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.

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.

One of the best ways you can help a child become good in language arts (which carries over to all of his school work–since all school work involves reading, comprehending, organizing, etc.) is to help him become a good reader.

Over the past month, I have focused on teaching reading, reading aloud, reading instruction, phonics, and more.

(Check out some of those posts here:

Read Aloud Tips (with video!)

Reading Aloud Together…Builds Memories Forever!

Using Word Cards in Reading Instruction

Preparing a Child to Learn to Read

Phonics Program Round Up for Reading Instruction )

If your child is still learning to read, be careful that you don’t get caught up in the “do everything” part of language arts too soon. In the early elementary grades, your child’s primary focus should be on reaching reading fluency.

(This is why I have “reading” benchmarks in place for students who want to come to my complete language arts classes or purchase CQLA: (1) Pre A students should be able to read non-vocabulary-controlled picture books; (2) A students should be able to read easy chapter books.)

If you are still working on reading fluency, let me refresh you with some tips for that before I delve into teaching beginning writing:

1. Be sure he reads from a book every day. So much reading instruction nowadays is workbook oriented. This is like taking piano lessons while only doing theory books–with no actual playing time. Check out my readability info for choosing readers here!

2. Try the “you read, I’ll read” approach. Have him read a page or paragraph then you read a page or paragraph.

3. If he gets stuck on a word that you think he knows, remind him of what he knows about it:

a. Remember, this rhymes with light and bright. You had this word before.
b. Do you remember what the e at the end of the word makes the first vowel say?
c. How do you think Rabbit feels? Would that word be sad or silly based on how he probably feels?

4. If he is stuck too long or you do not think he knows a word, tell him what it is (and anything about it that might help him in the future) and move on. Do not get bogged down on each word.

5. Ask your librarian for help getting a reader that is truly at his level (or check out these vocabulary controlled readers). Do not believe those readers that say K level in the corner but contain two syllable words!

6. Read aloud to him from a chapter book or other book that he enjoys to make the reading experience pleasant for him.

7. Reward him for practicing reading–stickers, coins, candy–it’s worth bribing for!

I am going to move into beginning writing for a while here on the blog–sentences, sentences vs. clauses, writing sentences, verbs, etc.

Here are some tips for taking your child from a reader to a writer:

1. Teach him/her the five parts of a sentence—CAVES—Capital; All makes sense; Verb; End mark; Subject. Help the student find these things in his sentences or in sentences that he reads. Learn more about CAVES here.

2. Teach anything about the writing process informally that can be taught informally. Point out that a sentence begins with a capital letter as he reads to you. Ask him what the (?) at the end of the sentence means. Talk about why a word is capitalized in a sentence (it’s at the beginning or is someone’s name). These informal teaching times will carry over to his real writing.

3. Understand the difference between penmanship and writing. Penmanship is art. Pure and simple. I would almost say (but can’t bring myself to do so since I have a degree in elementary education and a two hour credit in penmanship!) that “you either have it or you don’t.” Writing is putting words together to form sentences then paragraphs, then stories/reports/essays/letters—anything! If your child has penmanship difficulties (as many young boys do), do not let this distract him from writing. Pen for him as he dictates to you. Teach him to type. Remember, penmanship is not writing. Writing is writing.

4. Show him that writing is just the spoken word written down. Have him talk slowly to you while you type. Read it back to him. Tell him that if he can speak, he can write (even if the penmanship and spelling are not there yet!).

5. When he is first learning to write sentences, do not make him sound out every word. Just tell him how to spell the tough ones and move on. There is even research out there now strongly suggesting that when it comes to spelling, “you either got it or you don’t.” Nowadays with computers and spell check, no person should be uneducated or feel stupid because of spelling problems.

6. Have him dictate sentences about anything (his day; his favorite show; his favorite game; etc.) and write them in large letters with a highlighter. Have him write over the highlighter with his pencil. Have him read the sentences back to you. Then make a big deal out of it—your child can write!

When starting to read and starting to write, a child needs a great measure of success to keep going and feel confident in what he is learning. Making the reading and writing connection in the elementary grades can help do that for your child.

The post From Reader to Writer 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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In my experience, students either love story writing or hate it. They either have ideas floating around in their heads, waiting for the next story writing unit–or they feel that they have no ideas and hope for a stomach bug that week! This is one reason I use the Directed Writing Approach in my books–so that each step of each type of paper is laid out incrementally.

One common problem that students have when story writing is telling “first this happened; then this happened; after this, that happened; later on, this happened” by students. What could be an exciting, action-packed story becomes a narrative/retelling–or worse yet, an essay. Have you ever wondered how to help students from the start with this rambling problem?

Well, I have a lot of ideas for story writing

• Naming/titling each scene or paragraph from the beginning so that the student knows ahead of time what they want to include;
• Having students list the primary goal right off the bat so that the entire time they are writing, they are heading towards that goal;
• Laying out believable obstacles that must be conquered or succumbed to or overcome;
• Teaching being, helping, and linking verbs in a systematic way so that students can avoid using them and use action-driven verbs instead;
• Teaching quotation and dialogue writing incrementally throughout the school year so that the student’s dialogue sings;
• And much more

(These elements are included incrementally in my creative writing books. Check out their full-length sample lessons here: MC 5 II, MC 7 II, MC 9 II as well as in many of the Write On books!)

But the first way that I ensure that students do not have a list of events strung together in their stories actually starts with the lesson itself: The characters, setting, obstacles, goals, and dialogue expectations MUST match the assigned length of the story.

The reason kids string together events one sentence after another in their “story writing” is because they were often not taught to NARROW, NARROW, NARROW according to how much space/time they have.

Click or tap to download lesson!

Follow along with this story writing video (and free downloadable lesson) that contains a TWO PARAGRAPH story to see how this is done. (Yes, two paragraph stories are harder to write than longer ones!)

Let me know what you think! Happy writing—and teaching!

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