home.

Examples of Resolution:

Lord of the Rings – The ring is destroyed; Aragorn is made King; Frodo and Sam return to the Shire.

Cars – Lightning realizes that winning isn’t everything and helps the older car to the finish line; he moves to Radiator Springs.

The Incredibles – They beat the robot, return home, defeat Syndrome, go to one of Dash’s races.

Pride and Prejudice – Darcy rescues Elizabeth’s family from ruin; Elizabeth and Darcy marry and move to Pemberley.

Examples of Moral:

Lord of the Rings – Good will triumph over evil, as long as there are brave men and women who defend the good.

Cars – Fame and money don’t mean as much as having good friends.

The Incredibles – Family is more important that being adored by the public.

Pride and Prejudice – Well, pride and prejudice can ruin your life. Take time to learn someone’s character; don’t just make assumptions.