by Donna | Mar 19, 2018
There are five influences that we have found in determining priorities in life. Obviously, there are more impacts than these; however, these are the five that have guided us through the years. Like everything else we have learned and applied in our lives, these were learned from others (especially through Gregg Harris Seasons of Life seminar)—for which we will be eternally grateful.
by Donna | Mar 17, 2018
I recently had a student miss an important class session in my sequence of teaching the 3 P’s of Persuasive Writing, so I recorded the review for him. When I finished recording it, I thought it would make a good review for parents and teachers who are teaching in these areas (and for those who would like to see what goes on in my advanced writing classes). So….here you go!
Watch the teaching video and follow along with the downloadable portions provided. It really is fun to learn how to take your POSITION, design your POINTS, and gather your PROOFS! 🙂
by Donna | Mar 15, 2018
For optimal viewing on a mobile device, tilt your device to landscape mode.
Kids from second grade on can often tell you that a noun is a “person, place, thing, or idea.” We tend to think that nouns are “easy.” However, that simply isn’t true. Nouns are one of the most difficult parts of speech to spot because nouns act like other parts of speech all the time.
Look at these “nouns” that are acting, either directly or with suffixes added, like other parts of speech:
Because of the difficulty in recognizing nouns, I focus my noun teaching on helping students recognize words that tell them that a noun is coming. One category of words that tells us that a noun is coming is the noun marker or article. (I like to call them noun markers because the name tells what they do—they mark nouns, or tell you that a noun is coming.) While a noun marker doesn’t necessarily mean that a noun is the next word up, it does mean that one is coming soon.
Thus, learning to recognize these three little words is super helpful. You can use my rhyme if you’d like. (Oh, and notice the order….when you have a and an together, and you have the word and between them, students think AND is a noun marker.)
An, the, a….three little words…
Tell you that a noun is about to be heard.
The next category of words that indicates that a noun might be coming soon is the preposition. The preposition is the first word of a phrase (group of words that is not a sentence) known as a prepositional phrase. A prepositional phrase begins with a preposition and ends with the object of the preposition. That is where nouns come in: The object of a preposition is usually a noun (to the STORE) or pronoun (to HIM).
Thus, a preposition tells us that a noun might be coming soon. Since my students (my personal ones and those using my books) learn prepositions early and often, it is a natural step to teach that when you see a preposition, a word or two or three over will either be a noun or pronoun: INTO the river; OVER the rickety, dangerous bridge.
An adjective is a describer that tells you something about a noun or pronoun. It describes a noun when it comes before a noun (the KIND lady). It describes a pronoun when it is a predicate adjective—an adjective in the predicate part of the sentence (the second half of the sentence) that describes something in the first part of the sentence. Predicate adjectives can describe nouns (The boy is STUDIOUS—studious describes boy) and pronouns (He is STUDIOUS—studious describes he).
Some handbooks consider possessives, articles, and clarifying words to be adjectives. Regardless of whether you learned it this way or not, descriptive adjectives should be taught as signaling words for nouns. Students can learn quickly that when they see a descriptive adjective, a noun will usually be following. An adjective tells us that a noun is coming right away (pretty DAY) or that a noun is coming in a little bit (in the case of two or more adjectives in a row—the noun isn’t necessarily right after the first adjective): pretty, warm, sunny DAY).
As mentioned previously, some protocols teach that a possessive noun (Donna’s) or possessive pronoun (her, its, our) is an adjective. Regardless of how you classify possessives, they tell you that a noun could be coming next (or soon, if there is a describer between the possessive and the noun. Thus, I teach my students that possessives OWN (or possess) something (often a noun). This could happen right away: It is HER bike. Or it could happen after a possessive and some describers: That is Donna’s pretty, smooth pen.
It might seem laborious to teach all of these types of “signals” for nouns. However, they are parts of speech that students learn in grammar and writing all of the time. So let’s teach all of the uses for them at that time and make finding nouns then matching nouns with their correct case of describers and even correct number of noun markers, etc., much easier. After testing my books with one hundred students a year for nearly twenty years, I am all about making concepts as easy as possible for our amazing students!
by Donna | Mar 12, 2018
We’ve been studying prepositions a lot here at Character Ink Blog! I’m excited to teach parents and teachers how to teach prepositions in a way that allows students to be able to come up with 100 prepositions fairly quickly!
Prepositions must be reviewed over and over. They should be taught in a way that teaches their FUNCTION (not just in rhyme or song). Then we must practice them over and over and over again IN REAL SENTENCES. Below are three simple steps I follow….but before you read the steps, here are some other preposition helps for you!
by Donna | Mar 8, 2018
For optimal viewing on a mobile device, tilt your device to landscape mode.
I talked about these in last week’s slideshow for Teaching Beginning Prepositions, but they work wonderfully for teaching prepositional phrases as well as lists of prepositions. The first Preposition Check Sentence that I teach is one that is focused on spatial relationships: The plane flew XXXX the clouds (under the clouds, through the clouds, over the clouds, in the clouds, between the clouds, atop the clouds, etc.). The second one that I teach is focused on time: The boys played XXXX the break (during the break, after the break, , before the break, etc.). These Check Sentences are amazingly efficient for helping students memorize long lists of prepositions while focusing on the PURPOSE of prepositions (showing spatial or time relationships).
