ABE Writing: Conjunctions, Fragments, and Run-On Sentences

Yay, Grammar!

I know you guys all love my sarcasm... Lol.

Coordinating Conjunctions

Coordinating conjunctions (C.C.) are words that join equally important ideas. When you use a C.C. to join a complete sentence to a fragment sentence, you do NOT need a comma. When you use a C.C. to join to complete sentences, you DO need a comma directly before the C.C. The coordinating conjunctions are:

FANBOYS -- For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, So

Examples:

• John and Steven talked to Cody on break. (No comma)
• Jessica walked and laughed in the hallway. (No comma)
• Emily went outside, and she was cold. (Yes comma)

Subordinating Conjunctions

Subordinating conjunctions (S.C.) are words that show relationships between ideas. S.C.'s also make one idea more important than the other idea. When you use a S.C. at the beginning of a sentence, you will have a comma where the ideas break. When you use a S.C. in the middle of a sentence, you do not need the comma. Subordinating conjunctions include:

• after 
• although 
• as 
• because 
• before 
• even though 
• if, even if 
• in order that 
• once 
• provided that 
• since 
• so [that implied], so that 
• than 
• that 
• though 
• unless 
• when, whenever 
• where, wherever, whereas 
• whether 
• while

Examples:

• Because he was cold, Jeremy put on his jacket. (Yes comma)
• Jeremy put on his jacket because he was cold. (No comma)
• Erica missed the chair when she sat down. (No comma)
• When she sat down, Erica missed the chair. (Yes comma)

Fragments of Sentences

Sentences fragments are words that don't express a complete thought. Fragments may be missing a subject or an action, or they might be a subordinated clause (a sentence beginning with one of the S.C.'s). Sentence fragments are not necessarily short! Clauses can be 20 words long and still be fragments.

Examples and corrections:

• Worked hard throughout the day. (Missing subject)
• The students worked hard throughout the day.
• The girl who was in orientation with us. (Missing an action)
• The girl who was in orientation with us didn't show up today for class.
• Whenever it was rainy and cold outside. (Subordinated clause)
• Whenever it was rainy and cold outside, the students complained.

Run-On Sentences

Two complete ideas cannot be joined to each other just with a space or a comma, or they will create a run-on sentence. We've already explored how to join two ideas with our C.C.'s and S.C.'s, but you can also fix a run-on sentence with a semicolon (;). Here is a review of the run-on sentence fixes:

Run-on: Frank wanted a hot breakfast so he went to Cracker Barrel. (Remember a C.C. like "so" is not strong enough to hold two complete ideas together!)

Fix 1: Frank wanted a hot breakfast, so he went to Cracker Barrel. (Add comma before C.C.)

Fix 2: Frank wanted a hot breakfast; therefore, he went to Cracker Barrel. (Add semicolon, transition, and comma)

Fix 3: Because Frank wanted a hot breakfast, he went to Cracker Barrel. (Use S.C. with comma)

Fix 4: Frank went to Cracker Barrel because he wanted a hot breakfast. (Use S.C. without comma)

Fix 5: Frank wanted a hot breakfast. He went to Cracker Barrel. (Use a period between thoughts)

See? That wasn't so bad, was it? :)

Until next time, peeps.

-Jc

I'm BAAAACK!

Firstly, I apologize for being away so long!

I have been writing so much for my graduate studies that I couldn't keep up with my blogging. However, I have learned a new trick to give me more time to blog...

I deleted Facebook!

Lol. Yes, that's right, ladies and gents. I have sacrificed the mother of all social media so that I can focus more on writing and teaching. :) 

Today's Topic: Civics!

Today in AE, we looked at U.S. government documents. Doesn't that sound thrilling??

Ok, maybe not. But here's the thing: If you never study the Constitution or Bill of Rights, you'll never fully understand the way our government works. And believe it or not, government is a big part of our daily lives. 

Now, whenever I teach civics (the study of citizens' rights and roles in government), I always have those Negative Nancies (maybe you're one of them) who like to say things like, "I hate government. I don't vote because it changes nothing. Government has never done anything to help me." However, I find that those people are usually just hiding behind ignorance or illusion. When they truly learn about government -- what it is, who is involved, how it works -- then, they become empowered as citizens. So let's start this lesson with a review of what civic power is.

Government is not just some authoritative body created to take your money and tell you what to do. I am the government. You are the government. We all are the government, especially when we know and act on our civic duties. If you liked the video above, I highly recommend Eric Liu's TED Talk on civics and power.

Your Assignment

...should you choose to accept it...

