Grammar Reference Sheets
ACT Prep Sheet |
Editing Rule Sheets |
Grammar Research
Before I show you how I do grammar, I first want to talk about grammar in isolation (grammar in textbooks). You think that students make progress, but really you are simply teaching to a test that they forget the next week and rarely apply to their own writing. What about sentence diagramming? That began in 1860. We might as well be using muskets today. Besides, the system breaks down when you add complicated clauses. What about the people who swear by it? You are referring to teachers and the people whose hands are always raised. Well, those students' loudness overcompensates for the insecure quietness of the rest of the class, and have you noticed that those bright, bright stars still misuse semicolons in their writing? Below you will find the grammar research I completed.
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Long story short: buy Don Killgallon's Sentence Composing for High School.
Another strategy that is useful is the Sentence Writing Strategy that incorporates a specific formula for different simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex sentences. The problem is that the formula is then discarded when you add phrases or specific types of clauses. It is not as comprehensive as Killgalon's book, but it is still very far above anything else I have seen. I also made a grammar flip book for this type of strategy. Just print off the document below on card stock, print on both sides, bind it, and then cut along the lines. The picture and that part of the sentence will change. |
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Sentence Writing Instruction
Grammar and writing take some practice. Here are different approaches that I had for my instruction.
The next major component to the classroom is the process of grading and marking up papers. All too often, though, my hands hurt from writing "comma splice" or "run-on," and the students barely look at the results before tossing the paper aside. I wanted to stress the importance of revision, but I also figured out that students frequently asked me what those terms in the margins were. Well, I had an old copy of grammar rules from an inservice--I also happened to observe Mr. Creasman at my school focus on rules in his student papers--so I decided to modify them a bit to focus on the mistakes that tended to pop up a lot in papers. I had a word side and a punctuation side, and I included the rule, an example incorrect sentence, and the corrected version. Now, after I handed back their papers, I could have students write their five most common errors and fix them as an assignment. Sounds perfect, right? The problem was that students still needed more individualized attention. That was when I decided to add QR codes to the mix. Below you will find a preview of the document and the file available for download.
editing_rules_-_2015_qr_2.pdf | |
File Size: | 280 kb |
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Please use this document. Share the document with whomever you think will benefit by it. If you want more related to this, I also made a semester-long collection of bell work, quizzes, and answer keys that are available at http://tinyurl.com/oy9t3ss.