_Let's review some basics.

There are words. They come in eight parts of speech: verbs, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections.

There are phrases. They are groups of words that work together to do a single job: verb phrases, participial phrases, noun phrases, prepositional phrases.

There are clauses. Clauses have both a subject (with a noun or pronoun) and a predicate (with a verb). Clauses that can stand by themselves as sentences are called independent clauses. Clauses that cannot stand by themselves as sentences are dependent clauses.

There are different ways to join two independent clauses. Here are two independent clauses:
There were 58 students from Poulsbo Middle School at Regional History Day.
The girls led them all in school cheers before the awards ceremony began.

The most basic way to join two independent clauses is to use a comma and conjunction:
There were 58 students from Poulsbo Middle School at Regional History Day, and the girls led them all in school cheers before the awards ceremony began.

Another common way to join two independent clauses is to use a subordinating conjunction to make one sentence into a dependent clause and then attach it to the other sentence:
Since there were 58 students from Poulsbo Middle School at Regional History Day, the girls led them all in school cheers before the awards ceremony began.

A less common way to join two closely related independent clauses is to use a semicolon:
There were 58 students from Poulsbo Middle School at Regional History Day; the girls led them all in school cheers before the awards ceremony began.

An unusual and classy way to join two closely related independent clauses is to use a nominative absolute. Change the verb in the second sentence into an -ing participle and use a comma where the period was. See how it works:
There were 58 students from Poulsbo Middle School at Regional History Day, the girls leading them all in school cheers before the awards ceremony began.

Cool, huh?

You will be using nominative absolutes in your vocab sentences during December. That's just two weeks--Dec. 7 and Dec. 14.

The kings vs lords chart and your notes on the two power points should help on the essays. The chants are full of information that is on the multiple choice test.

Look at the file above called "UW Prep." What a wonderful thing the librarians at UW have done to help all of you! Then read this note from the library staff at UW:

The UW Databases with the padlock icon are UW Restricted--only current UW students, faculty, and staff can use them from off campus.  Your students are welcome to use them (and will likely have the most success finding newspaper articles searching these UW databases) while on campus, and we hope that they'll visit a UW Library to use them again if needed.

Our website can be a bit overwhelming, so we have pulled together the most useful UW Databases and added them to the News: History Day Guide at <http://guides.lib.washington.edu/hdnews>. Students can view this before they get here and begin to use the websites listed on their resource sheets. 

The titles listed under the Microfilm heading include the Microfilm A call number that the students will need to locate the microfilm in Microforms & Newspapers (MicNews).  MicNews staff will be on hand to help the students locate their materials, use the computers, and the microform machines.

Don't forget that in every vocab sentence you write, you must use one of the vocab words in a way that demonstrates you know what the word means. If we can substitute random words in place of the vocab word, we will not give you credit for the vocab word.

For November the stylistic device to use in vocab sentences is the participial phrase opening.

• Opening means it comes at the beginning of the sentence.
• Participial means it uses the participle of a verb. For these sentences, we will use -ing verbs. (Verbs that end in -ed can be used in participial phrases, too, but we will stick with one kind.)
  
• Phrase means it's more than one word.

Here are some examples:

• Walking through the Bloedel Reserve, the visitor stopped to watch the swans on the pond.
• Hitting a line drive, the batter made it to third base.
• Savoring the delicious enchilada, Matt decided he liked Mexican food the best.

It's not a participial phrase if there is just one word:

• Meandering, the visitor stopped to watch the swans on the pond.
• Sprinting, the batter made it to third base.
• Eating, Matt decided he liked Mexican food the best.

It's not a participial phrase opening if it's not at the beginning of the sentence:

• The visitor walking through the Bloedel Reserve stopped to watch the swans on the pond.
• The batter, hitting a line drive and running as fast as possible, made it to third base.
• Matt decided he liked Mexican food the best, savoring the delicious enchilada his friend's mother had served.

Most of all, make sure you don't turn your participial phrase opening into a dangling modifier! Remember, the subject of the sentence (right after the comma) must be the person or thing doing the action of the participle. Here are some bad examples:

• Walking through the Bloedel Reserve, the pond's swans entranced the visitor.
• Hitting a line drive, third base was a reasonable goal and the player ran as fast as he could.
• Savoring the delicious enchilada, the dinner was the best food Matt had ever eaten..