1. Warm-Up Please begin class by writing out five different complete sentences. It does not matter what your sentences are about as long as they are school appropriate.

2. The Simplest Complete Thought Tapping your inner-grammarian

3. The Simplest Complete Thought Twasbrillig and the slithytoves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; All mimsy were the borogroves, And the momerathsoutgrabe, Beware the Jaberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird and shun The frumiousBandersnatch! –Lewis Carroll

4. The Simplest Complete Thought Twasbrillig and the slithytoves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; All mimsywere the borogroves, And the momerathsoutgrabe, Beware the Jaberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird and shun The frumiousBandersnatch! –Lewis Carroll

5. What You’ve Always Known The flinkglopped. What is the above sentence about? What action is taking place in the sentence? Who is performing the action? You are able to understand the nonsense sentence because you are familiar with the sentence pattern.

6. What You’ve Always Known

7. Tells You Time

8. The Simplest Complete Thought How would you change “glopped” to make it happen in the present?

9. Tells You Time

10. Tells you number

11. The Simplest Complete Thought What would you do to “flink” to make it mean more than one flink?

12. Tells you number

13. The Simplest Complete Thought What would you do to “glops” to make it mean that more than one performer is performing that action?

14. The Simplest Complete Thought

15. The Simplest Complete Thought What do we usually call the performer? We usually call the performer the subject of a sentence. What do we usually call the action? We usually call the action the verb of a sentence.

16. The Simplest Complete Thought Subject: the thing that does the action. Verb: the action performed by the subject.

17. The Simplest Complete Thought Now take the time to look over the sentences you wrote for warm-up and label the subject and verb. Now check to see if your subjects and verb agree in number and time.

18. The Simplest Complete Thought Please copy these sentences. John and his brother plays basketball. The ball need more air. I scores a lot of points during my last game. I are a baller. The captains ask me to start two weeks ago.

19. The Simplest Complete Thought Now label the subject and verb of each sentence. Please correct the sentences so that the subject and verb agree in number and time.