PRE-THANKSGIVING VACATION TpT SALE

 To All of my English Language Arts colleagues-

I wish you a relaxing vacation with family and  friends. 

So you don't have to cram in planning before your break, and 

So you don't have to endure a grumpy week after your much deserved vacation,

I am having a 15% off EVERYTHING SALE in my TpT store
https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Connie

Along with all of my literature, writing, vocabulary, grammar and journalism lesson plans, activities, unit plans, PowerPoints and Teacher Resources, be sure to check out these two November Newbies:

WRITING-SHOWING NOT TELLING-THE EMOTION POTION

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/WRITING-SHOWING-NOT-TELLING-THE-EMOTION-POTION-2215478 (on sale for $2.55)

and-

Literary Analysis-MAKING THE MOST OF TIME

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Literary-Analysis-MAKING-the-MOST-of-TIME-681650
(ON SALE FOR $2.13)

Browse the sale so you can make the most of your vacation time. 

Go to https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Connie

Have a wonderful break, and when you return to the classroom next week,

Enjoy a Teach It Now Day, Every Day.

Language Arts - What's So Important? A Coordination and Subordination Activity

When trying to show the importance of ideas, speaking tends to be so much easier. Word choice- along with the chance to instantly replace words for clarity- a tone of voice that expresses which ideas are emphasized, and even the speaker's body language work together to create sentences where thought coordination or subordination are evident.

Writing, though, is much more difficult. The writer has many rough drafts, but one final opportunity to demonstrate which thoughts show coordination, and which ones reveal subordinate ideas.

For example, maybe I want to show that Zelda's and Bubba's responsibility about homework is the same. I would write, "Zelda and Bubba both turn in their homework ninety percent of the time."
(I bet that their teacher is happy with this excellent data!)

But what if I want to emphasize that Zelda is more responsible than Bubba? I might write, "Although Zelda is conscientious about always meeting homework deadlines, Bubba is undependable about completing his assignments.

That information in that sentence is correct, but the emphasis is on Bubba's lack of responsibility because this idea is in the Independent Clause- always the clause that shows the most important idea.

This activity, "What's so Important? A Coordination and Subordination Activity" offers Middle School and High School students three different activities to practice showing What is So Important.

What's So Important? A Coordination and Subordination Language Arts Lesson is aligned with the Common Core standards and Bloom's Taxonomy, but will easily meet the needs of individual state's benchmarks.

Middle School and High School students will find that their verbal and written misunderstandings will diminish when they master "What's So Important".

Download this Language Arts Grammar Activity from http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Language-Arts-Whats-so-Important-A-Coordination-and-Subordination-Activity-1185877

Your students will be thrilled when you, "Please don't let us be misunderstood." 

I paraphrased these words from the song written by Bennie Benjamin for Nina Simone (1964) and also sung by The Animals (1965), and Santa Esmerelda (1977).

Happy Teaching,

Teach it Write

Building Powerful Academic Homes

Students Won't Grumble over These Grammar Grapplers

Just the mere mention of the word grammar causes students’ eyes to glaze over and English teachers to argue methodology.  In fact, until the Virginia Standards of Learning were adopted, most county administrators frowned upon the teaching of grammar, usage and mechanics solely as separate entities.

When preparing for the Standards of Learning  assessment, they took heed of the warnings from district English teachers regarding students lack of understanding of  basic grammar and usage concepts. The leaders  rescinded their previous viewpoint. 

Those of us leading classrooms know that students won't understand a comment on a paper that states, "Verbs must agree with their subjects in number" unless they know what a verb is, as well as its subject, and understand what number means in relation to this part of speech. Expecting them to do so reminds me of the time my neighborhood car mechanic growled at me about all of the dirt clogging my oil filter. Oil filter? What was that? I knew my car needed oil...where...I didn't know. And it was filtered?  Chalk up another, "I didn't know that even existed," for me.

I strongly feel that students need to see the connection between the “what they say” and the “how they say it” aspects of their writing.  Combined with my philosophy that learning can be fun, I attempt to eradicate the consternation associated with the study of the English language. So do my grammar go to make-believe teenagers, Bubba and Zelda.  Readers have met these two in the Troublesome Words Power Point (http://teachitwrite.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-trouble-with-troublesome-words.html) and the Prepositions Power Point (http://teachitwrite.blogspot.com/2013/04/prepositions-are-talkin-about.html), both of which are also FREE. They are back to engage students grammatically by sharing some of their antics.

The key word, when planning for a grammar segment, is interaction.  Just the other day, a BFF from shortly after we were born and I laughed about the hours and hours that we spent at the blackboard in high school diagramming sentences. Did we learn?  Yes, but at the price of sheer, teeth-grinding boredom. After years in the classroom, we know that lifelong learners emerge from lessons that inspire students with engaging and fun activities.Therefore, it is vital that students do more than work through the exercises in a grammar book.

In fact, other than using a text to clarify the definitions of the work under study, I only utilized our adopted book for defining the grammar concept and for learning and reinforcing the rules associated with its usage. Every introductory lesson for a concept should start with the students writing original sentences on the board. Next, the teacher should guide them to

1. find the errors (when choosing the sentences to use, I made sure that I selected examples that exhibited the concept that I wanted students to grasp).
2. name the concept.
3. review the concept’s rules with students coming to the board and writing original sentence that show the principle.
4. connect the concept with one of its rules.

