The post Learn When to Use Who/Whom With Language Lady! appeared first on Character Ink.

So many grammar debates, so little time. And here’s yet another one: Are proper adjectives a thing? Or are they really just proper noun elements within a common noun?

We will likely never know for sure….

However, it really doesn’t matter what you call them. They need some proper capitalization!

So let’s start with the proper noun. (Practice proper nouns more HERE!)

We have a tendency to think that the noun is the first part of speech we learn, so it’s automatically simple to locate, which isn’t true at all (it’s true we learn it first–just not true that it is simple!).
A noun can become many different parts of speech.

1) Take the word school–I’m going to school you (verb)

2) The school children (adjective)

3) She is so schoolish when she explains things (adjective)

4) Let’s go to school now (finally, the noun).

One cannot truly find the part of speech that a word is when the word is out of context. (Be careful of programs that teach parts of speech out of context if you are choosing grammar materials for your children! They should never be given a list of words and told to tell the part of speech of each one!)
The same thing is true of capitalization–we learn it early, yet it is far from simple.
*Cap this in this instance but not in this.
*Cap this when it is used as an address but not when it is used in a non-address scenario.
*And on and on.

Into that madness, enter the proper adjective–another capitalization nightmare, in many cases.

Essentially, a proper adjective is a proper noun used as an adjective. The key to using this properly (with the proper capitalization) is knowing for sure that the word is usually a proper noun (without having context, in many cases!).

For example, the following words are capitalized when used as adjectives:

1. Spanish….Spanish speaker

2. Jesuit…Jesuit priests

3. Herculean….Herculean effort

4. French…French braid

So…. a proper adjective is essentially a proper noun that has been put into adjective form.
Words are different parts of speech based, oftentimes, on their suffixes. For example, loveliness (with the ness suffix) is a noun…but changing a suffix often changes a word’s part of speech. Thus, lovely is an adjective; loveliness is a noun.

There are many other difficulties with proper adjectives and proper noun elements within common nouns.

For example, animal, flower, plant, and tree breeds are not capitalized (i.e. husky, mockingbird, rose, poison ivy, and sycamore tree). However, if a proper adjective or proper noun element is part of the name, that part of it is capitalized (but the rest of it remains lower case):

1. black-eyed Susan (Susan is a proper noun in other contexts, so it gets capitalized here as well)

2. Australian sheep dog

3. Alaskan husky

4. Jack Russell terrier

No wonder our students are confused!

It is up to us to help them with these challenging usage scenarios.
We can do this by…

1) Being patient with them. (Sometimes we have to look these things up ourselves!)

2) Giving them lots of practice with them–and verbal feedback and discussion of the practice sentences and exercises.

3) Not making everything “count.”

A word about number three above. In my books, I use a TPA approach—Teach-Practice-Apply. This means they learn the information in the teaching portion of the book. Then they practice the skills with little or no grading. This is done in passages of material usually–completely in context. Then they apply it in exercises/assignments, and, ultimately, in the Checklist Challenge and their writing–where the rubber really meets the road and where we want the application to really sink in.

Let’s make grammar, usage, spelling, writing–all the things–as easy as we can for our students! 

The post Are Proper Adjectives Even a Real Thing? appeared first on Character Ink.

Today’s Puzzle is about Proper Nouns and Quotations… and it uses an interesting sentence from one of our Write-for-a-Month/Write On books about Pinocchio.

Read More

By Zac Kieser and Donna Reish

Read More

The post Punctuation Puzzle: Proper Nouns and Quotations with Pinocchio appeared first on Character Ink.

Merry Christmas from Language Lady and Character Ink Press! It is the time of good cheer, festivities, magical moments with children, celebrating the Nativity–AND grammar errors galore! Usage errors are to be expected since many of the things we are writing this time of year are things we only write once a year. It’s hard to remember grammar and usage protocols that we use daily, much less ones that we only use yearly. I hope this post will clear many of your Christmas grammar issues up!

