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Help with KISS grammar


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I'm having trouble understanding the explanation for today's lesson.

 

I'm looking at the instructional material for the lesson, "Other Helping Verbs", Exercise #1, on page 42. This is on the second part of "other helping verbs which show an attitude of action", using love and hate.

 

1. Bobtail does not love flying.

 

2. Bobtail hates flying.

 

I don't understand that flying is part of the verb phrase in these sentences. Isn't it used as a gerund, which functions as the direct object of the verbs *does love* and *hates*? I'm confused here. :confused:

 

Warriner's would qualify them both as gerunds.

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I'm no grammar star, but I think the point is to have the student get comfortable with seeing the whole verb phrase. In the teacher notes/key for lesson 34, he gives this explanation:

 

The wind stopped blowing.

The student underlines wind as the subject, and stopped blowing as the verb phrase.

In the complete analysis he shows wind underlined as the subject and stopped as the verb and identifies blowing as the gerund functioning as the direct object of stopped.

 

The gerund is then part of the whole verb phrase, right? I'm not sweating it, because the goal is simply to pick out the whole verb phrase for Grade 2, which is what level of KISS I am using.

 

It looks like he would class the first example like this one:

He did not like to work. Whole verb phrase is did like to work, and classes the to work as an infinitive functioning as the direct object of did like.

Edited by Critterfixer
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I think what is giving me pause is that we haven't covered infinitives or gerunds yet. That is making it difficult to work through the complete analysis, which is what we have been doing so far without any difficulty.

 

This lesson is really throwing me for a loop. I feel that in order to teach it properly, I need to go back and teach about gerunds and infinitives. Soooo, I feel that we're stuck for a bit. :(

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  • 1 month later...

LOL - You might let them know on the Yahoo group. He is re-ordering a few things. That's how I felt when my DS9 (3rd grade, level 1) started complements. He knew DO and IO from Latin, and PN is easy to generalize from Latin. But we hadn't really covered adjectives, so I was trying to explain them simply, and not overwhelm him with information. (I prefer the way the grade 2 book introduces complements first, then later teaches which types.)

 

We do our best on KISS. And I end up looking at the teacher's key, I never had explicit grammar instruction.

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I missed this thread when it was first posted. I'm not sure if Annie has found her answer by now. I just want to point out that Dr Vavra answered a similar question on the Yahoo group on 10-Oct. He clarified that at the first and second levels, verbals may be classified as part of the verb phrase. Verbals are taught in level four.

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  • 2 weeks later...
I missed this thread when it was first posted. I'm not sure if Annie has found her answer by now. I just want to point out that Dr Vavra answered a similar question on the Yahoo group on 10-Oct. He clarified that at the first and second levels, verbals may be classified as part of the verb phrase. Verbals are taught in level four.

 

Dredging up this older post of mine....

 

We're still working on infinitives right now.

 

I am teaching the infinitive as usually the direct object of the verb, then the latter part of the infinitive phrase as the modifier of the infinitive. Is this too confusing for this level (2nd grade workbook)?

 

Ex: Bobtail began to nibble the greenest leaves.

 

We would mark this as Bobtail began to nibble the greenest leaves.

 

So, we would mark subject, verb, infinitive (functioning as d.o. to began), adj., adj. direct object (of inf.).

 

Am I doing this correctly, or should I include the infinitive as part of the verb phrase for now? :confused:

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should I include the infinitive as part of the verb phrase for now?

At 2nd grade level, yes, you should include the infinitive as part of the verb phrase. However, if your student

is able to understand the way you are teaching (infinitive as D.O.) then that is fine too.

 

At KISS Level Two, I would suggesting teaching students to consider

"to play" in "He likes to play" as part of the verb phrase (to be underlined twice).

 

This is not the best explanation, but I firmly agree with Jerome Bruner. Bruner argues for "a spiral curriculum in which ideas are first presented in a form and language, honest though imprecise, which can be grasped by the child, ideas that can be revisited later with greater precision and power until, finally, the student has achieved the reward of mastery." See: http://home.pct.edu/~evavra/kiss/wb/IM/IM09_Bruner.htm

 

Distinguishing finite verbs from verbals will be a complex problem for students, so the KISS instructions in Level 2.1.6 attempt to Keep It Simple. If we try to have the students see "to play" as the direct object of "likes," the students will ave problems with verbs like "ought" and "needs," verbs which are often considered helping verbs. In other words, most grammarians would consider "ought to play" as a finite verb phrase in "He ought to play in every game."

 

Once students get to verbals in Level Four, they will probably have little trouble in seeing "to play" as the direct object of "likes," and "baseball" as the direct object of the verbal "to play" in "He likes to play baseball." But at KISS Level Two, many students will be overwhelmed by a direct object "to play" that itself has a direct object "baseball."

 

I hope this helps.

 

So again, if your student is not getting overwhelmed in seeing the infinitive as the D.O. then you can continue to teach it that way.

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