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.

It has been said that when a banker or a counterfeit money “agent” learns about counterfeit money, he or she begins by learning what the real thing looks like.

I use this same approach to teach about sentences, clauses, and phrases in my language arts and writing books (Character Quality Language Arts and Meaningful Composition): teach the students what a real sentence looks like—and then teach what are not real sentences.

I teach what a sentence contains using a simple acronym: CAVES

Once a student learns what a real sentence is and can spot real sentences (and “non-sentences”), the possibilities for writing, sentence structure understanding, advanced sentence combining technique use, and more are endless!

Work on CAVES first—then your student will be able to do any and all of the following:

1. Tell the difference between a real sentence and a non sentence
2. Fix comma splices (since it will be obvious that this is a real sentence and that one is too)
3. Match subjects with their verbs in tense and number easily
4. Write with sentence openers clearly and in sophisticated manners
5. Combine sentences for all kinds of conciseness techniques and fancy shmancy writing

CAVES—it is what a sentence contains!
If you write a sentence and you are unsure of whether it is a “real” sentence, use CAVES.

When a sentence is not a “real” sentence, the culprit is usually the A one—All makes sense. And that “A” one will take us into sentences vs. phrases and clauses…on another day. Happy writing!

The post CAVES: Parts of a Sentence 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.

Did you know that there is a group of pronouns called reflexive pronouns? I know, right? Not mentioned that often. I hardly remember studying them in school at all. And yet, we use them all the time—and even eloquent people use them wrong quite often. (How many interviews or speeches have you heard someone say, “Then my friend and myself….” or “He began talking to my friend and myself…” WRONG!

So here is the scoop…that I am giving to you by MYSELF…actually my technical assistant will put this all together HERSELF and make it look amazing, so I can’t really say that I am doing it all by MYSELF. Sorry…..I couldn’t help it…

First of all, myself, yourself, and ourselves are pronouns known as reflexive pronouns. That is, they reflect back to the antecedent (a noun or pronoun earlier in the sentence).

When we say that Donna is the antecedent to herself in the sentence “Donna gave herself a pat on the back,” we are saying that herself is a pronoun and Donna is the antecedent (the word that herself refers back to).

So, reflexive pronouns reflect or refer back to another word. They cannot be used alone (i.e. myself can not be used without a noun or pronoun earlier in the sentence as its antecedent).
1.       I bought myself some candy. (Myself refers back to/is reflexive of I.)
2.       Donna bought herself some candy. (Herself refers back to/is reflexive of Donna.)
3.       He looked at himself in the mirror. (Himself refers back to/is reflexive of He.)

The key to understanding and using reflexive pronouns is to not use THEM by THEMSELVES!

Thus, you wouldn’t say the following:
1.       Ray and myself went to town. (There is no noun for myself to refer back to. You need the subjective I in this sentence…Ray and I.)
2.       They gave it to him and myself. (Same thing—no noun or pronoun for myself to refer back to.)

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With school just around the corner (don’t you love the smell of those new binders???), I thought I would offer some printables that can help you in your school prep. One of the things I have each of my writing students be sure they have in their binders is a copy of my Proofreaders’ Marks page. I edit their papers with these proofreaders’ marks, and I want them to have the “cheat sheet” to refer to and learn from right at their fingertips. Students as young as third grade can learn the first few/basic ones. They will learn more and more of them as they write and as you edit their papers using these simple marks.

Before I show you the basic proofreaders’ marks that I use in my books and classes (and give you the printable version to print off for your school), I want to share a funny version of proofreaders’ marks that are floating around the internet. It is attributed to Tom Weller in 1987. It is said to have hung in many print houses in the eighties and nineties—sometimes with certain parts circled and emphasized when editors had, had it with certain errors! It’s a comical look at proofreaders’ marks—and I’m super thankful that we don’t have such extensive lists for students today! 🙂

No, our marks are much simpler. Here are the ones we use:

And….here is the printable version of the Proofreaders’ Marks for you to use with your students, on your class bulletin board, your teacher binder, etc. Happy proofreading! 🙂

Love and hope,
Donna

P.S. What common errors do your students make that you would like help in teaching? Homophones? Commas? Paragraph breaks? I’d love to help you!

