Sit and rise have I’s–and lie does too. “Coz these are things that I, all by myself, can do. Set, raise, and lay are words that you choose When each one has an object after it to use.
Here we are at the end of our Wacky Word pair—lie and lay.
Remember these lie and lay tips:
Lie has an I—and I alone can do it (it is not done TO something else).
I lie in bed at wide awake.
Yesterday I lay awake half the night.
Before that I had lain down when the cat jumped on me.
Lie means to stretch out in a flat position—anybody or anything can lie, as long as it does it by itself (i.e. it is NOT laid)
She lies down with a headache every day.
The sun is lying low.
She has lain down for a nap.
Lay must have an object following it—something that it is being laid down.
Lay your book on the table.
He laid his money down.
She has laid the towels in the sun.
Okay…the tenses for the three:
1. Lie
a. Base form: lie—Tomorrow I will lie down early. (Remember—no object; down is an adverb; early is an adverb here, not an object.
b. Past simple: lay—Yesterday I lay in the sun. (Tricky part: past tense of lie is lay; lay is also the present tense of lay—to lay something down!)
b. Past participle: lain—They have lain low ever since then.
d. Third person singular: lies—The dog just lies under the tree all day long.
e. Present participle/gerund: lying—The sun was lying on the horizon for so long today.
2. Lay
Base form: lay—I lay the kids’ clothes out every day. (Tricky: lay is the base form of lay (to put something down; it is also the past tense of lie—to stretch out by yourself or itself.)
Past simple: laid—Yesterday I laid the pink pants out for Jon.
Past participle: laid—Before the dog came in, I had already laid his bones out.
Third person singular: lays—He lays the book down every night at ten.
Present participle/gerund: laying—I am laying the swim suits out to dry.
Tricky Tricks to Help It Stick
Again, do sit/set first (all same base word for tenses of set!) or rise/raise (since many people get this pair correct even if they do not know sit/set and lie/lay very well).
Do rise/raise after sit/set or sit/set after rise/raise (saving lie/lay for last).
Memorize acronym/rhyme to cement the fact that all three with I’s are the ones that are done by someone or something (not to something).
When you get to lie and lay, to lie first all by itself until it is memorized. Then do lay. (I am starting to wait a week between the two with lots of practice on lie during that week before moving on to lay.)
I’m officially done with sit/set; rise/raise; and lie/lay! Time to move on. I feel that I have risen to the occasion and am glad that I did not sit idly by and lay these tricky ones aside. Glad I did not let people lie in agony over these Wacky Words. I would like for all of us to set our grammar burdens aside and raise a toast in honor of sit/set; rise/raise; and lie/lay! J (Last time for a while, honest!)
A few more ideas for encouraging/helping your child with sentence writing, then we’re on to something new!
If your child is hesitant to write because of penmanship difficulties, either teach him how to type (use a typing program for young kids) or write for him as he dictates to you. He needs to see that penmanship difficulties do not mean that he is unable to write. Writing is thinking. Penning is art.
Try having him write sentences about things you are doing. For example, have him write a sentence each day in a journal about that day or every Saturday about the weekend.
Or have specific things listed at the top of a journal for him or her that he/she writes about:
Monday: Weekend
Tuesday: Food
Wednesday: Book
Thursday: Animal
Friday: Person
Saturday: Movie
Have him write a sentence under a picture, similar to captions. These pictures may be ones that he has drawn or colored or cartoons or pictures from a book.
Make a list of nouns and a list of verbs. Have him write a sentence using one word from the noun list and one word from the verb list. For example:
NOUNSVERBS
Dogrun
Boyjump
Girlcatch
Radioblare
Cowate
For more sentence writing help, along with help in other areas of language arts, for the second/third grade level (i.e. already reading well), check out the sample of the our books, “Character Quality Language Arts,” Level Pre A (https://www.tfths.com/samples.php ). There is a full month that you may use with our child free of charge. Happy writing!
