Week 1 Update and Notes

Hi Parents!

I owe you all a big THANK YOU for all the grace you extended to me today during class!  Thank you for your patience with me while we settle into this new course!

We have all the English flashcards cut out and bagged up for those of you who did not get to pick up your cards today.  These will be a great way to review important EEL terms we will cover over the year.

Some follow up for EEL:

• Practice those charts!  The students need to work diligently on having charts A & B memorized.  Some of the parts of Chart A I didn't get to cover very well are the 8 Parts of Speech and the 5 Parts of a Sentence.  Review these with your students, as well as the parts we covered in detail in class (the structure, purpose, & patterns).  Quiz them orally and make them copy the charts by hand.  Work on these charts at least once a day.  A lot of it is not going to make sense to them, but they need to know it.  It will all start making sense once we start breaking down the big puzzle.
• For Chart B, sit down and go over it with your students.  Discuss each purpose and pattern (the structure is the same for all - Simple).
• Each week there are editing exercises at the end of each lesson.  You will find week 1's editing exercise on page 31 in the EEL guide.  Follow the instructions on the page and see how many mistakes your student can catch in the passage.
• Don't stress!  So, we hit a lot of topics today, right?  It's a lot to take in.  We'll do another bird's-eye-view of the course next week, then we'll start drilling down.  Don't worry - at the end of the year, your student is going to know every inch of Chart A (including what each little word/letter combo/line mean!).
• When your students are copying their charts, please make sure they are copying the lines exactly like they are shown on the chart.  The vertical line between the subject & predicate must extend below the line underneath the sentence structure.  Any line that is diagonal must go in the direction as shown on the chart.  This will not make sense to them now, and that's OK.  It will make perfect sense once we get into diagramming around week 7.  So when you check for accuracy, don't just check letters - check lines, too.
• Reminder: the scope and sequence of EEL can be found on page 18 of the EEL guide.
• The Week-at-a-Glance suggested home schedule can be found on page 22 of the EEL guide.

Some follow up for IEW:

• The assignment for this week is the two poems in Lessons 1 & 2 in the Ancient History-Based Writing Lessons Student Book.  Have your students do the brainstorming for quality adjectives on page 9 and strong verbs on page 13.  After they have brainstormed, get them to complete the poem using words they have chosen from their brainstorming pages.  Don't forget to remind them of alliteration and -LY words!  If they would like to illustrate their poems after writing them, that is always encouraged!
• Bring 2 copies of the poem(s) next week for class - one for you to keep and follow along with the student and one to turn in for their writing book.
• The instructions for the stylistic techniques can be found in your TWSS book on pages 17-18.
• Don't forget to download the student resource notebook from the IEW website!  Follow the instructions on the blue sheet in the front of your Ancient History-Based Writing Lessons Student Book.
• Vocabulary cards are in the back of the student book!

Coming next week:

• We will continue our overview of EEL as a whole
• We will focus in on verbs
• We will learn how to make Key Word Outlines in IEW

Please keep track of what work your student completes for Essentials this week!  Next week I will have the ticket tally sheets, and we will go over what your student has completed and award tickets as needed.

A few housekeeping notes: next week when class is over, I would greatly appreciate it if you (and/or the students) can help me get the room back in order the way Lakeside keeps it.  This includes collapsing and stacking the chairs and moving the tables back to their correct rooms/places.

I cannot even tell you what a wonderful job all your students (and you!) did today!  We have such a fun class, and I am so excited about this year!

As usual, if you have any questions, please email me!  Thank you all for your participation and excitement today!