Friday, October 15, 2010

Happy Thanksgiving

Hello!

The week of October 11th was a short week, wasn't it? Monday was Canadian Thanksgiving. (Americans celebrate Thanksgiving in November.) Tuesday was our biweekly computer lab day, so that left us with only two days in the classroom!

Wednesday was our weekly conversation day. We talked about the poem that we read last week. I really learned something that day. I learned that if the goal is for us to have conversations, I should not give out a list of discussion questions to each person. That makes it too tempting to get out pencils and spend a lot of time writing. Next time I will put the discussion points on the board, or I will give out prompt cards. Also, we might say, "No pencils."

We did have a good discussion about the poem.

Thursday was our day to read aloud and talk about the words that were difficult to pronounce. We looked at words from the poem to see if we could guess how to pronounce them using some rules we learned this term. We used the Two Vowel Rule to figure out how to pronounce many of them.

We also discovered that the past participle form of a verb can often be used as an adjective. To pot a plant means to put it in a pot with soil. A potted plant is a plant in a pot. There were many words like that. We discovered that the same rule we use for determining how to pronounce the regular past tense (-ed) endings also applies to adjectives that come from the past participle of regular verbs.

Food adjectives are a good example of this: grilled, baked, fried, steamed, tossed, chopped, diced, etc. All of those can be used as adjectives, and the same rule applies to their -d endings.

Okay! As we've said, I will begin the course again on Monday. This time we will take it very, very slowly. This means that we can study each pronunciation point in greater depth than before!

See you then!

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