Sentence Analysis (Montessori)

I have read about sentence analysis or some might call it, sentence diagramming, a long time back. But at that time, I had no idea how to do it and what was the purpose of it, despite reading about it up teen times.

 

Recently, I looked it up again because I wanted Sonshine to learn more about sentence structure. I find that our schools don't take enough time to teach the students about proper sentence structures. In fact, our students are made to dive right into writing a story even before they truly know how to compose proper sentences. Hence, many are left to guess or go by their 'feel' when it comes to writing. I am a living product of this education, sometimes I just know a sentence is wrong because, it just 'sounds' wrong. I don't really know why nor can I explain it. And that's why my grammar is so bad.

 

So I went researching and sentence diagramming appeared on my screen. This time, I studied it thoroughly. Something must have changed in me like maybe I got smarter over time (yah right!), this time, I understood sentence diagramming perfectly. I was blown by it and even had loads of fun learning how to diagram sentences.

 

That said, while I have finally have the know-how in sentence analysis, I am still not clear what is the true objective of it.

 

In her book 'Writing with Ease', Susan Wise Bauer believes that to write well, the student needs to know put his ideas into order. She feels that diagramming will help the student in this aspect. There are other benefits of diagramming, raised by others. You can research more here if you like. But of course, there are also the detractors who feel that it is unnecessary.

 

Well, it did help me to 'see' the relationships of the words and phrases in a sentence better. Also, I do feel that I am more equipped to understand complex sentences now that I know how to diagram sentences.

 

But what bugs me is that I fail to understand how diagramming can help to improve writing and correct grammar? I still have not figure this out yet at this point. This was the reason why I toiled and wondered if I should teach Sonshine this, because if it doesn't help in writing, then why bother learning?

 

In the end, I made the decision to teach him for one simple, and probably shallow, reason- because it is fun. I have decided that anything else that comes with it is added bonus. But like I said, I have discover some of the benefits of diagramming and so I do think it is good for one to know this skill.

 

After that much blabbering, what exactly is sentence diagramming or sentence analysis? It is essentially graphing out a sentence or breaking it down into parts. If you want to know more, you can google for it and many articles will show up to fill you in. It is essentially an American 'thing'. Apparently, the American students in the past were made to learn this but not so much now.  

 

So, I shall now present how one can diagram a sentence using Montessori method. Note I am not following the authentic way but you will get the idea. To do the following you need to have a set of Montessori sentence analysis symbols. You can download this for free here.

 

First let's take a look at this sentence: 

 

 

 

Read the sentence and identify what is the predicate; what is the main action of this statement?

 

You should have picked out 'read'. 'Read' being the main action is called the predicate (of this sentence).

 

Place black arrow indicating 'Who is that? What is that?' on the left side of the predicate. Ask the child, who or what is doing this action?

 

 

It is 'I' who is executing the action 'read'. Hence 'I' makes the subject of this statement.

 

Next, place the black arrow 'Whom? what?' on the right side of the predicate. Ask the child what is the subject reading?

 

The subject is reading 'a book' and that makes the direct object of the sentence.

 

By now, the chart should look like this.

 

The phrase 'at home' is the only one left uncharted. Take the orange arrow 'where?' and place it under the predicate. Ask the child 'where is the subject reading the book?'

 

The answer is 'at home' which is the preposition object of the sentence.

 

Your final chart should look like this.

 

Here's another example:

 

The final diagram of the second sentence.

 

These sentences are fairly simple and easier to chart. It gets more complicated and fun with more complex sentences (like complex or complex- compound sentences) and more challenging if we  further diagram the words by adjectives, prepositions, articles etc. What I showed earlier is a fairly simple version of it.

 

You may be surprise to know that I didn't do the above presentation to my son. In fact, I taught him another diagramming method.

 

If you google 'sentence diagram' you will see images like this:

 

Image source

 

And that was how I taught my son. This site gave the best and most detailed explanation on how to diagram sentences. I even picked up grammar terms like predictive nominative and predictive adjective, auxiliary modifiers etc - I never knew!

