Grammar Punk Blog

Janus: January

In ancient Roman religion and mythology, Janus is the god of beginnings and transitions. He is usually a two-faced god since he looks to the future and the past. Thus we have the month of January. I like this idea that we begin our new year looking forward with resolutions and goals and transitions while also looking back with just as much intensity. After all, how do we resolve to change if we don’t first examine what needs changing? Happy New Year!

Teachers of English challenge your students to write down their past and their future goals.

Quondam: former or sometime

I really hate to admit but I’d never heard of this one. Which is a shame because it is a handy little word. It comes from 16th century Latin. Quondum which means at one time or formerly.

Teachers of English, I strongly urge you to fit this handy and little used word as well as many others I’ve illuminated in his blog into yours—and your students lexicons—lest they disappear forever which would truly  be a shame.

Grammar Punk Sentence: G O 3 quondam

Hoping to regain his quondam days of glory, Jenkins refused to give up bowling, disregarding the fact that he barely broke eighty during any given game.

Write your own Grammar Punk sentence containing 3 words with the letters G and O and the word quondam.

The New Year is here. Resolutions abound, anticipation hovers, change is in the air and it’s all in front of us, just waiting for us to…do something about it. Grammar Punk is a good way to start the new year. Doing something different with a difficult subject is a great way to start the new year. Creating truly phenomenal writers is a stupendous way to start the new year.

Here’s a review sent by an unsolicited review group.  

There’s Nothing Punky about Grammar Punk

Grammar Punk is a rebellious little program that has thrown out the lectures and note taking when it comes to grammar. Forget about having your child spend oodles of time memorizing all those picky grammar rules. Pick up a Grammar Punk package and watch them learn through fun dice games and creative writing processes. Created by an English teacher fed up with traditional grammar curriculum, this system teaches proper grammar in such a way that kids have fun learning and doing. The learning and doing regime actually helps kids retain more of what they learn.

 
Doing is more fun than memorizing, and Grammar Punk dice games require kids to “to create their own sentences, dictated by the Grammar Punk dice and story cards.” Grammar rules are practiced with each written sentence and grammar rules become part of the child’s natural writing ability. There are five Packages which cater to different age groups and each one is packed with quality curriculum materials. The programs come complete with specialized grammar punk dice, grade-specific story cards, worksheets, and more than 180 pages of “lesson a day, exercises, activities, games and challenges.” There is a Creative Writing Course for older children and a Writer’s kit complete with all kinds of “writing how to’s.” They even offer a homework package so that students can reinforce their grammar skills at home. When it comes to learning grammar, this fun “punky” program really has it together.

Our New Year’s Resolution at Grammar Punk is to do our bit to encourage those great writers just lurking beneath the surface of those students struggling with dry rules and diagramming sentences.

 Happy New Year!

Parsing Your Words

I’ll say it again, I love this language.  And there’s so much of it to love. And those choices shouldn’t be squandered. Or neglected. Or abandoned.

I’m talking about the either or’s that come into play when choosing which word to use in a particular situation. The real fun is choosing the word that not only explains what you want to explain but also conveys the emotion behind the thought. And if you also come across as a bit smarter than others may have thought you were, well, that’s just the frosting on top.  

This occurred to me when I was searching for the word obfuscate. Excellent word, obfuscate, it means to confuse, disguise, conceal. Any of those words would do, any of them would have filled the concept I was reaching for but obfuscate gave the thought that extra bit of…oomph. And oomph, when it is called for, is everything.

Gravitas is another great example of a conceptual sort of word. Yes, you could say dignity but doesn’t gravitas sound more…dignified? Snuffle rather than sniff, prevaricate over lie, gesticulating over gesturing, reconnoiter instead of investigate.

The key to concision in writing is choosing carefully but not so carefully that you stifle the creative flow, just pad your vocabulary with enough inventory that the choices will make themselves.

Teachers of English, grammar, and writing this is a great point of discussion for your students. Challenge them to explore the limits of their vocabularies. And then to push those limits. Then write about it. And share!

The New Year is coming and bringing with it all the possibilities of all that newness. I love new years, whether I think of them in January or September with the new school year, new is new. And new is good.

Grammar Punk is a new way of teaching the same old grammar and punctuation. A really new way that puts the learning back where it belongs: with students doing the learning and the writing and the getting it.

Here’s a review from an educational site that sums it up nicely.

The best game I’ve seen lately is a dice-based game that teaches grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure. It’s called Grammar Punk. This is one of those simple games that takes very little teaching, and quickly gets kids thinking about the work they do in order to win at the game — that’s a two-fer! Kids learning and thinking about learning.

