One way to grab a youngster's attention is by making up stories with him or her as the main character. For my first grade student, I work on a story no more than 500 words long, usually fewer words.
I asked him what kind of stories he would like about himself. He made a list - with my help - of the things he wanted in his story. His list included do magic, a magic hat, rabbits, a magic wand, and a magic cape. Magic stories I can do, piece of cake. How hard could it be, since I made up stories and characters for my daughter when she was young?
I double space each story and use a nice large font and wide margins at the top and bottom. The more white space the better for a young reader.
When I bought the first story for the next lesson, he read about himself. He learned he could fly to the top of a tree and that he could understand what a kitten was telling him. We were building up to super powers, kid style. Since I tutor him for an hour after he has been in school all day, we take turns reading aloud. He likes that.
When he asked how many stories I could make up for him, I told him as many as he wanted. He liked that a lot!
This time he wanted space aliens and guns and swords and guns that shot swords and a space ship bigger that ten houses, and cannons. Hmmm, not so easy.
I created Fitzu, a space alien.
More on Fitzu later.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Lesson One, Nouns and Verbs
Starting simple is always good, even if your writing is complex. If you already know this material, read over it anyway and feel smart.
My student's writing is complex and he uses a lot of complicated concepts, so we needed time to identify the concept nouns by their uses in his sentences. Concrete or tangible nouns are easier to pin down than intangible ones.
FIRST LESSON
In order to work on sentence structure and effectiveness, I’d like to make sure you and I have the proper building blocks to speak the same language. Those building blocks are called the parts of speech.
The first two parts of speech we’ll identify are nouns and verbs.
Part 1
Nouns name persons, places, things, ideas, concepts, creeds, etc.
John, America, Duluth, Ford, Catholic or Catholicism, University of Georgia Bill of Rights are all proper names.
Carriage, car, man, boy, religion, city, school, university, gym, church are common names. They don’t name a specific person, place or thing.
Many words can be used in different ways in different sentences.
Part 2
Verbs show action or state of being.
Jump, sing, read, throw, study, practice, run, find, exercise, and shoot are action verbs. Verbs have tenses you use automatically, like jumped, sang, threw, studied, practiced, ran, shot.
Have, has, and had are helping verbs or show possession when they appear without an action verb. May, might, can, could, should, would, will, and shall are all helping verbs.
Is, am, are, was, were, be, been, being are all being verbs since they show no action. Seem, appear, and felt are verbs also.
If you want to do something with this knowledge, select a page you have written or a page in a book. Copy that page so you can mark it up.
On the same page, find the verbs and color them blue, nice bright, easy to spot blue. Include verbs of being and helping verbs listed above. Now mark the nouns with red.
What happens in your sentence? At least one word in a sentence tells you that. Then find the word that tells who or what did the action. That will be a noun or a pronoun.
Want to try this on your own? Send me your answers and I'll grade you. Copy a page and paste in into a document. Highlight your nouns and verbs in color.
Make a comment or ask a question.
My student's writing is complex and he uses a lot of complicated concepts, so we needed time to identify the concept nouns by their uses in his sentences. Concrete or tangible nouns are easier to pin down than intangible ones.
FIRST LESSON
In order to work on sentence structure and effectiveness, I’d like to make sure you and I have the proper building blocks to speak the same language. Those building blocks are called the parts of speech.
The first two parts of speech we’ll identify are nouns and verbs.
Part 1
Nouns name persons, places, things, ideas, concepts, creeds, etc.
John, America, Duluth, Ford, Catholic or Catholicism, University of Georgia Bill of Rights are all proper names.
Carriage, car, man, boy, religion, city, school, university, gym, church are common names. They don’t name a specific person, place or thing.
Many words can be used in different ways in different sentences.
Part 2
Verbs show action or state of being.
Jump, sing, read, throw, study, practice, run, find, exercise, and shoot are action verbs. Verbs have tenses you use automatically, like jumped, sang, threw, studied, practiced, ran, shot.