(Want to learn more grammar and usage from Language Lady? Check out these links:

• My new Tricky Tricks to Help It Stick Page
• All of our amazing Punctuation Puzzles
• The Write Right Quick Kit
• Preposition Practice Pack
• Think Fast Grammar Quiz)

This time of year we see a plethora of spelling, capitalization, grammar, and usage errors–on signs, catalogs, greeting cards, and more:

1. merry Christmas on a greeting card (which technically isn’t wrong, but just doesn’t look right either!)

2. “This line is for eight items or less”–even though it should be “eight items or fewer”

3. Xmas–even though the Associated Press itself says to never use this abbreviation!

4. Seasons’ Greetings (which indicates that you are offering someone greetings for more than one season–the plural noun seasons)

5. Happy capitalization guy or girl–Christmas Tree, Christmas Decorations, Christmas Ham, etc.

Many holiday greetings and terms are subjective (shocking, huh?); however, here is a list to help you see the most common ways that greetings and holiday words are expressed this time of year:

1. You can write any of the following:

a. Seasons Greetings (no possession shown at all–more of a noun describing another noun)

b. seasons greetings (same as a., but no capitalization–not recommended for greeting cards and headers)

c. Season’s Greetings (the most common way, showing that the season {one season} possesses the greeting; note the capping here)

d. season’s greetings (like c but not capped)

2. Of course, people also write Merry Christmas in different combinations (with and without the M capitalized; however, Christmas should always be capitalized because it is a proper noun by itself:

a. merry Christmas

b. Merry Christmas

3. To cap or not to cap greetings? This is a stylistic preference, but if it is in a header or greeting card, you definitely want to capitalize:

a. Season’s Greetings or season’s greetings

b. Merry Christmas or merry Christmas

c. Happy Holidays or happy holidays

d. Happy New Year or happy New Year

e. Happy Christmas or happy Christmas

f. Happy Christmastime (all one word) or happy Christmastime (again, all one word)

4. Words that are already proper nouns should remain proper nouns in every context and should retain their capitalization:

a. Santa Claus

b. Poinsettia–This is traditionally capitalized because the flower is named after a botanist and physician who was also the first US Ambassador to Mexico, Joel Roberts Poinsett. In 1828, he introduced the plant to the country.

c. The actual holidays

i. Christmas or Christmas Day
ii. Christmas Eve
iii. New Year’s Eve (one year–singular YEAR…..hmm….”that doesn’t end in an s, so I need to put apostrophe s”)
iv. New Year’s Day

d. North Pole (Remember–you capitalize directions when they are part of a proper noun already–but not when giving directions. No “Turn West at the corner”!)

e. Jesus, Jesus Christ, Messiah–most Christian publications capitalize names for or references to God and Jesus

f. All locations associated with Christ’s birth and life as they are proper nouns already–Bethlehem, Nazareth, etc., and, of course, King Herod, Joseph, and Mary (but not shepherds or wise men)

g. When describing decorations, only capitalize the original proper noun:

i. Christmas tree
ii. Christmas wreath
iii. New Year’s Day dinner
iv. Christmas Eve party

h. Nativity is capitalized when it stands alone or when it is combined with non-proper noun elements

i. Nativity scene
ii. Nativity pieces
iii. Nativity story

i. Advent is capitalized in all contexts

Merry Christmas from the Language Lady!

The post Fix Those Christmas Grammar and Usage Errors! appeared first on Character Ink.

1. Use three key words to introduce sentence types. Sometimes just shortening longer words to their base can make them easier for students to grasp. I like to use the punctuation marks as part of the key word teaching in phrases like these:

a) Declarative–You DECLARE something. Just stating something.

b) Interrogative—Are you a suspect in an INTERROGATION room getting questioned?

c) Exclamatory—You EXCLAIM something in loud words with an exclamation point!

2. Use the graphic below enlarged or create a poster with the key words and samples (emphasizing the ending marks on the samples) and hang up in your classroom when working on three types of sentences.

