Grammar Punk Blog

Spelling 101

Like writing itself, the art of spelling has also taken serious hits in the past few decades. It’s easy enough to blame PC spell-checkers and they certainly deserve much of the blame, but not all of it.

Good spelling takes effort. Work. Discipline. Finesse. It is also a necessary skill that should not be short-changed.

Not that I’m dissing spell-checkers; I’m not. Entirely. They absolutely have their place, especially for us writers whose fingers can move faster than our brains, more concerned with the flow than the individual words. However, spell-checkers have their limitations. Big time. Homonyms spring to mind. A word might very well be spelled correctly and be entirely the wrong word. Another common oops with spell-checkers is commonly confused words such as affect or effect, accept, except, you’re, your, and on and on.

Strong, effective, in-charge writers are good spellers.

At least we work at it.

Spelling and writing should go hand in hand. Well, duh, you say? Not so much. Let’s face it, spelling, like that other bugaboo of the writing world, grammar, has obtained a bad reputation. Spelling, schmelling. Getting students interested in spelling, not matter what age group, has never been more challenging; creativity is key.

Reason number 97 why the Grammar Punk™ dice were created. By breaking words into their most basic elements—letters into words—and by requiring students to use specific letters to form words, students therefore pay more attention to the words they create.

We’ll be looking at some ways to make this important skill approachable, achievable, and even, gulp, fun. We’d love to hear from the great teachers out there who might have their own cool ideas about spelling.

What kinds of grammar games work best in the classroom?

If you’ve visited our site, www.grammarpunk.com you know that we specialize in programs and products that will take grammar from the subject students dread to one of their favorites. We do that by putting the learning process back where it belongs: into student’s hands. Literally. They learn by doing, not reiterating, diagramming, or flogging the same old material from 20 year old textbooks. We made the teaching and learning of grammar feel more like a game.

When choosing grammar games for your classroom beware of games that are intended only as “time-fillers” and do not also affect or improve student writing. Simple, entertaining games may be entertaining and enjoyable to students, but game-play in classrooms should also teach. 

Because each and every grammar lesson in the Grammar Punk™ programs revolve around the interplay of dice and cards which introduce and constantly reinforce the grammatical elements, Grammar Punk™ feels like a game, but teaches every step of the way. 

I’ll give you more insights into the concepts and how we got from A to B to C as we go along. Wanna play too?

Scientists tell us that the act of crawling actually creates hard wiring in the brain of small children. It actually helps their brains develop. Quite a concept. To skip this crucial stage from helplessness to walking can be decidedly detrimental to the future learning of said child. Think of that, something as simple as learning to crawl before taking first steps can make a huge difference.

The act of brain to hand to paper feels much like the act of rolling over, getting up on all fours and scurrying across the floor to explore new venues, as is the act of those first laborious marks made on paper, small hand wrapped around the long slim contours of a number two pencil, or even the stubbier lines of a Crayola. From brain to hand to paper. It feels…necessary somehow. To first print out your very own name and recognize it as such. Heady stuff.

Remember the Palmer method? According to Wikipedia, The Palmer Method of penmanship instruction was developed and promoted by Austin Palmer in the early 1900s. It soon became the most popular handwriting system in the United States.

Then, bit by bit, the Palmer Method was weaseled out as students were first taught “manuscript” or printing first so they could have a method of written expression as soon as possible. It’s just that next step that seems to have been lost, many students not moving on to this next step. WHY!? It seems to this blogger that once again kids are being underestimated.

So, what happened to taking those first chicken-scratches to graduating to the near elegance of cursive writing? Yes, it takes time and effort and perseverance, so what’s wrong with that? All good things do. We are already in danger of losing the beauty and symmetry of language with keyboards and phone pads and slicing and dicing words with counterfeit communication. Don’t get me started.

What do you think?

Grammar is fun. No, really.

As with most things, it’s all in the application. I myself loathe and detest math, pretty much all of math, but I happen to be good at the multiplication tables and I blame that on a long ago teacher who used games and rhymes to teach it. I liked it then and I remember it still. Games in classrooms work.

Which is precisely where the concept of Grammar Punk™ comes from.

Making grammar lessons fun allows students to practice as well as internalize rules and procedures as a natural extension of their writing process. Because the grammar lesson is disguised as a “word game” students are much more motivated to “play.” In addition, because students are more focused on their own performance and classroom competition the grammar lessons are absorbed and become part of student repertoire.

In other words, if kids think something is fun they’re more apt to do it for longer periods of time, will remember what they did, and will more easily incorporate it. Just ask them about their favorite video game characters.

The introduction of grammar play in the classroom will also foster teacher-student as well as peer-to-peer bonding and cooperation. A healthy sense of competition will also be input in your classrooms. And because game play adds fun and laughter to a classroom, students will want to play more, which only reinforces the grammar lessons through sheer repetition.

Visit www.grammarpunk.com to see more about Grammar Punk™ and making your classroom fun.

Start the new year by making this tough subject fun to teach. And learn!

Even with something as simple as making nouns possessive and plural, grammarians can disagree. I wish it was as simple as just add “s” or “es.” And it almost is. We’ll handle the exceptions next week.

As usual, we use Michael Strumpf’s “The Grammar Bible” as our guide, and we don’t lose sleep over it.

To make numbers plural, just add an s:

1. That sounds like music from the 1980s.
2. Gary bought a few 747s for posterity.

To make most nouns plural, just add “s” or “es”:

1. I like my dog. Dogs are cool. I have two.
2. I have a box. I have boxes.
3. How many picnics have you been to this year?

Because we believe in little bits of grammar at a time, and I don’t want our heads to explode, I’ll save the exceptions of plural and possessive nouns for later. Trust me, you’ll want to bring a friend.

Most of us know what a noun is. In fact, we figured that nouns (and verbs) are so easy to identify and so well known, we didn’t even include it on the Grammar Punk dice, making room for more advanced parts of speech. But that doesn’t mean we couldn’t use a little review, right? And we may even learn something we didn’t know.

The word noun itself comes from the Latin word nomen, which means name. That makes sense, because that’s pretty much what a noun is. It names something. You may remember hearing this definition of a noun in school: “A noun is a person, place, or thing.” That’s a good definition, and it’s easy to remember.

There are two types of nouns: common and proper. Common nouns are general nouns like cup, clock, book, keyboard, desk, chair, and table. Proper nouns are capitalized, and they name specific persons, places, or things, like Eiffel Tower, New York State Fair, Nancy, Sue, and Greg.

Next time, we’ll talk about how to make nouns plural and possessive.