 The study of the concept in question continues with as much student involvement as time allows, utilizing both small and large group instruction. The following  FREE 36 pages of worksheets, tests and answer keys (Yes, 36 FREE pages) are by no means conclusive, but are a sampling of how form and function can combine to increase students’ understanding of English usage.  I compiled many of them after selecting prevalent usage errors from students' essays. In others, I use characters that I have created who are the Composites of Students Past (Zelda and Bubba). I found that students displayed more enthusiasm in completing the worksheets when they  related to the thoughts, actions and reactions of the young people wired to their likes and dislikes. You will, too. Download this Freebie from my TpT store:

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Printables-Grammar-Grapplers-Activities-and-Assessments

I copied the various grammatical definitions from: Kinneavy, James L, and Warriner, John E. Elements of Writing : Complete Course. Austin: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1998.

NOTE: Regarding the Active Voice Rules activity on pages 27-28, I sell a  corresponding Power Point that teaches this concept and that uses these sentences: http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Grammar-ActivePassive-Voice-PowerPoint

Happy Teaching,

Write Right: Banish Those Dialogue Demons

I could feel the dread twang my nerves as I glanced through Bubba’s original scene before settling down to edit and critique it. He had chosen to show the conversation Romeo and Juliet should have had instead of the one where they plotted using poison if their families kept them apart. My eyes skidded to a stop when they landed on the first dialogue between the besotted teens. “Oh, no! Not the dreaded Dialogue Demons…again!” my nerve endings screamed.

“How many more worksheets and grammar book exercises will it take,” I wondered as I tried to rub away the headache crouching behind my eyes, “until my students get proper dialogue formatting and punctuation?”



Cover

“Just one.” The creative genie in my head smiled as she waved an idea for teaching dialogue format at me. And just like that, the seed for my Thursday is Writing, Grammar, Vocabulary Day blog, “Banishing Dialogue Demons,” was planted in my mind. Well, not quite. Let me segue for a second and clarify that sentence- I first published “Banish Those Dialogue Demons” in NCTE’s Ideas Plus, Book Ten in 1992. What I am posting today is a much clearer and massively expanded version, one that is 13 instead of 2 pages.



My original goal remains-to reinforce students’ knowledge and understanding of proper dialogue format and punctuation resulting in stronger and more coherent writing when they need to show direct quotations (Common Core Standards: Writing: W3, 4, 5, and 10; Language: L1 and 2).

Here are the basic Teacher Notes. These are the condensed version. They are detailed in the product along with a page of student directions.

 Banishing Those Dialogue Demons

Days 1-4:

1. Have students choose one of the following prompts or one of their own each day.
2. They are to write a one page conversation that might occur between two people. 
3. Use the Quotation Marks explanations in a grammar book of your choice. I used: Warriner, John E. English Composition and Grammar  Complete Course.  Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers: Orlando, 1988, 665-668.

Prompts:

1. “Guess what I just heard?”
2.  “I said, ‘Sit down!’” the principal muttered through clenched teeth as a muscle twitched in his jaw.
3.  “I am so excited I’d float away if it weren’t for these boots,” Jenny said as she grabbed Todd’s arm.
4. "And your excuse this time is what?" his father said as he blocked the door from the garage to the kitchen.

Character Cards

Day 5:

1. Divide the students into pairs.  If there is an uneven number, one pair can become a trio.
2.  Have each student choose a Character Card. Each card names an ordinary (a football player) or an outlandish character (a skunk).
3. Have each pair choose a Setting Card. This is where the conversation will take place (a pond, a school cafeteria, Mount Everest, etc.).
4. Students take one minute to decide on: the topic of conversation, who will play which  character, and which student will “speak” first.
5.  From this point on, NO talking is allowed.  Any “speaking” will be done on paper.
6. Student 1 opens the conversation with the first character speaking, and then passes the paper to character 2.  This person reads what is written and responds in writing.
7.  Continue this process for fifteen minutes.  The conversation should show the characters, setting and conflict.  When finished, the piece should be 75% dialogue format, and 25% narrative with a few segments that show physical movements or actions in non-dialogue, explanatory mode. The “person” speaking here should be the 3^rd person omniscient narrator (i.e. She stomped her foot and screamed.)
8. When the time is up, students switch papers with another pair.  Each pair corrects that draft for quotation mark usage, proper dialogue format and punctuation, and then they return the paper to its rightful owners.
9. Each pair now revises their paper for any errors, citing the rules in the margin. Example: (4)5. “When you write dialogue, begin a new paragraph every time the speaker changes.  One person takes the piece home to type up in final draft format.
10.  Next class day: Each pair will read his/her conversation aloud, and then turns in both drafts, with the final, typed draft on top.



Setting Cards

This product offers: Complete Teacher Notes, detailed Student Directions, 30 Character Cards and 15 Setting Cards. If, at the end of the five days some students still haven’t fully grasped the concepts of this format, teachers can offer more dialogue prompts and revision work for remediation.

Suggestion: Here is a 20-minute remedial exercise: Have a student choose two Character Cards and one Setting Card. He/she now writes a short dialogue (take 15 minutes), and then uses the grammar book to proofread and revise the dialogue for format, punctuation and capitalization (5 minutes). The student should cite the rule number beside any error i.e. (4) 3. In the English Composition and Grammar text this one states: “Question marks and exclamation points are placed inside the closing quotation marks if the quotation itself is a question or an exclamation; otherwise they are placed outside,” ( 667).

May those dreaded Dialogue Demons be forever banished from your students’ writing.

Download this product from my Teachers pay Teachers store:http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Grammar-Banish-Those-Dialogue-Demons

Happy Teaching,