Read the following documents:

• The United States Constitution
• The U.S. Bill of Rights
• Constitutional Amendments 

Now, this may seem like a lot of gobbley-gook, which is why you should have come to class where I explained these documents in every-day language! Lol. But since you missed my lesson, here's the best online resource I know for learning civics and history:

Think about the following questions:

• Why is the "separation of powers" using a "system of checks and balances" important?
• What are your rights as a citizen?
• How can you exercise your rights?
• In what ways could you get involved in government?

I had hoped to make a big vocabulary list for this post, but I'm running short on time.

Womp womp. Lol. That's ok. I'm sure no one was waiting with baited breath for some good, old fashioned vocabulary words and definitions. Remember, the quickest way to learn a new word is to type define and then the word into your Google search bar. No need for a dictionary when you have Google! 

Until next time, friends.

-Jc

ABE Reading: Critical Reading

Today, we honed our critical reading skills.

What is Critical Reading?

The idea of critical reading stems from the idea of critical thinking. The word critical means accomplishing your activity, whether it's reading or thinking,  with skillful judgement. So how do we skillfully judge what we read? Well, we must not only read what is written, but also read what is not written. Some people know of this as reading between the lines.

I began this lesson by reviewing the resources available on The Critical Thinking Community site. I suggest you check them out, but here's a particularly strong graphic from their site about skills of critical thinkers:

Today, in class we focused on some of the elements of a text (inferences, implications, and assumptions), and we judged these elements on accuracy, completeness, fairness, clarity, and precision. If you asked me, we developed some intellectual perseverance, at least, and some fairmindedness and intellectual integrity, too.

Exercises

One thing I love about teaching adults is I don't have to censor my reading topics. :) So today we read about marijuana prohibition / legalization, and we looked at charts on economics. If you are following along at home, here's the article we read first:

This Is Your Brain on Legal Drugs: Let's End the Drug War With a Minimum of Casualties by Following the Science, by Arianna Huffington

We then reviewed the critical elements: assumptions, inferences (conclusions), and implications. A review of all these can be found on the Critical Thinking Community site I referenced above, but here's a basic wrap-up:

• Assumptions - beliefs that something is true or certain
• Example: Teenagers are technology wizards.
• While this statement might be true sometimes, we cannot assume that all teenagers are good at technology.

• Inferences - deductions or conclusions based on reasoning, logic, or assumptions
• Example: There are fire trucks parked outside and smoke coming from the neighbor's house.
• We can infer that the neighbor's house is on fire.

Here's a "ladder of inference" worksheet that shows how inferences are made (start at bottom and move up):

• Implications - underlying suggestions of a word or piece of writing
• Example: Murder versus manslaughter
• The word murder implies intentional killing. The word manslaughter implies accidental killing.

I'll try to find some videos for next time. 

After we reviewed the critical elements, we went back to the Huffington Post article and identified assumptions, inferences, and implications in it and discussed them. Then, we shifted focus to graphs on the economy via The Atlantic's article called The Most Important Economic Stories of 2013- in 44 Graphs, and we did the same activity -- targeting assumptions, inferences, and implications of the graphs. It was a great class day!

Until next time.

Jc

ABE Math: Number Operations

I've done two previous blog posts on number operations, so I encourage you to visit Fractions, Decimals, and Percentages: Part I and Part II.

If you want to check out the presentation I used for today's class you can view it here.

ABE Math: Number Operations

For practice problems, I suggest a.) COMING TO CLASS! *Lol* or b.) checking out the Arithmetic section on Khan Academy.

ABE Writing: Mechanics

We reviewed the mechanics of writing today, including capitalization, punctuation, and spelling. Here is the presentation we went through together.

ABE Writing: Mechanics

Grammar Bytes!

It's Monday, and that means we are working on writing today! Last week at our Adult Ed Academy we learned about a lot of new online study resources. One of them was Grammar Bytes.

Today in class, we checked out the Grammar Bytes interactive exercises and worksheets on comma usage, but they have all kinds of language exercises: paragraphing, sentence construction, parallel structure. Practice what you need most.

Until next time.
JmC

ABE Science: Ecology

Today in Science/Social Studies/Reading class we studied ecology! Ecology is the study of earth and its life systems. Here is a playlist of 12 lessons on ecology. We focused on the hydro, carbon, phosphorus and nitrogen cycles, but the entire playlist is awesome.

Crash Course on Ecology

I highly recommend the Crash Course YouTube channel for free and excellent lessons on lots of different topics.

Until next time!
-Jc