KISS Grammar -- Why the Cat always Falls upon her Feet -- ToC

Notes for
Focusing on Complements:

"Why the Cat always Falls upon her Feet"
from
The Book of Nature Myths by Florence Holbrook

[For the complete text, click here.]

Exercise # 1	AK	G5	L1.3 S/V/Mix
Exercise # 2	AK	G5	L1.3 S/V/Mix
Exercise # 3	AK	G5	L1.3 S/V/Mix
Exercise # 4	AK	G4	L3.1.1 CMC
Exercise # 5	AK		L3.1.2 SC (Adj & Adv)
Exercise # 6	AK		-
" Punct		-	L6.1

      Students often have trouble learning to distinguish the types of complements, so this set of exercises is geared to help them. It is based on the complete text of "Why the Cat always Falls upon her Feet," which is a very short tale. I selected this story both because it is short and because many of the sentences in it are relatively simple. Having taken the time to separate the sentences into types for exercises, I was a bit surprised to see that there are no predicate nouns in the usable sentences, but, having done the hard part, I decided to proceed anyway.
    The first seven exercises are the ones that you should use. The first three consist of six sentences each, but the sentences are relatively short. Individual sentences in these exercises may include zero complements, predicate adjectives, or direct objects, but there will be only one pattern in each sentence. Note that there may be more than one S/V/C pattern in any sentence. (I considered putting all the sentences with S/V patterns, etc. together in one exercise, but that would be too easy.) The next four exercises consist of two sentences each, and within any sentence students will find more than one type of S/V/C pattern.
     If they do not already have it, give the students the instructional material on finding complements (or a variation thereof). Then simply have them analyze and review the sentences. The best way to use these exercises, especially in a classroom situation, is to assign one exercise for every other class. That way the students can do an exercise, and review it in class before they try the next one. To make up for the lack of predicate nouns in these sentences, you might want to have the students create an S/V/PN sentence for each of the three major characters:

The magician is a(n) (PN).
The serpent is a(n) (PN).
The cat is a(n) (PN). In addition to being a grammar exercise, this is an excellent elementary exercise in the literary concept of characterization. You might even want to extend this into a writing exercise in which the students support each S/V/PN sentence with two or three sentences that support their idea of what each character is.