Making Sense of Sentences

While some were discovering new things about familiar words this afternoon, one group introduced us to a brand new word.  Zoe found it in a book she is reading.  The word is sycophant.  It is defined as a self server; one who uses flattery to win favor with one who yields influence.  We might call such a person a “yes-man”.  It was decided that this person would not be considered sincere and should not be believed.  In Zoe’s book, the sycophant is not a person but a creature.

When it was time to practice our grammar, it felt right to incorporate our new word!  Here is another example of how we use knowledge, logic, and reason to analyze and better understand the structure of a sentence.

4 thoughts on “Making Sense of Sentences

  1. Thank you so much for these videos. They are very helpful to me in working with my students. I have a few questions: I am creating my own version of a grammar examiner, but wonder if you share or sell yours? I would like to lay eyes on it, if only for a model. I want my students to build their own as we go, not just be handed a resource. But having that resource for myself would be helpful.

    Secondly, I am teaching in this order and would like your thoughts:
    Subject/predicate, nouns, verbs and verb types, sentence types;
    Independent and dependent clauses, direct objects;
    Determiners, adjectives and adverbs and their relationship to nouns and verbs, subject compliments;
    Simple sentences with and without compounded nouns and verbs;
    Conjunctions and all sentence structure, comma versus semi colon usage;
    Prepositional phrases;
    Other phrases, such as appositives and infinitives;
    Gerunds and participles?

    Lastly, I can’t see your charts you reference. Will you share those or video record what they are?

    Please advise on any modifications you suggest.

    Thank you for breathing life into grammar. I am a SLP, and many of my students have significant grammar weaknesses that negatively impact their comprehension and writing skills. They are completely stuck in simple sentence mode!

    Rita

  2. Etymonline is about tracing the history of words to show how they have come to be written as they are now in English.

    Of course, the words are written with the alphabet itself, but the alphabet itself isn’t a word, so there is no entry in Etymonline.

    However ….

    The word ‘alphabet’ IS in Etymonline, and very interesting it is too. The fact that ‘alPHabet’ has the digraph ‘ph’ in it is a near certain sign that it has a Greek origin, and that turns out to be the case: the first two letters of the Greek alphabet are called ‘alpha’ and ‘beta’.

    I happen to know that Mrs Steven is currently doing the ’Transcribing Greek’ Spellinar and that she has a copy of a song for learning the Greek alphabet. So how about asking her to share it with you? Then you can learn the Greek alphabet itself

    Who knows – soon you could all be writing the Greek roots of English words in their original Greek spelling! Then you will really become real spellers.

    Χαιρετε μαθηται της ὀρθογραφιας !

  3. Mrs. Steven, look at this at The Online Etymology Dictionary
    Search:
    A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
    No matching terms found.metal

    Isn’t that weird?

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