 

I only started to give my son  a quick15 minutes lesson on this. I don't plan for him to be an expert in this but I do want him to be familiar with this as I am slowly recognizing how it can be useful in helping the write sort out his ideas in order as Susan Wise Bauer has said. It does help the writer to structure the sentences properly.

 

Phew, this is probably my longest ever. But I sure had a lot of fun reading; learning and sharing about this!

The teens and the tens

It is time!

 

It is time to take out my Montessori sets before it turn into dust and before Doll has no use for it! :D

 

I decided to teach Doll all about teens and the tens.

 

Actually I sort of already taught her before but this is just to reinforce her learning.

 

Note, I may not necessarily follow the authentic Montessori way in presenting but it works anyway.

 

 

 

First, we take out our tens beads. Doll determines that there are ten yellow beads strung together in a set.

 

 

Then we lay out the ten beads beside our teen board accordingly.

 

 

Next, we determine the number of beads in each colour set. For instance, the red set has just one bead, the green set, 2 beads, the pink, 3 beads and so on.

 

 

 

With our attention back to our teen board, we slide the '1' on the '10'. Here's where I tell Doll that 10 and 1 makes 11. I show her the 'magic' as I place the '1' on top of the '10'.

 

I also place a red bead, representing one, below the ten yellow beads. I counted them and determined that there 11 beads altogether. And again I told her that 10 (point to the yellow beads) and 1 (point to the red bead) makes 11. I do the same for 12 and the rest of the teens.

 

 

And we continue with the rest (here I only show up to 15).

 

At the end of the session, I randomly queried her how many does 10 and 3 makes or 10 and 5 makes etc, just to check if she understood what was presented. Sometimes, during our day to day I will also throw these questions at her just to reinforce what she learnt.

 

 

Also, I taught her what it means by counting by tens. I used my trustee ten boards. I showed that one ten makes ten, two ten makes twenty (and I counted each bead to show her that) and so on.

 

As with the teens lesson, I would ask her how many does 5 tens make or 7 tens make etc.

 

 

Next, as with the teen boards, I showed her that 40 and 3 makes 43. First we lay out 4 tens yellow beads and a 3 beads set.

 

 

I slide the 3 over the 40 and showed her that 40 and 3 makes 43. We counted the beads and determine that indeed 4 tens and 3 bead makes 43 and so on.

 

These activities are great for the child to learn place value. With these visual aids, it would be easier for the child to understand the place values later on.

 

And here's how I taught my pre-schooler all about the tens and the teens. :)

 

If you would like to know more here's a link on the know-hows and even how to DIY.

 

http://livingmontessorinow.com/2013/09/02/montessori-monday-diy-montessori-teen-and-ten-boards/

 

 

DIY hundred board

Ah yes, I already own one Montessori board but my itchy fingers just needed to make another one for Doll. I simply LOVE DIY stuff! I couldn't resist doing it after seeing these woods in Daiso. JUST-GOT-TO-MAKE-'EM!

 

If you desire to own a hundred board but don't want to splurge on one. Here's a cheap way to make your own. And easy too!

 

 

 

You can get these babies from Daiso. It comes with 18 (if my memory didn't fail me) of these in one pack for just $2! You need to get about 5 packs and that just cost you $10 in total!

 

 

You can either write directly on the wood or get those sticky labels. I did the latter. LOVE the effect. And oh, what happens when the child is done with these? You can convert them into free play, wood blocks! How's that? Play and learning incorporated in one, and it's affordable! Now do you know why I love DIY stuff?

DIY continent map

When Sonshine was just 2 years old, he worked on the Montessori continent map. He loved it and it rocketed his interest for world maps, flags and the countries till this very day. (He's quite the expert now!) I cannot wait for Doll to work on it; she's not quite ready yet though. Before that happens, I decided to make a new continent map for her.

