Language Arts Week 1
Language Arts this quarter will follow a typical arc: we'll do some basic grammar, construction, and punctuation work. We'll write paragraphs and essays. And we'll read and discuss interesting literature or watch and discuss interesting videos.
Construction
Sentence basics: Here's a link to several Khan Academy short videos and exercises about sentences.
Parts of Speech:
Nouns: Person, place, thing, idea
Examples: woman, Amy, school, Tacoma, chair, dog, happiness, freedom. If it can be who or what a sentence is about, it's a noun (or pronoun like he, she, it, we).
Verbs: Action or state of being
Examples: run, laughed, going, thinks, is, am, are, was were.
Adjectives: Describe nouns. They answer the questions what kind, which one, how many?
Examples: blue, large, scary, interesting, that, this, five, many, few.
Adverbs: Describe verbs (and adjectives). They answer the questions how, when, where?
Examples: quickly, slowly, ominously, yesterday, soon, there, here.
For a more comprehensive list, see the other resources page.
Composition
Writing assignment: Please write 2 or more paragraphs . Who are you? What is it important for me to know about you? If we already know each other, please write an update for me. What have you been doing recently? You have options for submitting it to me: write it in email and send me the message; use whatever word processor (Word, google docs, etc.) you normally use and attach it to an email, or submit it using the form below. I'm looking forward to reconnecting with you. My preference is a google doc, but any method is acceptable.
Literature
Here is a very famous poem by the Irish poet William Butler Yeats. Read it, watch the two brief videos afterward, then discuss it. Feel free to use the internet to research.
The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?