3. Write sentences on cards that are laminated and have students practice putting the punctuation on with wipe off markers.

4. Write sentences on a worksheet for students to add punctuation to.

5. Write lists of sentences that should be changed from one type to another type.

6. Have “Sentence-Type Drills” in which students are to find a certain sentence type in their reader or content area book and read it aloud with the emphasis needed for that type of sentence.

7. Don’t ask students to write the three sentence types. Those words are not in their reading or writing vocabulary. Have them draw lines from those words to the sentence types on the other column or write D, I, E….and especially have them put the punctuation marks in the sentences.

8. Bring a Clue game out to use the characters or “weapons” for asking “Interrogative” sentences to each other.

9. Write instances in which a person would EXCLAIM something on cards and have students draw one and state an exclamatory sentence. Write these sentences on the board for them to see them written with the proper punctuation. (These could be yelling over loud music at a concert, calling out to a small child in danger, shouting surprise at a birthday party, etc.)

10. Write a short story containing all three types of sentences. Cut the sentences up into strips. Break students into small groups. Have them put the sentences in order for the story. Then have them read the story aloud, emphasizing the sentence types when they fall.

11. Have sentences on cards all around the room with removable end marks. Each day move the end marks around in the wrong places and have students put them all in the correct places.

12. Have sentences all over the room that need end marks added (cards, sentences on board, posterettes, etc.) and let students add with a white board marker.

13. Have students work in pairs to match the first half of a sentence with the end of it …helping them focus on key words at the beginning that help them know it is likely a question or exclamatory sentence.

14. Memory game with larger cards for unpunctuated sentences and smaller cards for end marks.

15. “Fishing” with a pole and string that has a magnet on the end. They fish a large card (magnetized) and a small card (punctuation mark). When they get a matching pair, they keep it. Winner is the one who has the most at the end of the game.

16. Finish the sentences with the rest of the sentence and its end mark. This can be done in worksheet form, on the board with students orally finishing the sentence and the teacher writing the rest (as well as the punctuation mark needed), or having students do it at the board one at a time.

17. Use picture cards to elicit oral sentences from students. Orally say a sentence about a picture and say what your end mark will be or which kind of sentence it is

18. Use Boogie boards or white boards. All students write a sentence with no end mark and pass them to the left. Students say the sentence and what end mark they added aloud. Erase the boards and do it again, continuing passing.

19. Draw a question word card (who, what, when, where, why, do, are, will, how, etc.) and students orally give a sentence that begins with that card and ends with a question mark. Again, this can all be oral work or can be combined with board work or writing on paper (depending on level).

20. Use magnetic words to have them create the three types of sentences with their end marks.

For more sentence teaching help, check out my four elementary Meaningful Composition books:

(To see the article about my theory of teaching three sentence types, check out my recent article HERE!) 

Love and hope,

Donna

The post 20 Ways to Practice Sentence Types With Elementary Kids appeared first on Character Ink.

Most second graders learn about three types of sentences—the declarative, interrogative, and exclamatory. Children do not have a lot of trouble with the three types of sentences—it is relatively easy to discover the difference between a statement (or declarative sentence) and a question (or interrogative sentence), etc.

Again, the problem most writers (of all ages) have is not determining what the ending punctuation should be for a sentence or determining if a sentence should begin with a capital letter or not. The real difficulty lies in determining whether a group of words is a sentence or not a sentence. We will examine that more closely as the next month progresses.

For today, we will introduce the three types of sentence first learned in grade school.

1. A declarative sentence is a statement.

a. It declares (tell or state) something.

b. It ends with a period.

c. It is sometimes called a telling sentence.

2. An interrogative sentence is a question.

a. It asks a question. (To interrogate someone is to ask him a
lot of questions.)

b. It ends with a question mark.

c. It is sometimes called an asking sentence or a question.

