*Badger Claws* Clauses

A tip of the hat to retired teacher, Mrs. Ranney for this repost!

Mrs. Yollis' students have been reading about a Chumash boy named Badger Claws. It's been a great way to learn about the Chumash culture! We've also started learning how to improve our writing using dependent clauses. 

What are dependent clauses?

Dependent clauses start with special words:

After, Before, Since, While, When, If, During.

A dependent clause ends with a comma and cannot stand alone as a sentence. It must be followed by an independent clause, which is a sentence that can stand alone!

Here are some excellent examples of sentences with dependent clauses from our story about Badger Claws. 

1. If mischievous Badger Claws had not gone into the hot sweathouse, he would not have been caught by the Shaman!



2. After the Shaman left the brave Badger Claws in the high mountains, Badger Claws took a nap.



3. If Badger Claws shoots the fluffy, furry rabbit, he will have to skin it, clean it, and cook it before he eats it.



4. Since Badger Claws couldn't shoot a furry rabbit, he practiced shooting down the bumpy trail.



5. After Badger Claws shot a furry, little rabbit, he needed to skin the rabbit's soft fur.



6. When Badger Claws woke up in the freezing night,
he saw two monstrous "grizzly bears!"


7. Since brave Badger Claws found out the tracks were littleraccoon tracks, he was laughing like crazy!


8. Before Aged One got home, he devoured several acorn cakes and then lied about it. 

9. During the first two moons, Badger Claws was able to construct an ap, make acorn cakes, and adopt an orphaned raccoon. 


10. While Badger Claws slept, the little raccoon escaped and ate several acorn cakes.  

How did you like our dependent clauses?

If you have a sentence with a dependent clause that you'd like to share, we'd love to read it! (Hey, that was a dependent clause sentence!)

Maybe you can leave a sentence with a dependent clause about your biography subject! 

Again, dependent clauses start with special words: After, Before, Since, While, When, If, During.

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An Array of Compound Words

Today we reviewed compound words. 

First, we watched the BrainPop Jr. video.

Something new to students was the idea of different types of compound words. For this, we stopped by the teacher resources from Spelling City. 

There are THREE different types of compound words, closed, hyphenated, and open compound words! 

Next, Mrs. Yollis got out some compound word cards. Each student was given half of a compound word. The object was to find a student with the other half. Together two students made ONE compound word. 

Once all the compound words were formed, we started making an array to figure out how many compound words we had in all. An array is a multiplication word we recently learned. When you line up objects in equal rows and columns, it makes it easy to get the total, or product. 

The first attempt is shown below. Students thought they had eight rows of four. So, 8 x 4 = 32 compound words.

Students soon realized that we had eight rows. However, some rows had four compound words and some rows had three compound words.  

We did some figuring, and realized we had 30 words.

Once we realized we had 30 words, we started building real arrays. 

6 rows of 5

15 rows of  2

2 rows of 15

3 rows of 10

What arrays did we miss? 

Leave a comment using at least FOUR compound words! 

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Mrs. Yollis' class has been working on learning about

Mrs. Yollis' class has been working on learning about 

what it takes to create a 

SENTENCE!

Photo by Mrs. Yollis 

We have learned that it takes two parts: 

a SUBJECT 

and 

a PREDICATE.

The subject tells the person or thing the sentence is about.

The predicate tells what the subject is or does.
The predicate always includes a verb!

Why don't you try creating a special sentence or two of your own?

Here are some possible subjects:

Buck...
Mrs. Yollis' students...
Panda and Beverly...

On her first day at school, Ramona...

Last Tuesday, our buddies...

Here are some possible predicates:

...took a tour of our classroom. 

...chased a duck across the pond.

...are positive people who persevere!

...worked together to learn how to create compatible numbers

...thought Mrs. Binney would give her a present.

After creating your sentence and typing it into your comment, tell us what the subject is and what the predicate is, or if you want to give us a challenge...Ask us to tell you what the subject and predicate are!

This grammar task is due by Friday! 

subject: This grammar task

predicate: is due by Friday! 

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Verbs, Today and Yesterday

We have been learning about verbs. 

According to the dictionary:

verb

vərb/

noun

GRAMMAR

plural noun: verbs

1. 1.

   a word used to describe an action, state, or occurrence, and forming the main part of the predicate of a sentence, such as hear, become, happen.

Although we have done some worksheets with verbs, we've also collected verbs and placed them on our Daily 5 Word Work board. Notice the past tense verbs are in categories! Can you name each past tense category? 

For homework last night, everyone left a blog comment using at least three past tense verbs. Today we looked the the verbs in the comment section. We thought about the present tense of the verb and the past tense of the verb. 

Here are some examples of our verbs. 

Some past tense verbs did not follow any of the patterns. 

Those verbs are called irregular past tense verbs. 

Sawyer used the verb dive. Then he used the past tense dived. 

We were not sure if that was correct. So, we used the dictionary!

Is it dived or dove? Which is correct?

Leave a comment using at least two past tense verbs. Which category are your verbs from?

What is your favorite verb pattern?

What are some irregular verbs?

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