Have, has, and had are helping verbs or show possession when they appear without an action verb. May, might, can, could, should, would, will, and shall are all helping verbs.
Is, am, are, was, were, be, been, being are all being verbs since they show no action. Seem, appear, and felt are verbs also.
If you want to do something with this knowledge, select a page you have written or a page in a book. Copy that page so you can mark it up.
On the same page, find the verbs and color them blue, nice bright, easy to spot blue. Include verbs of being and helping verbs listed above. Now mark the nouns with red.
What happens in your sentence? At least one word in a sentence tells you that. Then find the word that tells who or what did the action. That will be a noun or a pronoun.
Want to try this on your own? Send me your answers and I'll grade you. Copy a page and paste in into a document. Highlight your nouns and verbs in color.
Make a comment or ask a question.
Tutoring a Graduate Student in Grammar
Tutoring my someone like my graduate student is the kind of experience every teacher should have. This man WANTS to learn grammar. Yep, grammar. He writes a lot now and wants to be able to proof and edit his own papers.
An intelligent and educated man, he missed or forgot the grammar rules. Listening to news reporters and anchors makes me believe a lot of people in his generation missed out on the basics. As a retired military man he knows about rules and structure.
What's the big deal with the grammar rules? There are rules to allow you to communicate in an effective manner with anyone who speaks your language. Even now people have their children study Latin or a different language because studying those languages involves learning grammar rules. Why not learn the rules of your own language?
Some folks refuse to learn formal usage or correct sentence structure because they already know English. What if you learned the wrong structure, the wrong words for things you need?
Would you argue with a French teacher about learning the right words to use or the correct sentence structure? If you did you'd fail the class in French. That is true of any language. If you use the wrong French words around a Frenchman you might end up with your face rearranged or a bad stomach ache from eat the wrong dish.
If you wanted to build a boat, you'd need to know about carpentry and the structure of boats. You'd need to know the rules before you could break them, unless you wanted to launch your boat into the water and see it sink or enter it in a race and lose because you didn't learn about shape and design for speed. Are their different designs for a motor boat or a sail boat? I would need to find out if I planned to build either kind of boat.
Many people can't perform simple repairs on their homes because they don't have the right tools or don't know how to use them. What's the difference between a nail and a screw? Would you use a sledge hammer to hammer a nail? Would you use a nail file as a screw driver? (Some of us have, but it doesn't always work. You can't always pick a lock with a hair pin, either.)
I plan to present the tools for anyone to improve his or her grammar. Check back often and feel free to ask questions.
An intelligent and educated man, he missed or forgot the grammar rules. Listening to news reporters and anchors makes me believe a lot of people in his generation missed out on the basics. As a retired military man he knows about rules and structure.
What's the big deal with the grammar rules? There are rules to allow you to communicate in an effective manner with anyone who speaks your language. Even now people have their children study Latin or a different language because studying those languages involves learning grammar rules. Why not learn the rules of your own language?
Some folks refuse to learn formal usage or correct sentence structure because they already know English. What if you learned the wrong structure, the wrong words for things you need?
Would you argue with a French teacher about learning the right words to use or the correct sentence structure? If you did you'd fail the class in French. That is true of any language. If you use the wrong French words around a Frenchman you might end up with your face rearranged or a bad stomach ache from eat the wrong dish.
If you wanted to build a boat, you'd need to know about carpentry and the structure of boats. You'd need to know the rules before you could break them, unless you wanted to launch your boat into the water and see it sink or enter it in a race and lose because you didn't learn about shape and design for speed. Are their different designs for a motor boat or a sail boat? I would need to find out if I planned to build either kind of boat.
Many people can't perform simple repairs on their homes because they don't have the right tools or don't know how to use them. What's the difference between a nail and a screw? Would you use a sledge hammer to hammer a nail? Would you use a nail file as a screw driver? (Some of us have, but it doesn't always work. You can't always pick a lock with a hair pin, either.)
I plan to present the tools for anyone to improve his or her grammar. Check back often and feel free to ask questions.
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