Read these sentences about your unprotected egg-drop in class, and think about what they have in common:

"I visited Mrs. Bockius's classroom today, and guest speakers were conducting an egg experiment.  Mrs. Bockius divided the students into groups, and each group created a landing pad for eggs.  Every group tested their landing pad, but some eggs did not survive the fall! "

All of these sentences are about the egg-drop experiment, and they are also all COMPOUND SENTENCES.  In fact, every sentence I have written before this one is a compound sentence!  Remember that compound sentences are combined from shorter, complete sentences that could have stood on their own.  Watch:

I visited Mrs. Bockius's classroom today. Guest speakers were conducting an egg experiment.  These are two perfectly fine, complete sentences on their own.  Add a comma and a conjunction and you have the magic of a compound sentence: I visited Mrs. Bockius's classroom today, and guest speakers were conducting an egg experiment.  Complete sentence + comma + conjunction + complete sentence = COMPOUND SENTENCE!

Why would we want to use compound sentences?  Well, we wouldn't ALL the time, but a little variety in our sentence structure makes our writing more interesting to our reader.  Also, as we've discussed before, combining related ideas often helps our writing be more direct, clear and powerful.  Look for and highlight conjunctions in your own writing.  Then see if that conjunction is linking two complete sentences together.  If it is, make sure you separate those two complete thoughts with a comma before that conjunction.  You have a compound sentence!

More examples of COMPOUND SENTENCES:

Armeck growled at the girls, so they all ran away screaming!
I couldn't open the door on my own, but Samsam arrived to help me.
Trevian J helps me with math, and I help him with spelling.

We have all had some practice using subjects and predicates in sentences.  I hear you are now talking about OBJECTS as well.   An example of a sentence with a subject + predicate + object might look like this:  Maikai throws baseballs.  The object of this sentence is "baseballs"...it is the noun that receives the action of our verb "throws".  Objects don't do the action...the action is done to them.

It's important that we had a quick reminder about objects, because now we are going to talk about using something called the ACTIVE VOICE in our writing.  Using the active voice is another way that we can strengthen our writing;  it puts the spotlight on our subject AND reminds us to use action verbs. To use the active voice in your writing, make sure that you name your subject, then tell us what action your subject does, and then tell us what or who receives the action.  

Simply, ACTIVE VOICE is just SUBJECT + PREDICATE + OBJECT again!  
Check this out:  Brancy feeds the tigers.  Active voice!  Easy, right!?
Now check THIS out...how is this different?:  The tigers are fed by Brancy.*  What do you think?

*This sentence seems to mean the same thing as "Brancy feeds the tigers", but the structure is different. This is because the object of the sentence appears first...even though the action isn't being done by the tigers!  THIS kind of structure is called the PASSIVE VOICE.  It's a perfectly good sentence, but it doesn't put the emphasis on our subject and it's not as easy to see who is doing what.  Also, did you notice how the "are" crept into our predicate in the passive voice?  The passive voice takes a little of the action out of our action verb!  


Mrs. Bockius loves the active voice!  (That's written in the active voice, by the way!)  You try writing something in the active voice in the comments section.  Remember, Mrs. Bockius loathes sentences using the verb "like" right now, so avoid that one!  :)   If you're feeling particularly adventurous, or if Mrs. Bockius tells you to do so, try and flip your active voice sentence into the passive voice.  It will help you make sure you know which is which!

A few more examples:
ACTIVE:  Several students aced the test!
PASSIVE:  The test was aced by several students!

ACTIVE:  Thorver's team won the game.
PASSIVE:  The game was won by Thorver's team.

ACTIVE:  Mrs. Bockius rewrote our comprehension packets. Yay!
PASSIVE:  Our comprehension packets were rewritten by Mrs. Bockius.  Yay!


 

It was great to work with such engaged learners in class last week!  If you remember, we talked about ways we can improve our writing by improving our sentences.  One way to improve sentences is to combine them.  We practiced identifying subjects and predicates.  We learned that when two sentences have the same subject and different predicates, we can combine them into one, more powerful sentence if we use a conjunction or joining word.  This kind of sentence is called a COMPOUND PREDICATE.
  For example, the sentences below have the same subject (Mrs. Bockius) and two different predicates:
                  Mrs. Bockius is creative.  Mrs. Bockius makes us laugh.  
  We can combine them:
                  Mrs. Bockius is creative and makes us laugh.

Post your own wonderful compound predicate sentences in the comments section.   If you are feeling particularly brave, try a COMPOUND SUBJECT sentence of your own.  These sentences combine multiple subjects that share the same predicate.
   For example, 
                  The girls are super good students!  The boys are super good students! 
   COMPOUND SUBJECT:
                   The girls and the boys are super good students!

Have fun!