3. An exclamatory sentence is an excited sentence.

a. It is used to show strong emotion or excitement.

b. It ends with an exclamation point (or excited mark!).

c. It is sometimes called on excited sentence.

While these skills are way easier than teaching a student to hear the realness or “unrealness” of a sentence (i.e. distinguishing a sentence from a subordinate/dependent clause), here are some tip, s for teaching the three types:

1) I don’t like to add the “fourth” sentence type, imperative sentence, to the initial teaching for these reasons:

a. Students don’t have any “hooks” to hook it on. They don’t know what imperative means–though they might have heard of declare, interrogate, and exclaim before.
b. There are three ending punctuation marks for sentences. Add imperative sentences at first can seem like there should be another end mark.
c. Imperative sentences are really just declaring sentences but giving instructions. Technically, they could also be exclamatory sentences.
d. Beyond the initial teaching of sentence structures, we don’t really talk much about imperative sentences anyway!

2) I like to use three key words to introduce sentence types. Sometimes just shortening longer words to their base can make them easier for students to grasp. I like to use the punctuation marks as part of the key word teaching in phrases like these:

a) Declarative–You DECLARE something. Just stating something.
b) Interrogative—Are you a suspect in an INTERROGATION room getting questioned?
c) Exclamatory—You EXCLAIM something in loud words with an exclamation point!

3) Don’t have all of the student practice in the sentence types be their writing of the sentences. This can be laborious and long for young kiddos. Here are some practice options:

a) Write sentences on cards that are laminated and have them practice putting the punctuation on with wipe off markers.
b) Write sentences on a worksheet for students to add punctuation to.
c) Write lists of sentences that should be changed from one type to another type.
d) Have “sentence type” drills in which students are to find a certain sentence type in their reader or content area book and read it aloud with the emphasis needed for that type of sentence.
e) Don’t ask students to write the three sentence types. Those words are not in their reading or writing vocabulary. Have them draw lines from those words to the sentence types on the other column or write D, I, E….and especially have them put the punctuation marks in the sentences.
f) Bring a Clue game out to use the characters or “weapons” for asking “Interrogative” sentences to each other.
g) Write instances in which a person would EXCLAIM something on cards and have students draw one and state an exclamatory sentence. Write these sentences on the board for them to see them written with the proper punctuation. (These could be yelling over loud music at a concert, calling out to a small child in danger, shouting surprise at a birthday party, etc.)

h) Hang Three Sentence Types posters up during the time you are working on them.
i) Write a short story containing all three types of sentences. Cut the sentences up into strips. Break students into small groups. Have them put the sentences in order for the story. Then have them read the story aloud, emphasizing the sentence types when they fall.

The post Teaching Three Kinds of Sentences appeared first on Character Ink.

Sentence openers. Non-essential information. Dress up openers. Introductory material. Or my personal definition: “A word or group of words that is put at the beginning of a REAL (complete sentence) to add more detail, different sentence rhythm, interest, and variety.”

Regardless of what you call them, they can be tricky to teach for sure. And the biggest obstacle I have seen to teaching them is the simple problem of students not knowing whether a sentence is a real sentence to begin with. Students will never get a good handle on sentence openers (also called introductory material or non-essential information at the beginning of a sentence) UNTIL they have a handle on what a sentence contains.

In other words, they have to be able to tell the five parts of a sentence (CAVES–Capital; All Makes Sense; Verb; End Mark; Subject) before they can truly find and punctuate their sentence openers properly.

Here are some tips on working with students concerning base sentences and sentence openers:

1) Use a trick or mnemonic device to teach students the five things a sentence must contain in order to be a sentence.

I use my mnemonic CAVES

Capital letter

All makes sense

Verb

End mark

Subject

(See more CAVES info HERE and find my Think Fast Grammar Quiz and Answer Key HERE {that we use to practice writing CAVES each week}.)

2) Cover up all sentence openers with fingers.