Just a couple of most posts about sentence writing for our “Homework Help” feature this month—then back to more tips and tricks for all readers, writers, speakers, and thinkers! Below is a list of other sentence writing ideas for you and your student/child:
If your child likes the feeling of creating through writing, but doesn’t think he can write sentences, you may want to try one of the following:
Have him copy sentences that you write for him or sentences out of one of his favorite books.
Write sentences for him with a light colored highlighter and have him write over the highlighter with his pencil.
Write “fill in the blank sentences for him.” When I was in teacher’s college, these were called “cloze sentence” (for those who want to google to find out more). This is where you write sentences but leave blanks for him to fill in key words. This way you have started the sentences for him, but what happens in the sentence and to whom is still his creation. (There’s a site that lets you build these and print them for your kids/students at https://www.theteacherscorner.net/printable-worksheets/make-your-own/fill-in-the-blank/ .)
If he can’t think of anything to write about in his sentences, ask him questions that he must answer in sentence form. “What is your favorite animal?” “What is your favorite color?” etc.
If he is having trouble writing “real” sentences (i.e. write fragments or dependent clauses instead), have him say it aloud and ask him more questions. For example, if he says “Blue” (to the favorite color question), say “Blue what?” If he says “favorite color,” continue to coach him. “Try this…Blue is…can you make that into a complete sentences instead of just words?” (Coaching is a huge part of teaching writing!)
If he likes to write stories, have him dictate sentences to you (or alternate giving sentences—he then you) that you pen for him.
Finally, have him write a sentence a day to get used to sentence writing. We had journals for our kids that they copied verses and quotes in—one a day—to help them get a feeling for sentence writing.
Tomorrow—final homework help for sentences. Thanks for joining us!
After a student is reading well (and sometimes even before if things are not quite taught in order), he will start learning to write. Remember this is not penmanship. Penmanship is penning words. Writing is putting words together to form sentences. Sentences are then put together to form paragraphs. And paragraphs are put together to design essays, reports, and stories.
A student can learn to write sentences either by writing them himself or by dictating to you and having you pen the sentences for him. Either way, here are some “sentence writing tips”:
The CAVES acronym shows that a sentence must contain five parts: Capital; All makes sense; Verb; End mark; Subject. You can use this with your child as he writes sentences to evaluate if he truly has written sentences or just a group of words. (If he doesn’t fully understand the subject-verb part, ask him if his sentence has someone or something that it is about. And that someone or something doing or being something (verb). He doesn’t even have to know the terminology to see if the subject or verb is missing from a sentence.
The other two “easily visible” part of CAVES—capital and end mark—can be spotted quickly by your student as you ask him for each one.
The last one, All makes sense, is best discovered orally (both now and in writing for years to come). This is because what a person thinks he wrote (and reads silently) is not always what he truly wrote. Thus, if he reads something silently, he will often read in his head what he meant to write, not what he actually wrote. If he reads it aloud, he will “hear” it. (Incidentally, we use this “hear” your errors approach in our writing books for high schoolers as well—not just for individual sentence writing.)
If he is learning to write sentences and feels at a loss as to what to write, point out the speaking-writing connection to him by dialoguing:
Student: I can’t think of anything to write.
Teacher/Parent: What did you do today?
Student: school
Teacher/Parent: Say it in a complete sentence with “I” as the subject.
Student: I went to school.
Write this down for him, showing him once again that the written word is simply the spoke word written down.
More homework help for early writing tomorrow. Happy learning!
Welcome to Homework Help Week at Language Lady 365! We are going to interrupt our regular posts to provide help to parents (and teachers) in helping their children/students with language arts, reading, writing, and grammar homework.
Roadmap for the week:
1. Starting with some reading help! Reading is the inverse of spelling in the same way that addition is the inverse of subtraction. Build a strong reading background, helping your student to reach “reading fluency,” and a love for learning, and you will go a long way way in helping him or her in language arts in general–and all learning eventually.
2. Then sentence writing, including…
a. Penmanship vs writing b. Beginning sentence writing c. Copy work d. Reading and writing connection e. Writing “from his brain” and from a source for little ones
