How many "hats" do we all wear?  Words can wear many "hats," too. The 9, 10 English students stretched their perspectives of the English language as they learned how verbs can be  twisted into "verbals." Between participles, gerunds, and infinitives, they settled into recognizing them as adjectives, nouns, and adverbs, yet still being a verb at heart! These are really used everywhere and once they caught the concept, they could see it. Now, the hope is they/we can use these tricky verbals to create even more improved writing.
    The 9,10 class also just finished a Lit. unit on discovering the "theme" in various stories and poems. The only thing better for a writer than clearly expressing his/her thoughts, is to be able to weave the message, the purpose of the writing, into the story. Sometimes the message is very clear, other times it takes digging by the reader to uncover it. But, just like the parables Jesus told, we readers and hearers remember those implicit themes the best!
    We are now reading The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom and the Sherills. This is such an inspiring story of God's love and of his followers spreading the Good News! We look forward to the class discussions and watching the movie soon.
    The 7,8 grade grammar students have completed three chapters over the past month-they have covered adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, phrases and clauses, and simple, compound and complete sentences. You may have noticed they do some diagramming of sentences, too.  Diagramming is like putting a puzzle together. The pieces each have a place, and fit well. The visual objective version of the sentence gives us another way to remember the function of all these words! They are all doing a great job!
    The unit on Generosity in 7, 8 grade literature was full of many examples of people giving of themselves for others' benefit-a great concept for this time of the year especially. "The Last Leaf" by O. Henry contained a great personification of "Mr. Pneumonia." Behrman, the artist who lived near the main characters, gave of himself, thereby helping Johnsy live, yet caused him to die.
    The 2018 Scripps Spelling Bee at KA will be on Thursday, December 13 at 8:30. Please encourage your kids to review their words and have fun with the challenge. One will win and move on to the county bee!
    In Creative Writing, we have explored the various ways to create tension for your character-and there are many, including the specifics of grammar, like "active voice," as well as dialogue, setting and action. Around the World in Eighty Days is an example of using a time limit to create tension. Once you think about it, you can see authors using this technique a lot...literature reflects life, afterall.

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas, as we celebrate God's amazing love shown through the gift of Jesus. Thank you for all you do!

Mrs. Lemmen
Phil. 2:10-11