Besides being invaluable for memorizing prepositions, these Check Sentences also teach students indirectly what a prepositional phrase is. The Check Sentences themselves contain prepositional phrases, so as students memorize prepositions, they are actually using prepositional phrases (under the clouds, through the clouds, over the clouds, in the clouds, between the clouds, during the break, after the break, , before the break, etc.). It is a natural progression to show students that in the Check Sentences, the object that the plane is under, over, through, etc., is the object of the prepositional phrase.
After using these Preposition Check Sentences with students, they are able to start finding prepositional phrases easily. They can HEAR the object because the Check Sentences have taught them the purpose of prepositions (not just a list of them). I use a Teach-Practice-Apply method in my books and classes, so as we go through practice sentences finding prepositional phrases together, we start out by highlighting all of the prepositions that they can find. Then I tell them which words they should have highlighted as prepositions, and on each one, I ask them PREPOSITION WHAT? or PREPOSITION WHOM? So when I come to by, I ask them “by WHAT?” I do this with every preposition they have highlighted: “to WHOM?” “for WHAT?” “over WHAT?” “from WHOM?” “under WHAT?”
THEN, we are ready to learn to isolate prepositional phrases with parentheses. This is an important step in the next point–we place parentheses around all prepositional phrases with the beginning parenthesis before the preposition and the closing parenthesis after the object of the preposition: (For example,) (in a given sentence), we place parentheses (around words) (like this). We do this after they have highlighted all of the words that they think are prepositions. This might sound laborious, but it becomes second nature very quickly–and is crucial for the REASONS for learning prepositional phrases: (1) To ignore them so you can match subjects and verbs; (2) To use as sentence openers (and punctuate them properly).
The first reason that I teach students for learning prepositional phrases is the easier one (and one that they are familiar with because of my Checklist Challenge for their reports, stories, and essays) is to use them as sentence openers. Sentence openers are also called introductory material or non-essential information. Prepositional phrases make great sentence openers, and students need to learn how to locate them easily and punctuate them correctly. Therefore, once they can spot prepositional phrases quickly, they can use them in their writing–and place commas in the correct spots.
The second reason that I teach students for learning prepositional phrases is more difficult–but super important. They isolate all of their prepositional phrases with parentheses at first and then mentally later because the sentence’s main subject (and usually ANY subject) and main verb (and usually ANY verb) are not found within a prepositional phrase. This is crucial for subject verb agreement. Consider the isolation and main subjects and main verbs in the sentences below and the difference it makes when you don’t have the option of considering the prepositional phrase’s object in subject verb agreement:
There are many prepositions that are also other parts of speech. One of those is the word TO. The word TO is a preposition when it has an object following it (to the store, to Mom, etc.). The word TO is not a preposition when it has a verb with it (TO run, TO jump, TO be). Obviously, all “exceptions” and “special circumstances” in grammar and usage can be confusing, but this one is especially challenging because TO is a high utility word, and prepositional phrases need to be located so that students are not tripped up in the aforementioned subject-verb agreement scenarios.
I teach that TO + a verb is a special verb very early (second grade during our beginning preposition practice). It’s okay if they don’t know if it is called an infinitive. Once they know their BHL verbs (Be, a Helper, Link verbs) and have their Preposition Practice Pal, they are ready to NOT highlight TO as a preposition when it has a verb following it. At first, this is low key: “To run….can you do that? Then it’s not a prep!” Lessons, of just finding infinitives (to+verb) for a while then lessons telling when TO is used as a prep and when it is used as a special verb called an infinitive quickly follow that. This might sound difficult for second and third graders, but interacting with sentences is something we do every day in my classes and books (and applying these to their writing is something they do every week in the Checklist Challenge), so it becomes a natural response for them and something that we have many discussions about.
As previously mentioned, all usage exceptions are complicated to teach. However, the ones that students encounter early and often must be given special priority. Such is the case for prepositions that are used as other parts of speech different times. In addition to the to+verb=infinitive situation, some prepositions are also adverbs, and some are also subordinators. I talk them through these: “Up is a preposition. But remember that in order for a preposition to be a preposition, it must have an object following it. So in the sentence He woke up, UP tells how he woke and is an adverb. However, in the sentence The squirrel ran up the tree, UP is a preposition and the PP is UP the tree.” Prepositions that are also used as adverbs are those that sometimes follow a verb but do not have objects of the preposition with them: He woke UP; She slid DOWN; He shouted OUT; They fell DOWN.
Prepositions are also sometimes subordinators. As a matter of fact, there are so many prepositions that are also subordinators that I teach an entire group of them as students learn preps and subs (in my books and in the Think Fast Grammar Quiz downloadable packet). A subordinator is a word that is found at the beginning of a subordinate clause. We teachers and parents often learned this group of words as a dependent clause. I use that word sometimes as well, but I try to teach with a content-based focus, so I call them subordinate clauses because they contain subordinators at the beginning of them, and they are subordinate to the rest of the sentence (i.e. lesser). Subordinators that are also prepositions usually have to do with time relationships, such as during, after, as, before, etc. These are used as prepositions when they have objects (during the break, after the break, before the break, etc.). They are used as subordinators when they have subjects and verbs following them (and create subordinate clauses): After we left class; Before she resigned; As he bought groceries.
1) Use Two Prepositional Check Sentences to Introduce Prepositional Phrases
2) Isolate Prepositional Phrases With Parentheses
3) Teach the Reasons for Learning Prepositional Phrases
4) The Word TO Can Be a Preposition or the Beginning of an Infinitive (Special Verb)
5) Some Prepositions Are Also Adverbs and Some Are Also Subordinators