The post Proofreaders’ Marks: Comical Ones and Accurate Ones! (Printable Included!) appeared first on Character Ink.

In this Wondering Wednesday video, Donna Reish (author of seventy curriculum books) teaches parents how to teach propositions with meaning. Using her downloadable e-book, the Preposition Practice Packet, Donna explains the importance of understanding what prepositions do in order to memorize many of the over 200 prepositions out there.

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Aboard, about, above. Along, among, around….

Whether your kids sing them, recite them, chant them, rap them, or write them…prepositions are important.

I learned them in chant-like form when I was in school. However, I never knew WHY I needed to learn them.

My newest downloadable product will teach kids prepositions—in a way that focuses on the WHY, that is, what prepositions really do!

Our kids (and we!) need to learn prepositions for a few important reasons:

(1) They are the beginning of prepositional phrases

(2) Prepositional phrases can be mentally eliminated from a sentence in order to get to the bare bones of the sentence…since the sentence’s main subject and main verb are not usually found in prepositional phrases

(3) Prepositional phrases are good to use as openers—especially lengthy ones—as they vary sentence structure and rhythm.

I’m all about songs, jingles, rhymes, recitation, and mnemonics for learning parts of speech (and really anything).

However, when prepositions are learned in songs or recitations, the real reasons for prepositions are overlooked. (Not to mention that they learn about thirty of the over two hundred prepositions….not enough memorized preps to adequately recognize them in sentences and use them for sentence openers!)

Click here to learn more and to download the Preposition Practice Packet!

The post [Video] How To Use the Preposition Practice Packet appeared first on Character Ink.

Okay, Reish boys–and anybody else in my virtual world who has non-virtual poison ivy right now!

1. Itch

a. A noun that indicates a place on the body that is irritated, such as a spot of poison ivy that is bothersome

b. A verb that happens to a part of the body: my poison ivy itches (meaning it feels like it needs scratched)

2. Scratch–a verb that is the action that one does (though one shouldn’t!) when he has an itch (noun)

Thus, Jonathan, Josiah, and Jacob–you guys each have an itch here and there where your poison ivy is bothering you (or it is itching on its own), and technically, you should NOT scratch it!

However, if you do have an itch that needs scratched, please call the portion of skin that is irritated an itch and the action you are doing “scratching.” Please do not tell your brothers to “stop itching”!  Thanks…

The post Don’t Scratch Your Itch! appeared first on Character Ink.

Seventh Grade: Teach your student to apply his grammar learning to writing.

While my students often groan when they are told to mark the Checklist Challenge for that week’s homework assignment, they know (and I know) that it really does help. A student just told me this week that her sister had her scan and email her a copy of her Checklist Challenge to use in college—because she had used our CC for every writing project and knew how helpful it can be in revising writing…..

Click here to read more→

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Seventh Grade: Teach your student to apply his grammar learning to writing.

Hopefully, this has been happening even earlier than seventh grade because seeing the “why’s” of learning something (“I need to learn prepositions so that I can spot prepositional phrases so that I can be sure that I have accurate subject-verb agreement” or “I need to learn how to punctuate double and triple adjectives so that I can write with them in my descriptive paper”) is extremely motivating to students.

One of my mantras is “Phonics is for reading and spelling. Grammar is for speaking and writing.” I try to teach my students from the beginning that every grammar concept that they learn is applicable (and needed) for writing.

One way you can do this is to create an ongoing checklist of sorts of each pertinent grammar skill (as he learns that concept in his grammar book) that your student can use in his writing. For example, after your student learns prepositional phrase openers, add this to his checklist for writing that week: “Add one prepositional phrase opener to your essay.”

Note: See one of my Checklist Challenges in my samples of Meaningful Composition here. This will give you an idea of how to create your own checklist—or you can print mine off and use it with your students.

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