 

 

 

The version Sonshine worked on was made of paper wrapped in clear plastic (at that time I did not have a laminator). Blessed Doll, gets a prettier version!

 

 

Her map is purely made from felt which I painstakingly hand-stiched bit by bit. Sonshine, the professional, was watching me like a hawk, making sure I sewed the continents correctly. He was the one who quickly reminded me that I had left Tasmania out!

 

I am not that clever, I did not come up with the pattern (wish I did). The free pattern is from the good lady at Imagine our Life; you can get it here. The felt materials can be found in Daiso or even Popular bookstore.

 

I think I may have butchered her pattern. My scissors cutting skill is horrendous. Plus, I left out quite a bit of smaller islands because I was just too lazy to do it!

But to be honest, the sudden wavy curves every now and then makes it terribly tough to cut! And don't get me started on cutting the small islands! Glad that that's all over now!

 

 

I made two sets of it. One, as shown earlier, I stiched the continents onto the map. I cut out loose pieces of the continents but I deliberately did not attached them.

 

It is meant for the child to arrange the continent map as what Sonshine is doing in the above picture.

 

Viola!

 

So what else can we do with this map? Plenty!

 

Learn the continents of course! I printed the free 3-part cards also from the same blog page. Using the cards, the child can label them accordingly.

 

 

Match the cards by its shape (ok, and color).

 

And it starts to get more interesting.

 

 

We can sort the animals by the continent where they are commonly found.

 

 

Or sort famous world structures by the continent they are at. (I had Sonshine sort it out for fun & photo-taking, easy peasy for him!)

 

 

The minitures are Safari Toobs which I bought it from Mothercare.

 

We could even sort country flags on the map too! You can see how Sonshine did here.

 

 

I am so proud of my felt map and excited! Can't wait for Doll to get her hands on it!

In the meantime, I'll just take it out every now and then and admire it. :D

 

 

Come and Frog with me *croak*

I am very grateful to Doll's kindergarten teachers. They are doing a fantastic job teaching her how to read, write and study thematic topics. She's having a lot of fun learning at school too. That explains why I have been pretty laid back with the home teaching.

 

But recently I was suddenly inspired to make some frog theme activities for her.

 Bouts of inspirations like these does wonders!

 

 

Doll's teacher will go through the day of the week with her class everyday. To the point where, she can read almost all the days in words. I made this matching 'Days of the week' cards to help her reinforce her reading.

 

 

To make it interesting, I threw in the 'lily pads' into our sensory box. Doll makes the frog jump according to the day of the week from Monday to Tuesday to Wednesday etc.

 

 

I bought this Safari Toob a long time back. So I took it out and have Doll find the matching poison dart frogs to the card.

 

 

I printed these free Frog Nomenclature cards from here. First I have her match the picture cards.

 

Later, she matches the word cards to the pictures. She can't recognise the words on the cards so she's expected to compare the spelling of each card and determine if they are the same. I would also read aloud each word card as she picks.

 

Learning parts of a frog. 

 

I managed to borrow two very interesting reads on frogs from the library.

 

As we flip through the pages, we try to spot some familiar looking frogs :).

 

 

Doll was taught writing alphabets and numbers in school. She's learning them very well and can write most letters and numbers independently. Still, I created these cards for her to practise her writing and hopefully, remember the spelling of the words :D.

 

 

Learning a simplified frog cycle. Matching the correct figurine to the right cards.

 

 

Since our last math learning, she now understands that 10+3= 13. I whipped this up just for her to practise and reinforce what she learnt. This time no visual aids, all done mentally and from recalling what she learnt the last time. 

 

 

If you need more ideas, there are lots more ideas on this theme over at Living Montessori Now here. Lots of free printable too!

 

Have a croaking good time!

 

 

 

Long Division with regrouping

I have taught Sonshine division using Montessori. From then, he is able to do mental division without regrouping i.e 266 divide 2 or 369 divide by 3.

