t DOCUMENT RESUME CS 200 486 ED 075 828 24 You Already Know It, Unit III: Language Curr_culum, TITLE Levels C-D [Grades Three and Four]; Teacher's Guide. Oregon Univ., Eugene. Oregon Elementary English INSTITUTION Project. Office of Education (DREW), Washington, D.C. eau SPONS AGENCY of Research. BR-8-0143 BUREAU NO PUB DATE 71 OEC-0-8-080143-3701 CONTRACT NOTE 111p. MF-$0.65 HC-$6.58 EDRS P:.ICE Curriculum Guides; *English Curriculum; *Grade 3; DESCRIPTORS *Grade 4; *Grammar; Language Arts; *Sentence Structure; Teaching Guides; Transformation Generative Grammar *Oregon Elementary English Project IDENTIFIERS ABSTRACT Developed by the Oregon Elementary English Project, the eighteen lessons in this unit aim to interest third and fourth grade students in thinking about how sentences are made, to introduce some grammatical concepts, and to build on the instinctive knowledge students already have about the English language. The first three lessons are devoted to the concept that words go together in an orderly way which we understand intuitively; lessons 4 and 5 demonstrate negative and question transformations; lessons 6 through 9 develop the noun phrase and verb phrase concepts; lessons 10 through 12 concentrate on noun recognition; lesson 13 introduces the pronoun; lessons 14 through 17 deal with verb recognition; and lesson 18 introduces the adjective. Each lesson is accompanied by a statement of its purpose, suggested procedures and materials, possible extensions, and student exercises. A packet of supplementary materials is also included. (See related documents CS 200 482-485 and CS 200 487-499.) (HS) I va- FILMED FROM BEST AVAILABLE COPY U S DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, EDUCATION & WELFARE OFFICE OF EDUCATION "+,S DOCUMENT HAS BEEN REPRO DUCED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED FROM THE PERSON OR ORGANIZATION ORIG INATING IT POINTS OF VIEW OR OPIN IONS STATED DO NOT NECESSARILY REPRESENT OFFICIAL OFFICE OF EDU CATION POSITION OR POLICY Language Curriculum, Levels C D Unit ITI YOU ALREADY KNOW IT Developed under contract with the United States Office of Education Department of Health, Education, and Welfare by The Oregon Elementary English Proje.:t University of Oregon Eugene, Oregon 1971 S UNIT lit IOU ALREADY KNOW 11 This looks like o..thic,k unit. sfuclerti lessons are short. The rezt e sturesit ns 4o kelp Unit HI You Already Know It TABLE OF CONTENTS Page number Teacher Introduction 1 Lesson 1 Mixed-Up Melvin's Mad Monday 7 Language Has Order Lesson 2 10 Word Juggle Lesson 3 12 Lesson 4 You Can Do It (1) 14 Lesson 5 You Can Do It (2) 15 A Sentence Has Two Parts Lesson 6 17 Lesson 7 We Need Both Parts 21 The Missing Parts Lesson 8 24 Noun Phrase + Verb Phrase Lesson 9 26 Lesson 10 Nouns 28 Lesson 11 The Goes With Nouns 31 Lesson 12 One or More Than One 32 Lesocn 13 Pronouns 34 Lesson 14 Verbs Grow and Change 36 Lesson 15 Verbs Have Endings 38 Helping Verbs Lesson 16 41 Lesson 17 Root Verbs 44 Lesson 18 Adjectives 45 Language C - D You Already Know It Teacher Introduction Unit III YOU ALREADY KNOW IT CHECKLIST OF MATERIAL NEEDED: 1. An overhead projector. Material in folders for each student for lessons 3, 4, 5, 7, 6, 2. There is no 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, and 18. 9, 2, 8, and 10. student material for lessons 1, The following Supplementary Material: 3. for lesson 1 -- 12 transparencies made from copies in the Supplementary Material envelope. for lesson 2 -- sets of tagboard cards which can be put together to form simple sentences, There is a sample in the Supplementary Material envelope and direc- tions for making them are found in ti e lesson. for lesson 6 -- set of tagboard cards, one card for each child, with either a noun phrase or a verb phrase on each. There are samples in the Supplementary Materials envelope and directions for using them in the lesson. for lesson 8 -- transparencies made from the copy in Supple- mentary Material envelope of list of simple noun phrases, verb phrases, and complete sentences, spaced widely apart to allow room for writing between. for lesson 13-- set of tagboard cards each of which should have either a determiner plus a noun or a pronoun that can replace a determiner plus noun. Sample in Supplementary Material envelope. for lesson 16sets of tagboard cards, each set of which in- cludes words to put together to form a sentence with a single verb plus a card with a helping verb. Sample is found in Supplementary Material envelope and directions in the lesson. Patience and imagination. 4. PURPOSE: 1. To interest students in thinking about how sentences are made, and to develop a sense of pride in what they know about using language. To introduce students to some grammatical concepts which will 2, be reinforced and developed more fully in later years. -2- Ycu Already Know It Language C: - D Teacher Introduction 3. To build on the instinctive knowledge students already have about how to use language in order to teach them some specific facis about English sentence structure. WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW TO TEACH THIS UNIT: This unit can be described best as a pre-grammar unit, although the word grammar is never once mentioned. It introduces, or exposes students to, some fundamental concepts of, and facts about, English grammar. At every step it starts with what children know intuitively about using language and tries to make them aware of what it is. Although you will not be teaching grammar in any depth, you need to understand something about the grammatical concepts which we des- cribe in this section in order to understand how the lessons fit together and what their purpose is. Grammar is --or should be--a description of the language human beings use. It is simply a way of making explicit what we all know intuitively about using our language. The way to find out how sentences are put together, then, is to analyze the sentences we use and accept as belonging to the language. Language is a rule-governed activity. We