So, as the New Year approaches and thus does the urge to turn one’s back on the old and fervently embrace the new, we urge teachers of English, grammar, and writing to scurry over to www.grammarpunk.com and check out our programs and tools and add Grammar Punk to your New Year.

Orgulous: Proud

Middle English, from Anglo-French orguillus, from orguil pride, of Germanic origin; akin to Old High German urguol .

Okay, that explains a lot. It’s a German origin of a a word, Old High German at that. In any case it’s a cool word that makes me think of the word ogre. Which has nothing to do with anything except ogre is kind of a cool word too.

I have to wonder though why it’s orgulous—it’s that ous at the end that puzzles me. That ous usually means a suffix forming adjectives that have the general sense “possessing, full of” a given quality ( covetous; glorious; nervous; wondrous ) So I guess it’s not all that strange that being full of org means to be full of pride. Okay, I can buy that.

Grammar Punk Sentence: L U 2

Standing tall and impiously orgulous, Denny prepared to face down the hostile crowd waiting impatiently for the mac and cheese to be served.

Write us a Grammar Punk Sentence with 2 words containing the letters L and U and the word orgulous. Teachers of English, grammar, and writing, challenge your students to feel orgulous about their writing and use this word to launch into a paragraph or two while they’re at it.

Just when you thought it was safe…  

In the west of France they have the Twelve Days of, known as a song, “La Foi de la loi.” It involves: a good stuffing without bones

1. two breasts of veal,
2. three joints of beef,
3. four pigs’ trotters,
4. five legs of mutton,
5. six partridges with cabbage,
6. seven spitted rabbits,
7. eight plates of salad,
8. nine dishes for a chapter of canons,
9. ten full casks,

10. eleven beautiful full-breasted maidens,

11. and twelve musketeers with their swords.

Leave it to the French to turn the Twelve Days into an orgy of eating things. Oh that and the…well-endowed maidens and some musketeers to round out the picture.

And don’t leave out the Scots. In Scotland, this goes back to the early 19th century and begins with:

“The king sent his lady on the first Yule day,

1. 1.    A popingo-aye [parrot]; Wha’ learns my carol and carries it away?”
2. 2.    Then there are two partridges,
3. 3.    three plovers,
4. 4.    a goose that was grey,
5. 5.    three starlings,
6. 6.    three goldspinks,
7. 7.    a bull that was brown,
8. 8.    three ducks a-merry laying,
9. 9.    three swans a-merry swimming,

10. an Arabian baboon,

11. three hinds a-merry hunting,

12. three maids a-merry dancing,

13. three stalks o’ merry corn.

They like three, the Scots do.

Thus the Twelve Days of Christmas is officially put to bed. And since the twelve days is officially going on for the folk who thought it up…yes, I’m still talking about Christmas. And now I’m done.

12 Drummers Drumming

I shall also go on and on about drummers drumming but I have to stop and comment on twelfth for a moment. What’s with that number? Doesn’t it just look odd? Not to mention sound odd. You can’t really pronounce the F in the middle there, go ahead and try. Twel-fu-th. See? Doesn’t work. Why isn’t it a V? Twelvth? As in twelve. Just a thought.

I guess I won’t go into too much of a quandary about what kind of drums these particular drummers are drumming on, a drum is a drum, right? And so I looked… And there are: Snare drums, bass drums, tom toms, bongos, congas, cajon, tabla, and tympani’s. And I’m sure there are many, many more but that’s as far as I was prepared to look. Besides, all I can think of is what a splitting headache the true love has by now and that she has no doubt broken things off and is on a coffee date with an old boyfriend who had better sense than to attempt the Twelve Days of Christmas.

And speaking for all of us at Grammar Punk we want to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and hope you all plan to begin the New Year as Grammar Punks!

On the eleventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…

11 Pipers piping

As we wind down this little foray into the 12 Days of Christmas I’m detecting a theme. Rich people have it pretty good. While the rest of us content ourselves with finding the perfect toaster, fuzzy slippers, power tools, Easy-Bake Ovens, and iPhone eleven guys with bagpipes stuff themselves into the room along with the partridge, turtle doves, hens, geese, swans, maids, ladies and lords and still leave room for the percussionists still to arrive.

It seems to be the consensus that the pipes being piped are bagpipes, which certainly makes sense. If you don’t mind the six geese to stop laying and become very interested in the pipers as kindred spirits in honking.  

On the tenth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…

Ten lords-a leaping

And on. Dancing I can get behind, dancing is nice, dancing is beautiful, dancing is… dancing. But leaping? What, off cliffs? Into swimming pools? Big bowls of Jell-o?

On the other hand I do like the idea of the Lords doing the leaping instead of barking at the poor maids who already have their hands full with all that milking.