Interjections

Students are usually asked to do two things: insert an interjection into a blank at the beginning of a sentence (though I did have one text that sometimes asked for it to be placed at the end, which seemed unusual), and punctuate/capitalize a sentence correctly when using an interjection. Students need to be reminded that interjections carry meaning. You wouldn't say, "Yuck! I see you bought a new car!" or "Hurray! I had to take my dog to the emergency vet this morning!" so yes, interjections must be chosen with some care. Secondly, students are often asked to include the punctuation after the interjection. If they will look at the first word on the printed sentence in the text, they really shouldn't make too many errors. If the first word is lower case, put a comma after the interjection. If the first word is capitalized, use an exclamation point. Believe it or not, we are at the end of one chapter!

Compound Sentences, and Compounds in General

Yesterday was a "three-fer" which ended up covering three lessons. Today will be a two-fer: compounds, and conjunctions. A great habit to establish from the beginning of the year is having students circle (or somehow identify) the basic conjunctions and, or, or but. Students often have trouble with compounds (subject, predicate, object of the preposition, etc.) because they stop too soon with their answer. If they get in the habit of identifying and, or, and but, and know that it means more of the answer is to come, they will do better throughout the year. When it comes to compound sentences, especially if students are asked to identify whether or not a sentence is compound, I use this little trick: I have the students turn their pencil around, use the eraser to cover the conjunction, and then look on both the left and the right. If both sides can stand alone as sentences, the sentence is compound. If that is not the case, then there is probably a compound subject or predicate. Now, is it all that essential that a student know whether or not a sentence is compound? It isn't in that knowing that probably won't result in a mistake in usage, but it is a common grammar question, and as students get older, each year it is expected that their writing becomes more sophisticated and sentence variety is part of that. Additionally, as students begin to work with more elaborate sentence types, it helps if they can identify a compound. One lesson later on deals with compound-complex sentences, so it comes in handy then. Besides the basic coordinating conjunctions, there are also the correlative pairs. Again, students need to know these for their lessons, test questions, etc., especially since it seems the older they get the more test questions tend to be geared to academic terminology rather than simply identifying the answer. Off the subject a bit -- my five foundation skills came in very handy today as we launched into nouns. Nouns should be a review, but they're not. Two hints for students: remember that the articles a, an, and the indicate a noun is coming; and, knowing the five jobs of nouns and pronouns and at least mentally going through our "steps" greatly increased the number of correct answers I was hearing.

Complete and Simple Subject and Predicate

These are foundation skills as well. It is very beneficial for students to be able to recognize complete subject and predicate because later on, if you've established the habit of dividing the sentence with a slash, students can be told that certain things can only be on the left side (on the subject side) or on the right side (the predicate side). When it comes to finding simple subject and predicate, if you've put the slash first, you will find that often they "hug the line." Adjectives and prepositional phrases which modify the subject tend to come before the simple subject (SS) and adverbs and prepositional phrases which modify the verb tend to come after the simple predicate (SP). A couple of other tips when it comes to these skills: for younger students (middle school), simply recognizing a complete sentence can be a challenge, so always have them first establish that they are working with a complete sentence. Additionally, another foundation skill, is the ability to make sure sentence is in normal (I also say "natural") order (subject before predicate). That skill in and of itself takes some practice, but work with students on the approximately four ways a sentence may not follow normal structure: a question, an imperative, starting with a prepositional phrase, and starting with here or there.

Let's go through a grammar book!

It's time for a change in approach. Yes, I have a very specific approach to grammar, and yes it works. However, some teachers don't have the luxury of teaching grammar in the order I believe is the most beneficial, and I would imagine there are many people who need help with a specific grammar question and not an entire approach. Before I start, I will say a few things. First, most aspects of grammar have a pattern as well as a trick for remembering how to achieve the correct answer, and I will do my best to offer both as much as possible. Secondly, the grammar book I have selected is a favorite, but shall remain nameless. I am only using it as a guide for the types of topics covered in most grammar books. Finally, I will discuss one lesson or topic a day. Lesson for today: Kinds of Sentences. It is not difficult to learn the four sentence types (declarative, interrogative, exclamatory, and imperative). Purpose and end punctuation help lead students to the correct answer. Sometimes students have trouble telling the difference between declarative and exclamatory for the simple reason that what the author is trying to use as something exciting and worthy of exclamation generally isn't all that exciting to young people, so I always tell them to pay attention to the intent. The most important aspect of the four sentence types is knowing about imperatives and their subject. Students must recognize an imperative and know that the subject is the implied or understood "you" which they must write in at the beginning of a sentence (in parentheses, I always tell them) or they won't have a subject. Knowing about imperative sentences is one of my foundation skills.