recognize, usually subconsciously, that sentences are made up of different kinds of parts and that these parts go together in an orderly way. This is what is meant oy saying sentences are formed according to rule. The most fundamental rule is that sentences consist of two parts. To make a sentence, both parts are needed, although sometimes one or the other It doesn't matter really is simply understood (as in "Open your books. ") what these two parts are called. Sometimes they have been called subject and predicate. In this curriculum we call them noun phrase and verb phrase because these terms say more specifically what kind of parts they are. We can understand all sentences of the language most easily if we start by thinking of very simple sentences that make statements and then see how these simple sentences can be varied and combined to make other sentences, just as a biologist can understand better how a living organism works by first finding out what an individual cell is like. At the third and fourth grade level we are concerned primarily with basic sentence structure found in very simple sentences. But what the child learns now about this structure will help him understand how more complex sentences are made in later grades. The parts of the sentence which we are concerned with are described and discussed below. Noun phrases. Noun phrases are different from verb phrases. One noun phrase can be substituted for another, but a noun phrase can't be substituted for a verb phrase. Noun phrases get their name because they include a noun or something that functions as a noun. Those with a noun usually also include a sentence part called a determiner. Determiners are words like the, a (an), some, many, this, and that which precede nouns in the noun phrase. -3- You Already Know It Language C D Teacher Introduction Some nouns may occur without an apparent determiner. Those that can do so are plural nouns (as in Birds like worms.), singular mass nouns, and proper nouns. Mass nouns are nouns like snow, water, grass, magic that name things which are not-countable. (We can say Grass growsz but not Tree grows. ) However, any other kind of singular noun must have a determiner before it, and mass and plural nouns usually do also. In fact, its ability to occur with a determiner is one of the ways in which we recognize a word as a noun. Proper nouns are exceptional cases. We can usually recognize them by the absence of a determiner. Another characteristic of nouns that distinguishes them from other words is that their form indicates number, either singular or plural. They mean either one or mo-e than one. Most nouns indicate plural number by the addition of a sound spelled -s or -es. A few, however, have irregular pronunciation, as in mousermice; goose/geese; man/men. A word should be said about the traditional way of defining a noun as a name of something. It is true that nouns are words that name--and we use this fact as a concrete device to start students out in lesson 10. But it becomes very difficult as one begins to talk about nouns like idea, uneasiness, obstinacy, fact, theory, to define what it is that is being named. The fact is that what we recognize in a word that makes it a noun is where it occurs in a sentence and what goes with it. In Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky, for example, "...The slithy It toves did gyre... we all recognize toves as a noun because of its position in relation to other words, and not because we have any idea what it might name. Determiners. We don't talk much about determiners at the third and fourth grade level except to use the and a few others as a means of identifying nouns. In fact, whether you use the term or not is up to you. But to enable you to answer certain questions you might have, you should know that determiners like the and a (an) never occur without a noun. This is what makes them a good signal that a noun will follow. Some determiners, like-this or that, may occur alone, but when they do we still understand the noun that does not appear. For example the word cake can be left out of This cake tastes good (This tastes good) and still be understood. Sometimes a whole group of words makes I p a determiner phrase before a noun. Examples are Some of the _people; a few of the birds; three of these houses, etc. These groups of words act as a unit. Notice that you would not use any of the groups without a noun. Pronouns. A noun phrase can consist of a pronoun instead of a determiner + noun. Strictly speaking, pronouns replace a whole noun phrase, not just the noun. (For example, Some of the wild iris are blooming. becomes They are blooming.) There is much to be said about pronouns, but we only try to introduce them here in this unit and make children aware of them. The personal pronouns have different forms when they are subjects or objects and a third form for possessives me Enz). They also have different forms for singular and plural (I, we). Your students will use the various forms correctly most of the time without ever thinking about it, but occasionally prob)ems arise. The Language C D -4- You Already Know It Teacher Introduction unit on punctuation and usage makes some suggestions for dealing with these. The verb phrase. The nucleus of the verb phrase is of course the verb. It is the one essential word. Every verb phrase has a verb. It may appear by itself or it may have other verbs before it which serve as helping verbs. We recognize verbs by how they relate to other words. They are words that have several forms, and the form depends on what occurs with them. They may end in -s (or -es) to indicate present tense. following a singular noun phrase (The cock crows. ); they may end in -ed to indicate past tense or the past participle following the helping verb have (The cock crowed. or The cock has crowed. ); they may end in -ing following the helping verb be (The cock is crowing.); or they may appear in their root form after modals (words like will, shall, can may, etc., as in The cock will