EASter
I like easter. My favarite thing about it is hunting eggs. The eggs represent Gods blood. The backround represents sin. East is great. Don't you think? The real reason of easter is God rising again. (by Emperor)
Eester
I like Eeaster for a lots of stuff. The main thing of Eeaster is Jesus rising again. It's fun to die eggs too. It has nice chocolate. Cute bunnys are there too. I like Eeaster is a nice holoday. There is also good books in Eeaster. (by Elf)
Some thoughts:
The words "Easter" and "favorite" are going to have to be added to next week's spelling list. Does that mean the children will spell them correctly next time they're writing on the subject? No. I keep doing these writing prompts and chatting a bit about grammar and whatnot afterward. We've gotten to the point where we can do one short paragraph as above. All the sentences at least vaguely relate to the topic, which is a big accomplishment.
How should I help the children incorporate better sentence structure? I'm concerned because they speak this way as well. It isn't as though I'm telling the children that I like Easter for a lots of stuff in my usual day-to-day speech. Yet, they get it from somewhere. I know we have autism in the family and it may express itself in language difficulties, but I don't want to just blame all of our language snags on that.
I have some of those exercise workbooks and I think that a short daily practice will be beneficial. We do our journaling once each week and learn grammar from Bob Jones. The strange thing is that these children can tell a noun from an adverb, a declarative sentence from a command, distinguish between linking and auxiliary verbs (they're called "helping" verbs right now, but still) and yet their sentences lack good structure.
I made it through college barely knowing a noun from a verb. I "just know" my spelling, and I can "just tell" when a sentence is wonky. I might correct a poor sentence without knowing that the thing I fixed was a subject-verb agreement problem. I'm learning the grammar along with my children so now I can tell them WHY they need the corrections.
Some of the worksheets are rather problematic, however. They may ask things like, why did Sara's mom think that Sara had "ants in her pants?" And I would get an answer about bugs.
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Look Out, Dad!!
My father is the purple dot above the blue weather station. He's juuust outside Milton's evacuation zone. Well! My brother and I jus...
PS Yes, we need a theology lesson as well. I know that the Easter egg does not represent the blood of Christ.
ReplyDeleteWe did copywork and, when they were comfortable with than, studied dictation which covered grammar and spelling. If you run a search on copywork and studied dictation at my blog, it will turn up some posts on that topic!
ReplyDeleteHi, I followed over from another blog...Very interesting and cool blog! I know exactly what you mean about just "knowing" nouns verbs and sentence structure. I think it is because I read so much..Funny, my kids are such literal thinkers-if I suggested someone having ants in their pants-they would freak out:)
ReplyDeleteI think that the more a child reads great literature and books full of lovely vocabularly they'll become solid writers in time.
ReplyDeleteThat's my theory anyway.
I think these little paragraphs are great. As a teacher, I suggest making the corrections for them, and having the kids recopy them, making the indicated corrections. Then they can draw a picture to illustrate it.
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