DOL (Daily Oral Language)—

EVERYONE MUST TAKE THE DOL PART OF THE EXAM!

• “me and my friend”—study when to use “me” and when to use “I;” remember that the “me” or “I” ALWAYS comes at the end of this phrase!

• “, because”—Remember that when you are using “because” you DO NOT need a comma before it.

• Redundancy redundancy—Watch out for repetition of words, phrases, or ideas.  Eliminate repetition!

• Subject/Verb agreement—The subject of your sentence must agree with the verb in your sentence.  If you have a SINGULAR subject, you need a SINGULAR verb.  If you have a PLURAL subject, you need a PLURAL verb.  Examples:

Incorrect agreement:  Jenny and I was going to the store.  (This is incorrect because “Jenny and I” is a plural subject and “was” is a singular verb.)

Correct agreement:  Jose, Reggie, and David are on the basketball team.  (This is correct because “Jose, Reggie, and David” is a plural subject and “are” is a plural verb.)

• Dialogue—Make sure you know how to use quotation marks (“”), how to punctuate, when to capitalize, and when to start a new paragraph when formatting dialogue.  Example (dialogue is written correctly):

        Yesterday afternoon, my friend Sheri came by to see how I was feeling.  “You don’t look so good,” she said as soon as she walked into the room.

        I replied, “You should have seen me yesterday!  I was throwing up every five minutes!”

        “I sure am glad I missed that!” Sheri responded.

• There/Their/They’re—Know the difference between them and when to use each one!

• Your/You’re—Know the difference between them and when to use each one.

• Through/Threw—Know the difference between them and when to use each one.

• Verb Tense—In a passage, all the main verbs should be in the same tense (i.e., present tense or past tense).  Examples:

Incorrect:  When I was three years old, I went to the zoo for the first time.  I see all kinds of animals like lions and zebras.  (This is incorrect because “went” is past tense and “see” is present tense.  Both should be past tense; change “see” to “saw.”)

Correct:  Before I came to Curie, I lived in Waukegan, Illinois.  It was hard living there because I was so far away from my family.  (This is correct because all the main verbs, “came” and “was,” are all in the same tense—past tense.)

• Run-on sentences and Sentence Fragments—Make sure you know what a complete sentence looks like (must have a subject and a verb!).  You cannot have a sentence that is incomplete (missing a subject or verb).  You also cannot combine two or more sentences with only a comma!  Either use a period or use a comma and a conjunction.

Narrative Writing

• Study narrative terminology!  Study definitions and also study EXAMPLES of the types of figurative language.

Narrative, personal narrative, narrator, plot, rising action, climax, falling action, mood, figurative language, imagery, simile, metaphor, hyperbole, onomatopoeia, dialogue, in medias res, exploding the moment, flashback

• Practice/review writing a description with a variety of imagery and figurative language.  Your description should try to convey a certain mood.  You might want to pick an interesting picture out of a magazine and write a description of it to practice this.  Write a description of a friend, your dog, a family member, the couch in your living room, etc.  Use detailed adjectives, similes, hyperbole, onomatopoeia, metaphors, and try to appeal to sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste imagery where appropriate.

Warriors Don’t Cry

• Review the basics of the novel.
  • Who are the main characters?  What are their names?  What important things should we know about them?
  • What is the time period?  Where does the story take place?
  • Is this story a true story (a personal narrative)?
  • What is the novel about?  What happens to the main character, Melba Pattillo?

• Review important vocabulary/concepts from or related to the novel.
  • Integration
  • Segregation
  • Jim Crow laws
  • Ostracism/pariah
  • Civil Rights
  • Discrimination

• Review the topic you researched for the Warriors project and think about how it relates back to the book.
  • Brown v. Board of Education
  • Jim Crow
  • Thurgood Marshall, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Governor Orval Faubus
  • Freedom Summer and the Disappearance of the Civil Rights Workers, 1964
  • The Civil Rights Movement
  • Emmett Till
  • Teen Culture in the 1950’s

Greek Mythology

• Study the OLYMPIC gods!  Know their names, epithets (what they were known as), key qualities, and symbols.  Also know how they are related to Zeus.

Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Hestia, Demeter, Apollo, Artemis, Ares, Aphrodite, Hephaestus, Athena, Hermes, Dionysus

• I also highly recommend you study the 13 words (minus Hypnosis) we looked at before break and the family tree of the Greek gods (extra credit???)

Echo, fate, atlas, iris, Olympic Games, chaos, Nike, furious, tantalizing, narcissistic, panic, arachnid, and cereal