Literacy Speaks Volumes

This week's learning is identifying infinitive and gerund phrases and identifying mood, imagery, and style in a piece of literature. Lovely lessons that will herald in the holiday with festive language. I absolutely love, love, love practicing writing sentences that begin with phrases. A sentence that begins with a phrase is just so much more interesting than other sentence structures. Keith Polette does an amazing job with his "Ten Different Ways to Begin a Sentence." Here is my adaptation of his strategy using participles, infinitives, and gerunds (and their respective phrases).   Hanging on small pegs, the stockings lent an air of festivity to the otherwise drab fireplace.  Melissa wanted to hang the stockings in order to create a sense of anticipation. Hanging the stockings is my favorite part of decorating for the holidays. Have your students create their own holiday sentences using phrases and clauses.  Another Polette strategy is having your st...

Imagery is used in literature in order to give the reader a virtual picture in his mind~the author might use the five senses to create this image. Notice the imagery in this passage from One Thousand White Women  by Jim Fergus: From these cold rocks we can see the camp dogs beginning to slink back into the village to pick among the ruins for scraps of meat. The still frigid morning air bears the odors of roasted meats, spent gunpowder, scorched hides, burnt flesh. There are still dozens of soldiers about in the village so that we are unable to go back down to scavenge with the dogs, perhaps find a scrap of meat for sustenance, a flame of warmth...a blanket...   A good author creates imagery with words~he shows, he doesn't tell. Imagery and mood can affect the way you feel about a work of literature. An author's style , though, is what helps you recognize the writing of a particular author. In literature, style is the way that something is written~it is the way it...