learning journey, sentences, publish, FORM, content, writing skills

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May 31, 2013

Greetings all learners! Mrs. J is ‘musing’ again….

An overcast spring day; but, oh, so green!

Remember the Learning Journey?

How well do you understand your place in it?

A quick review: a learner has a question, they seek out resources that may provide an answer, they ‘play’ (work, experiment) with the answer to prove its accuracy (or error), they articulate (apply words to) what they have learned; finally, they ‘publish’ their words.

Publish?

‘Publish’ means putting the words into the sentence FORMS that communicate the learner’s desired meaning and deciding who needs to read the words and why and what place or venue this can best be accomplished.

All writing is words ordered in sentence FORMS.  FORMS are limited and learnable. Content – what is articulated in those FORMS – is individual and infinite. 

                         LEARN FORMS BEFORE CONTENT!!

We are ultimately responsible for our own words, but they are disjointed bits without the FORMS (patterns) that determine meaning. (What does a sentence look like, anyway?)

I repeat:

Learn FORMS before applying content; words contained in FORMS generate meaning. Understanding FORMS well gives you creative control over your content (words).

Meaningful content generates understanding, for yourself and your readers. Your questions can be well and thoroughly answered, by you!

Example:

What does a sentence FORM look like?

Noun  l  verb

Mom  l cooks

This is a base clause, kernel sentence or base sentence FORM.

Words can be added that develop and extend meaning.

It could become: My mom cooks hamburgers.

       And:        My busy mom cooks hamburgers at lunchtime.

Add a few more details: My busy mom usually cooks hamburgers at lunchtime, in the school cafeteria, every Tuesday.

Mom is the noun; ‘cooks’ is her action.

Challenge: Start a ‘treasure hunt’ for base sentences buried in the details of longer sentences in the stories you are reading.