Say the “sentence” that remains aloud. Talk through the parts of a sentence. How can they know that a real sentence remains? It has to have a subject and verb. It has to make sense when it stands all alone.

3) Read sentence openers aloud with inflection where the comma goes.

Teach students that the comma goes where the voice goes up. Teach that the “real” sentence begins when the sentence opener ends. Walking through these orally with emphasis REALLY helps students hear the “correctness” of a sentence.

4) Work extensively on sentences that do not have sentence openers, helping students get a handle on what a real sentence (without an opener) looks like.

It’s important not to jump ahead too quickly. Internal sentence punctuation is way easier to teach after ample practice without sentence openers, ending which and who clauses, compound sentences, and other complex/compound sentence complications mudding the waters too early. Those will be SO much easier once a student can look at any group of words and quickly correctly say, “Yes, that is a sentence” and “No, that is not a sentence.”

5) Make it a habit of isolating sentence openers when dissecting sentences.

I use the following protocol:
a. Place parentheses around all prepositional phrases anywhere in a sentence.
b. Place brackets around all subordinate clause openers.
c. Place “less than/greater than” (<>) around all other openers

We are just placing parentheses around prepositional phrases anywhere in sentences for quite a while. This is okay. It gives us the opportunity to find the “realness” of sentences by locating main subjects and main verbs and by “hearing” what a real sentence sounds like.

6) Use verb practice extensively.

Every paper that students write for me has its verbs circled via my Checklist Challenge. Working with sentences in this manner helps students to see that a sentence must contain at least one verb in order to be a sentence.

(See my Checklist Challenge packet and video HERE.)

In emphasizing what a sentence must sound like in order to be a real, complete sentence, we also must emphasize that in order to have a chance to be a real sentence (and sound like a real sentence), it must have a main subject and a main verb. Continuous verb practice helps greatly with this.

To learn more about teaching verbs click HERE.

7) Have your students memorize being, helping, and linking verbs.

Teaching students that a verb is something you do, an action, and having them find those action verbs will definitely fall short as soon as a being verb is encountered. For this reason, I use my BHL Verb song to teach Being, Helping, and Linking verbs starting in elementary school. In order to tell that a group of words is a sentence, a student must be able to spot that sentence’s main verb. If they are only looking for action verbs, they will often think that a group of words is not a sentence when it really is.

(These are in my Think Fast Grammar Quiz and Answer Key packet. You can also learn more about them by clicking HERE.)

8) Practice orally with the “Sentence/No Sentence” game.

You say groups of words and have the tell you whether they are sentences or not and why. Again, oral practice is so important. And…so is telling you why a group of words is not a sentence.

9) Read the sentence opener and discuss how it is NOT a real sentence.

A sentence opener is added to a real sentence to give more information, change sentence rhythm, and provide conciseness. However, it is not a sentence itself. Again, add emphasis by bringing your voice up at the end of an opener. (Remember, grammar and usage are for speaking and writing—be sure you are teaching them orally when applicable)

10) Teach sentence openers one at a time, starting with the most familiar to them (usually prepositional phrase openers).

(Check out my Preposition Practice Packet here or my Beauty and the Beast Preposition Practice Download HERE!)

I like to start working on prepositions almost immediately when students begin language arts studies (after reading fluency is reached). We can learn 100 of them quickly. Then we can spot prepositional phrases quickly together. (Again, use oral instruction for this “to the what?” “from whom?” “down the what?” to help students find where a prepositional phrase ends.) All of this can take place while you are still working on sentences—before you even begin discussing prepositional phrases as sentence openers.

We often want to rush things. We want to add all of the “extras” to sentences. I understand this. My entire Checklist Challenge is based on adding material to make sentences, paragraphs, and reports/essays/stories sing. However, just like everything else, when we put the “cart before the horse” and teach the “fancy shmancy” before the “ordinary,” our students get confused and true learning does not take place.

The post Tips for Recognizing Base Sentences to Teach Sentence Openers appeared first on Character Ink.