crow. ) Some verbs form their past and past participle forms in special ways. Examples are see, saw, seen; sing, sang, sung. Many of these irregular verbs, however, are the most common verbs of our language and we use the different forms correctly without thinking about it. So, we recognize verbs both by their endings and by the helping verbs that occur before them. We make no attempt at this level to label the various parts or to formalize rules for using them. We simply want to make students aware of the forms and to give them practice in using them. Adjectives. Adjectives are words that are found in two different places in a sentence. Most basically they are found after forms of the verb be in the verb phrase. In this position they are sometimes called predicate adjectives. The other place they are found is between a determiner and noun as part of a noun phrase. So we have both The child is cute and the cute child. We simply nxpose students to this concept in lesson 18, but don't develop it to any great extent. Other sentence parts. Verb phrases also include' parts that follow the verb. With the exception of the adjective we do not take up any of these parts in this unit, but you should be aware of them. What follows the verb depends on the verb. The verb sleep doesn't have to have any- thing after it (The child sleeps.) But many verbs are followed by noun phrases (The plumber fixed the pipe. ) Such noun phrases are called direct objects. As far as sentence structure goes they have a subordinate role in the verb phrase whereas the subject noun phrase is one of the two main parts of a sentence. If we were to show the relation of these two parts on a diagram, it would look like this: Sentence subject--noun phrase verb phrase noun phrase--direct object ve Verbs can also be followed by adverbs which tell when, where, how, why, , or etc. Adverbs may be single words, such as sAistLy. prepositional phrases such as at noon, or even whole clauses, such as when he was here. None of these are involved in this unit, although students will use all of them frequently. -5- You Already Know It Language C - D Teacher Introduction RESUME: The unit consists of 18 lessons. The first three are devoted to the concept that words go together in an orderly way which we understand intuitively. Lessons 4 and 5 simply demonstrate to students that, without anyone teaching them how, they can make sentences negative or turn them into questions. Lessons 6 -9 develop the concept that a sentence must have two parts, a noun phrase and a verb phrase. Lessons 10 - 12 are concerned with learning to recognize nouns. Lesson 13 introduces the pronoun but does not go into much depth. Lessons 14 -17 deal with the recognition of verbs. Lesson 18 is an introduction to the adjective. In conjunction with this unit there are two packets on combining sentences which can be used for individualized instruction: "Compound Sentences" and "One Sentence in Another." The first can be used together with the 3rd extension in Lesson 6. The other can be used with Lesson 18. The differences in approach should help you discover which method works best with different children. TEACHING THE LESSON: You should not try to teach this unit all at one time. The intent is exposure, not mastery. We believe you can spread it out over the school year, teaching at one time only those lessons that are related. For example, the first three should be taught close together in time because they develop the same concept. Many of the concepts and activities are ones that need to be reinforced many times apart from the lessons For example, the themselves and in connection with other activities. noun list that is started in lesson 10 should be added to all year long. The sentence expansion game first introduced in lesson 7 can be repeated over and over at odd minutes. It should have implications for composi- tion lessons as well as for language. You can call attention to the two parts of the sentence and to nouns, pronouns, verbs, and helping verbs whenever it is relevant in reading or the teaching of other lessons. The object is to make language a living thing related to all other activities. Much exposure should develop a familiarity with sentence structure that will serve as background in later years and make students comfortable in thinking about language. At all times you should refer to what seems right to the student. Remember you are analyzing language as the child uses it; you are not teaching him how to use it. You should not worry about "right" answers but about helping students to explore their language and to find out what they can about it. Although the unit is designed to be used in both third and fourth grade, you should adapt it to your group. You will go more slowly with third graders, and many third graders will not finish every lesson and you may not want to teach every lesson at that level. We make some Language C - I) -.6- You Already Know It Teacher Introduction specific suggestions. about what to use or your more advanced students in the suggested procedures of individual lessons. Although this unit does not develop grammar formally, it is based on very clear grammatical concepts and it is important that it be taught as much as possible as we suggest. That is, it is important that contra- dictory approaches be avoided. We believe that children can learn about sentence structure more easily this way than in the traditional way. To find out, however, we must have it tried out. You are part of the experiment. Remember you are a speaker of English and you know how sentences go together. You don't have to have studied grammar in any depth to teach this unit. We hope you will relax and enjoy it. For additional background information you will find useful the following books from The Oregon Curriculum: A Sequential Program in English, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc. (1968). I. Language I, A Self-Instructional Orientation for Teachers Language/Rhetoric I 2. Language/Rhetoric I, Teacher's Guide 3.