Week 3 Term 3 - Know Your Role

 Understanding our why, our purpose and our reason is important. It helps to ground us, shape us and it creates a foundation for us to navigate ourselves through. Applying this to how we understand words is affective as it helps us to know the role words play in any text. Dr Jannie has spent Week 1 and Week 2 of Term 3 introducing the students to the Word Group program. So far they have spent time unpacking what the concept of 'to survive' (survive being our focus word) means, discussed the meaning of the word, identified members of the 'survive' word group and have crafted sentences using the word group members. Here is a break down on what the students did when they crafted their own sentences using the word members. 

Crafting Sentences: Put the word members into sentences. 

• Put the word into a sentences. You are to make sure that the sentences are well thought out. You cannot start the sentences with your word members for 'to survive'. 
• Students to share their sentences

Exemplars: Student's crafted sentences using word members from the survive word family. 

• Timote: The thought of being among the several survivors from the war haunts me because so many were unable to return.
• Anamaria: Pressure solidifies… the remaining survivalists are protecting their handful of food supplies, one is struggling with the risky shelter, another’s health is deteriorating.
• Asher Is Cool: I hadn’t even had time to test my survivability, I was forced straight onto the battlefield.
• Louis: I returned home unscathed, but my comrades were unable to Survive.
• Mata: A person who survives, especially a person remaining alive after an event in which others have died.
• Diego/Deeko: The long drop from this mountain down to the ocean seems “survivable”
  
• Laina: He walked away from at least non three survival accidents.
• Limi: Even though Bob survived, he died later of old age.
• Kena: It is a miracle that he survived his huge plane crash.

 The next part of the program is all about focusing on the grammatical role the word member plays in the sentences that they have crafted. This part of the program is quite high-level thinking - the students have responded well though. With a lot of prompting and sharing of different examples, the students have been able to go through the process quite well. Here is a run down on what happened when the students focused on the grammatical role. 

Part 1: Grammatical role

• Students read out the examples that they created on Tuesday August 3
• Dr Jannie speaks to each example (complimenting on how the students crafted the sentences)
• What is the grammatical role? Unpacking the sentence and finding what the grammatical role is for the springboard word. An example that the students discuss with Dr Jannie is prepositional nouns. 

Class discussion: What is a prepositional noun? Dr Jannie shares examples of prepositional nouns (among, with, from) Students are to discuss 5 more prepositional nouns

• Among
• With
• From
• In
• At
• Within
• Without
• Out
• To
• (Students are to google frequently used prepositions)

Part 2: What is the grammatical role for your word member?

• Prepositional nouns tell us the position of something
• Dr Jannie explains the next part - unpacking your crafted sentences and finding the grammatical role for your word group
• She goes different examples via the powerpoint presentation - Your Word Member Sentences (click on the link to access the PowerPoint)
• She explains what the grammatical role is for each word and how the guiding questions have helped her identify this
• Students are to discuss their crafted sentences with their partner and talk about what they think the grammatical role is for their word member.
• Students have access to the the powerpoint Your Word Member Sentences - they are copy slide 14 and paste it onto their word group powerpoint that they have been working on Name my Word Work (click on the link to access the PowerPoint)
• They are to write down their crafted sentences onto Slide 14 and then explore/identify what the grammatical role is.

Part 3: Share your crafted sentences

• Dr Jannie has asked that the students share their crafted sentence and grammatical role break down onto a shared presentation - Shared Sentences: 9KLe (click on the link to access the PowerPoint)

MY THOUGHTS: 

We are heading into a new week with a focus on progressing into the last stages of the program. I would like to see the students spend a bit more time on the grammatical roles that words play in a sentence structure. This is a definite advanced step that needs time and I feel that the students have only just scratched the surface. I see how this can be explored in depth with a class over the course of a 10 week term. I am looking forward to going further with my students.