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.

Time flies, and the magic of teaching

As the year has gotten up to speed, I've obviously had a bit more trouble getting in here on a regular basis. It is hard to fathom that we are at the halfway point of the first quarter and I am frantically grading as quickly as possible in order to produce mid-term progress reports. We have a new online grading program this year, and dinosaur that I am, it's a bit of an overwhelming adjustment. Just my two cents, but it seems that with each year I spend more and more time reporting grades and less and less creating interesting lessons and developing new materials. I think that is a sad change in my career. Today I asked my colleagues a question: Is all this grading, reporting, assessing, testing, etc., making us better off than we were in the past? I think we all know the answer to that, and it is no. Yes, I realize some will counter that the pressure to get into college is greater than before, and if a young person is not some sort of uber wunderkind they don't stand a snowball's chance. Therefore, every assignment, every point, must be micromanaged and fought for. It just seems we've become obsessed with the grade, not the learning. Yes, grades and assessments are important, and yes, times have changed, but not necessarily for the better. There is only so much time to go around each day, and spending increasing amounts of it at the computer, typing in grades, instead of creating lessons and having time to think about what I'm doing and consider how I might be doing it better seems a bit...sad. I fear that within ten to fifteen years, we won't have any teachers left who remember what it was like to really teach, to have freedom and flexibility in what they do. You see, teaching is not about being in lockstep with everyone else, on the same page, at the same time, assessing with the same test. It's about the magic that occurs, and that magic is different in every classroom setting, or at least it used to be. The true magic of education is allowing creative professionals to be their best, which means bringing their own personalities and strengths, their insights, their passion about the subject, and imparting that passion to their students. That's the magic. I recall being told, probably during student teaching (and I won't confess how many decades ago that was), to never teach a piece of literature you did not love, because the students would know. But if you always taught what you loved, they would love it, too. My career has validated that over and over again, and yet I now find myself limited in what I teach and how I teach it. And who suffers for this? Students, who need to experience the love and passion a teacher can have for a subject. I do my best to at least like and appreciate what I'm required to do, and keep a positive front, but it's not the same as the love and passion I used to have when I had freedom of choice. What does any of this have to do with grammar tips? Absolutely nothing. But my book is written out of love and passion for the subject. That's right. I love and have a passion for grammar, especially making it accessible for students and presenting it in a way they can understand and apply, now and in their futures. I'll try to stay off my soapbox, though I would imagine at some time I will address popular "bandwagons" onto which some school districts jump, and the acronyms by which they are known. However, I will try to stay focused on the purpose of this blog. Right now, on my desk, I have a list of topics that have come up during class. I'll do my best to bring the list home tomorrow and start addressing what is on it.

Story Graph/Plot Development, Protagonist/Antagonist

We started graphing our first short story today, and as I went over the terminology, I asked if anyone could explain what each term meant. One student gave an amazing analogy for plot development, from rising action, to climax, to resolution. I realize a previous teacher very likely taught it this way, and kudos to them for their insight, because it's a great way to help students remember. It was such a great description, I wanted to share. "Rising action is like music that gets louder and louder. Then it reaches its loudest [climax], and then gets quieter [resolution]." I loved it! I truly appreciate when teachers put things in terms kids can understand and recall. On the flip side, some memory tricks can lead to a bit of a misunderstanding later on. We have not yet begun to discuss protagonist and antagonist, and though I fully understand why a teacher might explain it this way to very young children (sometimes I think we are pushing concepts down too far to students who are not yet developmentally ready to understand them), saying that the protagonist is the "good guy" and the antagonist is "the bad guy" will lead to issues later on when there is not good guy or bad guy, or there is a person vs. self internal conflict, or a person vs. nature external conflict. Sometimes students have the good/bad guy idea so firmly in their minds they have difficulty understanding types of conflict other than person vs person. In fact, for many the mere term "conflict" is confusing because they hear it and think "fight" or "disagreement," which simply is not always the case.

Have you ever wondered how students develop certain habits?

I have a standard writing guide I have used for years and it includes specific examples of what I do and don't want to see. I make small revisions as necessary, but in the last year or two, I find myself needing to add quite a few more reminders of what not to do. What's really interesting is I see the same error repeatedly, despite the fact that students come from many feeder schools. A couple of years ago I had to start asking, when doing any type of narrative writing, for students to please not use convenient devices such as "suddenly," "out of nowhere," or "all of a sudden," and to please not begin with "One day," or end with "It was all a dream," or "Then I woke up." Last year I was taken aback by what I now term "the dreaded also comma." The number of fragments created by using also as the first word of a sentence, followed by a comma, was (and is again this year) amazing. I have already seen the continuation of several other trends: infront of (I don't know why students are putting in and front together as a single word -- gosh, why not include of and run the entire multi-word preposition together?), starting sentences with and or but (which I always thought was fairly verboten), and the widespread inability to spell tries, tried, or trying. Again, this isn't a matter of young writers making mistakes, which is to be expected; it's how certain ones crop up, in large numbers, errors that in the past were not frequent enough to be on my radar screen. One excellent source for bringing common writing errors to the attention of students is a book from the Cottonwood Press about English Teachers' Pet Peeves. It has one or two I haven't seen as a prevalent issue, and it lacks one or two I would have included, but overall it's an excellent source, and like most Cottonwood Press publications, a lot of fun with a sense of humor young writers appreciate.