1. They use my Directed Writing Approach!

In my Directed Writing Approach, every detail of every project is laid out for your student. None of my writing projects are “writing ideas” or “writing prompts.” Every writing assignment contains step-by-step instructions with much hand-holding along the way. The student is “directed” in how to write and what to write at all times—from brainstorming to research to outlining to rough draft and finally to revising.

My Directed Writing Approach takes the best methods I have discovered in order to teach each type of writing—color-coded research for research-based projects, “Topic of Paragraph” commitment for teaching paragraph breaks, The Three P’s of Persuasion for persuasive writing, the “section-paragraph-sentence” method for longer papers, story writing mapping, Paragraph House for young writers, 1-3-1 essay outlines, my Checklist Challenge for revising, and much more. Each Directed Writing Approach “method” is tried and true after fifteen years of my writing one hundred books and over fifty thousand pages!

Click on the picture above to view free samples of these books!

2. They contain a combination of projects—those with “given material” to write from and those that are completely original (in which student finds material on his own to use as his source).

Students are taught a wide variety of outlining methods in all of my books—Key Word Outlines From Given Material, Directed Brainstorming, Persuasive Mapping, The Paragraph House Outline, Split Paper Technique, Sentence-by-Sentence (S-by-S) Outlining from original sources, Q and A Outlines, Five W’s outlines, Scene Outlines for Story Writing, Formal Outlines for research, and much more.

I teach most writing types/projects by giving the student source material to take notes from first—then having the student branch out and write that same type of writing finding his own source. It is this combination of “given material” first followed by student-found material that gives the student confidence to write that type of paper or story. This method keeps the student from becoming too dependent upon given source material while at the same time helping him learn to find source material (or create his own!) after using given passages first. It is a win-win method.

Click on the picture above to view free samples of these books!

3. The skills that are needed for each writing project are taught within that writing project.

To ask a student to write a paper using three sources and two quotations without teaching the student the skills to complete those steps is cruel! When a project is being taught in my books, the student is also taught whatever skills are needed to complete the project.

 
For example, if the student is writing a story about an animal escaping, he will be taught words and vocabulary that describe various sizes and types of animals as well as how to use onomatopoeia to describe animal sounds. If a student is told to write a persuasive paper, he will be taught the elements of persuasive writing first. If he is writing a research report in which quotes are to be cited, he will be instructed first in how to use quotations (in an earlier lesson) then in how to cite them for that particular paper. These many “how to” lessons give students the tools to write whatever they are assigned easily and with confidence.

Click on the picture above to view free samples of these books!

4. Books are tested with over one hundred students each semester!

My books are not written by grammarians behind closed doors or even by experts who seldom work in small groups with students. (While my undergraduate degree in elementary education and my master’s work in reading specialist do help me occasionally, it is homeschooling for thirty-two years and testing my books every year {and writing and rewriting!} that give me my writing credentials.)

 
Character Ink books are written by teachers who write meaningful lessons then take them out and test drive them for two to five years with over a hundred students each semester. (My new 10 II: Four Research Reports has been tested for six years now—and took over a hundred hours to write and perfect the MLA/quotation citation methods lessons alone!)

 
Every year Character Ink has local cottage classes for homeschooled students in which small groups of students (six to ten per class) take either our complete language arts (Character Quality Language Arts) or our composition-only (Meaningful Composition) classes. As we test our books, we make notes in the margins, discuss them with our students (why was this one so hard for you when the last one was easier?), talk among the teachers, then go back and fix the books, tweak the lessons, and even drop lessons that are too confusing or uninteresting to students. You can’t possibly know if a lesson or project is a good one until you have sat across the table from eight junior high boys to watch their expressions (and/or glossed over looks in their eyes!). This is how we know our programs work!

Click on the picture above to view free samples of these books!

5. Student writing samples are provided for all original writing projects and portions of samples are provided for smaller assignments.

