Prepositional Phrases and the Scrapbook

"It is what the bunny does to the log." I have heard this saying so many times and yet it never gets old and is a very easy way to rememeber what prepositions are. I already had a pretty thorough understanding of prepositions, however I had not done that much work with prepositional phrases. On Monday when we were going through the newspapers it was some of the first practice I had with idnetifying these phrases. It was not difficult to pick up on as finding the preposition triggers where the phrase will be. Furthermore, using the newspapers is a very effective activity and has helped me learn the different parts of grammar that we have discussed thus far. The newspapers will definetely be something that I will use as a tool in my classroom.
The scrapbook is something that I need to start working on again as the due date is starting to approach us again. The first section became very entertaining and was easy to do once I got started which I believe will be the same for this next section, or at least I hope it will be. At the moment I am not sure which of the sections I will begin working on since that portion is free and we just need the 10 examples. I do have questions about teh sections and I hope to get them answered so I can start assembling more of my book.

Questions:

• For the Gems section we are supposed to pick certain aspects that stand out to us, are their any guidelines for that or is it totally up to us?
• By errors in print would it be when a magazine breaks their own house style?
• Finally, what is the Breaking the Rules section and what goes in it?

This week we furthered our understanding with the word classes. I personally love this part of grammar, as dorky as it may be. I enjoyed class Thursday working with the parts of a sentence and felt as though using magnetic poetry was a very smart and fun way to get this idea across. One point that was made during class that struck me was that commas have certain places in a sentence, and that they are not to be just placed to represent a pause or break. I think by learning this I will definetely be able to straighten up on quite a few of the issues I have with commas. On Tuesday we did the Socratic Circle which was something that I had never taken part in before. I felt as though it was a very constructive way to discuss something. It was brought up in class that some people did not like being on the outside of the circle, however I would not be part of that group. Observing the inner circle discuss that issue allowed for me to take some very good notes and points that I do not think would have come up had we just done a normal class lecture led by the professor. Being on the inner side of the circle was very helpful as well. And for me personally I like being on the outter circle before goign in to discuss becuase it gave me ideas that I could delve into and progress the ideas of others. Overall, I am pretty stoked about what is happening in class right now. I do believe that Wednesday's class was very important and knwoing what I do about this part of grammar I know that it is a very essential part to know about. In conclusion, I would hope that we are going to share ourmagnetic poetry sentences.

Question: How big of a class do you think you could still effectively use the Socratic circle for? Also, would the circle still be as succesful and thorougly cover a work if you were to do a play, book, or some larger type of work?

What I have learned so far

So far in this class I have learned mainly about apostrophes. The one thing that I remember the most from the class was our discussion about the apostrophe when it came to the name Jones and when it was plural and showing ownership. I never would have guessed to do it that way. I would have originally just done it by changing the sentence structure so that I would not have to do it this way. However, now I know that you would write it as Joneses' to show the plural possesive form. The other item that we covered in class was the use of nouns, adjectives, and adverbs. This is one part of grammar that I thoroughly enjoy doing as it is very easy for me to understand. I have been dealing with the word classes for quite some time and they come very easily to me. Going through the newspaper and labeling all the sentences is a really fun activity for me as it was something we also did in highschool, however back then I used a different color highliter for each of the word classes and colored those pages up. Finally, this week we worked on our scrapbooks. I have to admit I was not looking forward to this project, but by the time I got home I was all into the project and couldn't stop pilferring through the magazine to find more examples. Overall, this week has been really great learning wise and my mind has been stimulated the whole time as the class has kept me engaged and what I am learning are things that I have wondered about for awhile.

My question: When it comes to house style and a magazine uses multiple forms of grammar like People did is that acceptable and right or should they have to stick to just one?