Notes 1. Some students will want to consider "tell" as a finite verb. But the question "Who or what tell?" results in the answer "me." Since they will not consider "Me tell you" as an acceptable sentence, "tell" cannot be a finite verb. 2. Don't expect students to be able to identify clauses as complements. That will come in Level Three. 3. Students will realize that "to be myself" answers the question "Try what?" Thus they will know that it functions as a direct object, but they will not yet know that it is an infinitive. 4. Note that "two" here functions as the
subject because the semantic subject, "windows," has been ellipsed. "Sammy's"
and "Sara's" are, of course, possessive nouns, but possessive nouns function
as adjectives.
5. I have opted to interpret "First" in "First is Missy's room" as the subject, as in "The first." However an equally valid interpretation would be to consider "First" as an adverb and "room" as the subject. 6. I have not counted the many words in
this passage that appear in short fragments. They will be considered in
Level Three, on clauses. Even at this level, however, teachers might want
to note that sentences generally have subjects and finite verbs, and students
could be shown how to fix the punctuation in these sentences to eliminate
most, if not all, of the fragments. For more on this, see the Essay
on Fourth Grader's Writing.
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