Our books have a little extra something that is seldom found in textbooks and certainly never found at the level of ours—student samples! Each of the original projects have a full-length student sample of that project. As a matter of fact, we use the student samples in our books to teach from—starting with Thesis Statements, Thesis Statements “Reloaded,” and other LINK sentences on to paragraph breaks, proper quotation use, scene development in stories, and much more.

 
Students understand the writing project so much better when there are models for them to look at and when they see what the expectations are for the project. Parents love our student samples because it helps them measure their student’s skills in following the instructions for each project (and gives the parent confidence to know if her student is completing the assignment correctly).

 
Our student writing samples are provided in all types of projects—expository essays, biographical reports, research reports, short stories, twice-told tales, persuasive essays, and more. Your student will know from the beginning what each project involves as the book takes him through a sample to see what great project he will be doing! Student samples are invaluable!

Need further evidence? Go to our blog and print off two weeks of free Meaningful Composition samples at each level (or several pages of the downloadable books). Try before you buy! You will be amazed at how quickly your students become accomplished writers—and how pain-free teaching writing really can be! 🙂

*Write On downloadable and print books (Write On, Mowli; Write On, Peter Pan; Write On, Beauty and Beast); Meaningful Composition; Character Quality Language Arts; and other downloadable e-books.

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The post Five Reasons Why Character Ink Writing Books* Work! appeared first on Character Ink.

I won’t tell you how many weeks it is til school starts for our “Half-Day Homeschool” or our “Cottage Classes, but we all know how fast summer goes by! I hope you are enjoying your summer break–and getting some good school planning in here and there. To help with the latter, I would like to gift you my Think Fast Grammar Quiz book with detailed answer keys!

One of the ways that I teach writing is by helping students memorize the types of words that they will need to use with commas, semicolons, etc., and the types of words that they will need to use for various expressions (exceptions, giving more info, showing examples, elaborating, etc.).

I teach these to my students through rhymes, songs, jingles, mnemonics, check sentences, and more…..and then they are quizzed on them every week in order to learn them at a snap of their fingers.

This quiz booklet is that.

Here is how our store describes it:

“In this document, you will find Character Ink Press’ (CI) original Think Fast Grammar Quiz (Beginner’s Level and Advanced Level) and page after page of answers divided by category.

In testing my books, I have learned the importance of two things:

(1) Recitation/memorization of the parts of speech that are constants AND

(2) Teaching HOW to use these parts of speech (via my Checklist Challenge—intro packet available HERE).

This free 26 page document will help you with the former—teaching, memorizing, and quizzing the constant parts of speech (those with definite lists).

The quizzes test students (or give practice in) prepositions; Be, a Helper, Link (BHL) verbs, coordinating conjunctions (FANBOYS), interjections, subordinators, and conjunctive adverbs. These are taught in our books (and in the Answer Key) through rhymes, jingles, songs, and mnemonics.

The lengthy Answer Key for these quizzes is divided by categories—even breaking prepositions down to ones taught with a Preposition Practice Pal, with synonyms and antonyms, with compound words, with Check Sentences, and by initial letters. You will not find a more thorough list of these parts of speech anywhere—especially lists with the tricks and tips that CI materials provide.”

Regardless of the grammar, usage, or writing program that you use, the Think Fast Quiz and Answer Key booklet can be a huge help to you. Let me know what you think—and if you need help implementing it.”

Click on the picture below to go to the store—and use your freebie code QUIZFREEJULY (hurry! It’s free only until August 1st, 2018)!

Think fast,

Donna

PIN THIS POST!

The post FREEBIE–Think Fast Grammar Quiz Packet and Answer Keys! appeared first on Character Ink.

“Prepositions show position!”

That is where I start. The very basics. Catchy. Easy to recite. Simple to remember.

From there, we branch out to the explanation: Prepositions show position of one thing to something else.

