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Thursday, September 18, 2008

Language Arts: The Chortling Bard

Unless your kids are the sort who turn down opportunities to play family games in favor of diagramming sentences, you have to find a way to convince them that this whole grammar thing is not just necessary, but potentially fun.

Jane Bell Kiester attempts to do just that with her Caught 'ya! grammar series.

The basic concept behind the Kiester's approach is that students who already have a fairly decent grasp of grammar get the chance to apply it in a fun, low-pressure way. The series was written for classroom use, but I've found that modifications for homeschool use are fairly straightforward and that not a lot is lost. Caught 'ya! essentially presents an ongoing silly story section by section. As the teacher, you write out the sentence (on a whiteboard or sheet of paper) complete with errors. Then, your child copies the sentence CORRECTLY into a notebook. If he or she misses some errors, you just go over them together. Pretty easy, huh?

This approach is extremely flexible. If a child is strong in a particular area (such as capitalization or adding commas) simply don't put those mistakes in your sample. But if your child has a particular area of weakness, you can just as easily throw that in to the mix and see how she does.

Each section only take about fifteen minutes a day, and has been really helpful in keeping editing skills sharp. It's also been a giggle a minute around here. I actually have my 8 year old asking if *he* can do it. That's a pretty good find in my book!

Labels: Grammar, Language Arts