 

Recently, I decided to teach Sonshine how to do long division that require regrouping and how to do the step by step working.

 

I tried teaching him by making him memorise the steps (which is a mix of division, multiplication and subtraction) but it didn't sit well with him. Realising that he needed to understand the technicalities behind the steps, I started to search for inspiration on how I can teach him. And lo and behold, I found it in our very own Primary 3 textbook. I was pleasantly surprised that our Math curriculum is adopting the Montessori method in explaining the subject to our kids. Finally someone up there see the good in Montessori Math! They have very wisely and cleverly combined the Montessori Math with the long division method. I was impressed!

 

Anyway, I studied it and presented to Sonshine exactly the way the textbook depicted. It worked!

 

 

 

 Here's how:

 

Let's work on this question 265 divide by 5.

 

 

 

 

You need Montessori 100, 10 and 1 stamps as well as green skittles. If you don't own these, you can easily make them using colored papers and simply writing the values on the paper. As for the skittles, you can use any objects really.

 

First, take out 2 hundreds, 6 tens and 5 ones to make 265.

 

265 is to be divided by 5, so take out 5 skittles. To make it more interesting. you can tell the child that there are 265 stamps to be distributed among 5 people. Pretend the skittles are people.

 

 

 

 

Next show the working as above.

 

Tell the child, always start with the largest value first. In this case, hundreds is the largest value. Next, he should try to distribute 2 hundreds to the 5 skittles. Notice, there is not enough hundreds to give out. The child has to convert all the hundreds into tens. 2 hundreds equals 20 tens.

 

Show the working:

 

 

Explain that the top part is the number of stamps distributed to each skittle. In this case, zero hundreds skittle was used. So put a '0' on top. And zero hundreds were distributed, hence '0' below the 2 under the hundreds column.  

 

 

After which, point out to the child after the conversion, he now has 26 tens (20+6) tens altogether. Show this in the working:

 

 

 

 

He can now distribute all the tens stamps.

 

 

Notice after distributing 25 tens stamps (5 tens stamps to each skittle) he has 1 ten stamps left over.

 

  

 

 

Divert the child's attention to the working. Tell the child that each skittle now has 5 tens stamps, hence have him write '5' on top of the working.

 

Ask him how many tens stamps did he distribute in total? There should be 25. Write it down in the working as shown above.

 

 

 

 

 

Remind him there were 26 tens stamps but he used only 25 stamps, hence there is 1 ten stamp left over as shown in the working.

 

Point out to the child that 1 ten is not enough to distribute to each of the skittle. Hence, he has to regroup or convert the ten into ones. He should now have 15 ones altogether.

 

 

 

Distribute all the one stamps to the skittles. Notice that there is no more stamps left. Show working:

 

 

 

Focus back to the working. Have the child count how many ones stamps did each skittle get. The answer should be '3'. Show in the working.

 

Also point out to the child that he had 15 ones stamps remaining and he has distributed all the 15 ones.

 

Have the child to count the number of stamps EACH skittle received. In this case, it is 53.

 

 

 

Point out to the child that there are no stamps left over. And the answer is 53.

 

Phew! I hope i didn't butcher the explanation. It is alot easier to explain in person then over the screen. If you intend to use this method to teach, you have to practise the steps out yourself first! Unless you are very certain, otherwise you will find yourself fumbling over throughout the lesson and you will lose your child's interest or worse, trust. If you didn't understand a single thing from the above, you can try studying the Singapore textbook, 'My Pals' for Primary 3 level.

 

Some things to note before embarking this lesson, the child must have a good grasp of the place values (2 hundreds is the same as 20 tens etc). He must be able to understand the meaning of division. It is important the child has a good foundation in his basics. Sonshine is able to grasp this because he was first taught the basics, read here. So he was able to understand the above concept very fast.

 

It may take a while for the child to 'see'. Practise makes perfect! Sonshine took this explanation very well and because of this method, he can now do long division regrouping mentally. All thanks to Montessori's very clear and visual explanation!