Of course, prepositions show time, space, and direction (among other things) of one thing to another thing. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

The first thing we need to know here about prepositions, as parents, older students, or adults, is the role that prepositions play in writing. So, today we will examine the role of prepositions—and tips, hints, and lists for learning these vital words. (Find all of my preposition teaching methods in the Preposition Practice Packet here!)

Our “grammar theory” here at Character Ink is that we learn grammar to write or speak.

I am a big “purpose for learning” type of teacher. If we know why we need to learn something, we will be more apt to want to learn it (or at least to see the value in learning it).

Thus, phonics is for reading and spelling. (No reason to learn phonics without also reading from a reader at the same time to apply the phonics skills.) And grammar is for writing and speaking.

So it is with preposition learning. Here is the sequence of “reasoning” for learning prepositions:

(1) Prepositions are words that are found at the beginning of prepositional phrases.

The prepositional phrase

a. A phrase—a group of words that does not contain a subject and a verb
b. Prepositional phrase–a phrase (group of words) that begins with a word known as a preposition

(2) The subject of a sentence is seldom found within a prepositional phrase.

Subjects in a sentence (anywhere in a sentence) must match their verbs in tense, number, etc.
Since the subject of a sentence is not found in a prepositional phrase, if you learn to recognize prepositional phrases easily, you can eliminate them (mentally) and easily find your sentence’s subject(s) and verb(s) to be sure they match.

We learn prepositions so that we can find prepositional phrase. One reason we find prepositional phrases is so that we can isolate them and match our subjects and verbs with each other.

A preposition is a word that shows position or time between one item and another. It is the first word of the prepositional phrase.

A prepositional phrase is a group of words that begins with a preposition and ends with the object of the preposition—the word that shows the “position” from or to. In the prepositional phrase, “the angel flew into the clouds,” clouds is the object of the preposition.

Again, we learn prepositional phrases so that we can mentally eliminate them in order to match our sentence’s subject with its correct verb. Recognizing and mentally removing prepositional phrases is a truly “writing worthy” skill as it will help a person write more grammatically correct.

Consider the sentences below that have the prepositional phrases isolated with parentheses. Once you mentally eliminate these prepositional phrases, you can easily match the sentences’ subjects with their verbs.

1. The boy (in the woods) was lost.

a. Isolating “in the woods” with parentheses keeps the writer from thinking that the sentence’s subject is woods—and keeps the writer from writing “woods were,” which is not correct.
b. The sentence’s real subject is boy and needs the singular verb was.

2. (On the outskirts) (of town,) a little house fell down.

a.This sentence contains a double prepositional phrase.

b. This double prepositional phrase is used as a sentence opener—coming before the sentence’s real subject and real verb.

c. By isolating both prepositional phrase openers with parentheses, we find that the sentence’s real subject is house (or a little house—some grammarians consider the one word subject and some consider the entire subject with its describers) and the sentence’s verb is fell.

3. The blonde girl (out of all the girls) was (on key.)

a. This sentence contains two prepositional phrases

i. Out of all the girls
ii. On key

b. By isolating them with parentheses (and thus, not considering them when we find our subject and verb), we can see that the sentence’s subject is girl and verb is was.

c. If we did not isolate “out of all the girls,” we might be tempted to think that “girls” is our subject and use the plural verb “were.”

Re-read the sample sentences carefully. Without isolating the prepositional phrases, would you have been tempted to use the wrong verbs?

Isolating prepositional phrases is one of the most helpful beginning writing skills that a writer can learn. It helps eliminate one of the most common sentence writing errors—that of mismatched subjects and verbs.

I think we can all agree that learning to recognize prepositional phrases is crucial to great writing! 🙂

Some Other Places to Learn About Prepositions:

Beauty and the Beast Preposition Packet

Preposition Practice Pal (with free download!)

Teaching Prepositions (video)

Prepositions List

5 Beginning Prepositional Tips

5 MORE Prepositions Tips from Language Lady

Punctuation Puzzle – Prepositional Phrases and Commas With Dumbo

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