February 23, 2009

Homework:
Completing the Sentence
(Section 3 did this in class)

Today:
Sections 1 and 2 continued their discussion of sentences.  Today we focused on finding subjects and verbs in unusual order.  We will probably take a test by Friday.  I have finished grading the ant pieces.  I will return them Tuesday.  I gave a lot of thought as to how to grade the papers.  The problem was they were so different.  There were 4 topics at least.  So basically, I had in my head the level of writing I expect for an A, B, or C, which reflected word choice, sentence structure, and amount of development.  That is subjective of course.  Then I factored in the grammar.  Some papers were lowered a half a grade for grammar mistakes.  Determining if a paper is an A or a B is pretty easy.  Trying to explain it is more difficult because I did not use a rubric.  If you have a question, let me know.

Sections 6 and 7 worked on finding dependent clauses.
Section 3 worked on confusing word pairs like sit and set, lie and lay, rise and raise, and can and may.  We will be practicing various gramatical skills this week as we wait for the other classes to catch up to us.