Week 10

 

The kingdom of Israel was divided in 975 B.C. because when King Solomon's son Rehoboam inherited the throne, he rejected the counsel of the elders, accepted foolish counsel from his peers, and acted harshly toward his people. Ten of the twelve tribes of Israel rebelled against him and chose Jeroboam, the son of Solomon's servant Nebat, to lead them. They kept the name Israel but were often referred to as the Northern Kingdom.

The Southern Kingdom, which was retained by Rehoboam, was called Judah. Sadly, both kingdoms were ruled wickedly and rejected the Lord before returning to him years later (which was a pattern we see often in the history of Israel).

Here is some trivia about the early Olympic games:

• The competitive games were started by the Greeks in Elis, Greece.
• The Eleans started the games with just foot races in honor of Zeus, the king of their gods.
• As the Olympics became more widespread, other events were added: jumping, discus throwing, javelin throwing, wrestling, boxing, and chariot racing.
• Women were not allowed to compete or even attend as spectators, although they eventually had their own running events in a festival called Heraea (named after the goddess Hera).
• Athletes competed without wearing any clothing.
• The Olympics lasted five days and was held every four years, but training was constant and kept soldiers in shape for battle.
• Prizes were olive wreaths, palm branches, and woolen ribbons.

Many students are very familiar with the story of Jonah, which is found in the book of the Bible bearing his name. 

 

Several linking verbs can be used as other verb types, so it's not enough for students to simply memorize a list (although that *is* helpful). They have to truly build their dialectic skills in order to understand the role of each word in sentences. Consider these examples:

• I smelled a rose.
• I smelled like armpit sweat.
• I smelled clean.

"Smelled" in the first sentence is transitive because its action is being transferred to an object, a rose.

"Smelled" in the second sentence is intransitive because although the "smelling" in this sentence is an action, there is no direct object.  "Like armpit sweat" is a prepositional phrase answering the question "how" I smelled.

"Smelled" in the third sentence is a linking verb that could be substituted with a form of "to be" ("am").  "Clean" describes the subject.  You can think of an S-Vl-PA sentence as [subject = verb].  I = clean.

  

 

If you need to scale back the difficulty of sentences to help a struggling student with his/her diagrams, one way to do that is by removing the prepositional phrases and possibly even some modifiers (adjectives, adverbs). Instead of "Rehoboam was not wise like his father, so the kingdom of Israel became divided" a student could work on "Rehoboam was not wise, so the kingdom became divided."

Students who want a bigger challenge can choose one of their Brashcard subjects ("Ancient Rome was vast, and its citizens spoke Latin") and then use our spinner to generate a new, randomized pattern and purpose for their own sentence inspired by the original subject matter. 

When I clicked the spinner, it gave me Interrogative/Complex/S-Vl-PA so a sentence I could create might be this one:

Was ancient Rome vast because its foes were inept?

It's OK if the sentence isn't true or doesn't make sense. The fun here is in playing with the patterns, purposes, and structures to better understand each of them.

 

WORKSHEETS

Click here for worksheets for each of the sentences in Week 10.