Slightly Late Friday Post

Reminders:

Research rough draft is due Tuesday the 12th.
Book report (or other project) is due April 19th now. That's next Tuesday.
Next (real) vocabulary quiz: Friday the 15th.

Our last five word parts for List Twelve:

cyt means "cell" like erythrocytes and leukocytes, red and white blood cells respectively
diplo means "double" like diplomacy and diplopia (double vision)
eco means "house" but I'll also take "environment" on the test like economy, ecology, and ecosystem
idio means "peculiar" like idiosyncrasy and idiom
fil means "thread" like filament and filiferous (thread carrying)

We also took our List 6 test on Friday. Students are still writing the ones they miss five times each (word part and definition) and drawing a word part picture for each.

We learned about verbals today using the verbal gerbils--Gerry the Gerund, P-Dawg the Participles, and Buzz the Infinitive. It's dorky stuff, but hopefully the jingles will help the students remember these things that the state of Indiana seems to think they should remember.

Verbals are words that are verb forms (-ing words, -ed words, other verb forms) but act like something else in a sentence. So they look like verbs but are doing the jobs of nouns, adjectives, or adverbs.

Gerunds always end in -ing and are nouns. Playing basketball is my favorite form of exercise. Playing looks like a verb but it's the subject noun in that sentence.

Participles are the -ing or -ed form of a verb, but they are adjectives in the sentences. The barking dog scared me. Barking looks like a verb but is tells "what kind" for the dog and is therefore and adjective. Barking ferociously, the dog chased me down the alley. Barking there is still an adjective. The chopped lumber was stacked neatly by the barn. Chopped in that sentence is also telling "what kind" for the lumber, making it an adjective.

Finally, infinitives. They're the easiest because they have the word "to" in front of them. It's "to" and a verb. They're used as nouns, adjectives, or adverbs in sentences. I would like to ski down that mountain. To ski is an activity (a thing--a noun) in that sentence. He's creating a quiz to see if his students learned about verbals. To see isn't the verb there. It's modifying the verb creating which makes it an adverb.

We'll continue working on verbals most of this week.