This week's learning - the sequel

This week's school newsletter.

This week we are also learning about the possessive apostrophe, but we ended up learning  about the apostrophe to show missing letters (elision) at the same time.  The apostrophe of the day today is for not: 

did not = didn't      had not = hadn't      will not = won't     were not = weren't 
could not = couldn't        have not = hadn't       is not = isn't       does not = doesn't 
    
We learnt that: 
- the writer George Bernard Shaw did not like to use apostrophes and only used them when they were needed to make something clear 
-  the apostrophe  punctuation mark came from France
-  the word apostrophe comes from Greek:  apo =  away, and strephein = to turn 
-  the word apostrophe also has a meaning nothing to do with punctuation; it is used in the theatre in plays  when an actor is talking to someone who is not actually present, or is talking to an abstract noun - such as 'honour', or to something which is an object - such as the moon
- the English language has gone through  at least three stages of change
- Old English used to have the suffix -es to show possession or ownership,  eg the cyninges haet meant  the hat belonging to the king; this became the kinges hatte in Middle English, and then the e was dropped and replaced by an apostrophe for the king's hat in Modern English (We should thank the French for that, says Mwaniki)


We are also learning the difference between passed and past. We know that passed is always a verb, but past  can be an adverb, an adjective, a noun or a preposition: 

Best in the class so far: Cameron and Lili, who can write sentences for all forms of passed and past - and identify the parts of speech. Clever!

- it's complicated but when you get the hang of it, it's quite easy (Cameron)
- practice is all you need to get better (Brylee)

Here are some examples of our class's work today. We had to write short sentences to show we understood the different ways passed and past could be used: 

I passed the salt. (verb)  Cameron
I tip-toed past. (adverb) Cameron
We are sorry for our past actions. (adjective) Cameron 
I went back into the past. (noun) Cameron
We sprinted past the house. (preposition) Cameron
I passed the fish and chip shop. (verb) Jason 
The runner passed him at the finish line (verb) Mason
The past years have gone quickly. (adjective) Kylah
Jamarl passed the Percy Jackson book to me. (verb) Alex
A wasp flew past. (adverb) Lili 
In the past, we went to Rainbow's End. (noun) Lili 
She went past the school. (preposition) Lili 
The child was sorry for his past actions. (adjective) Brylee

Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo
We are now in part two  of the story, and we are looking for parallels that were foreshadowed in the first part of the story, for example, Mr Munnings, Tommo and Charlie's headmaster, was a bully, and in the army Sergeant Horrible Hanley is also a bully.  Charlie sticks up for Tommo when he is bullied by others at school, and he does the same when Tommo is bullied by others in the army. 

Here's the link to the "You can't do correct English under pressure" game.