Do You Know Where to Find Tips on Good Teaching Resources?

I thought I'd start a thread on homeschooling/tutoring resources. I was going to share a fabulous Grammar program that my principle shared with me when I started teaching. It is called Easy Grammar Plus, and to be honest, it helped me understand grammar so much better. I grew up in the public schools and I never understood diagramming sentences because I didn't know how to identify anything other than subjects, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. Prepositional phrases were confusing me and I quickly realized that that's where my own students were stuck as well. I highly recommend this book for those middle school grammar years when understanding how the language works is crucial. After all, if you don't know how a sentence should be formatted, it makes it difficult to write with style and flair Wink.

Here is a link to the book: Easy Grammar Plus

Her book focuses on the importance of memorizing the preposition list (there are songs that list the prepositions that you can buy in order to make the task more fun). A game that I did with my students was to have everyone stand by their desks. Then I wrote the preposition list on the board in alphabetical order. For the first round, we went around the room and each person said the next preposition on the list. Once we got all the way through the list, I erased the first word and we kept going. Each time we finished the list, I erased the next word on the list...The first student to miss a preposition would have to sit down (You'd be surprised how many students had to sit b/c they weren't paying attention and even though the word was right in front of them, they lost their place and didn't know where we were on the written list Cheesy)...and we'd keep going until the last student was standing and that student would get a reward of some sort. Then we'd start over again.

We kept playing the game until the entire board of prepositions was erased. It took about 3 days to get through, and the students had a quiz where they had to list all 50 prepositions by the end of the week...Even the students who struggled in school were able to memorize the list and get higher than a C on the quiz with this classroom technique. The only students who ever failed that quiz were the ones who missed school. And once my students had the knowledge of which words are prepositions they were able to identify prepositional phrases and by identifying and getting rid of those phrases it makes it much easier to identify the subject and verbs of the sentence (subjects and verbs are NEVER found in prepositional phrases)...It was so great to give my students concrete rules to go by...My teachers in public school always concentrated on the exceptions to the rule...and that confused me because they didn't focus on the steadfast rules first.

My students left my room understanding grammar. In fact, I had the upper school teacher approach me within weeks of getting my first class of students to tell me that I was doing something right because the difference between my class's understanding of grammar and the class from the teacher who preceded me was amazing. She was able to start teaching them how to write and didn't have to spend time teaching them the rules of grammar. As flattering as that was, I know that it's only because of the trick of teaching my students how to recognize prepositions.

So anyway...I hope that's helpful to someone who is teaching grammar to a middle school child. The Easy Grammar Plus book by Wanda Phillips has so many helpful tips and tricks...I can't recommend the book enough! It should supplement any grammar curriculum. I've actually bought it for when Aiden reaches that age...

Now...I would LOVE some great teaching resources, games, and ideas for the preschool/elementary school age...I know we've got some other teachers and homeschooling moms around!