Category · 395 articles
Writing
Does Sentence Diagramming Make Sense?
Effective writing instruction melds both analysis and practice. Students need the deductive apply-the-components/rules-of-grammar approach and the inductive practice-the-meaningful-communication of ideas-with-feedback approach to become effective writers. Some…
Grammar Research and Balanced Instruction
A balanced approach to grammatical instruction just makes the best sense of the grammar research. An approach that involves direct grammatical instruction in partnership with plenty…
Standards and Accountability
The standards-based movement has ushered in a new era of accountability in public education with all of its attendant problems and teachers may be the ones…
How to Teach Prefixes, Roots, and Suffixes
Prefixes, roots, and suffixes: These word parts that are, indeed, the keys to academic vocabulary—the types of words that students especially need to succeed in school.…
How to Write a Summary
Learning how to write a summary is a valuable skill. Learning how to teach what is and what is not a summary may be even more…
How to Teach Helping Verbs
English teachers learn early in their careers that strong nouns and “show-me” verbs are the keys to good writing. Of these two keys, verbs give developing…
How to Teach Main Idea
Finding the main idea is a basic reading comprehension strategy. However, basic does not mean easy. Main idea questions are found on every normed and every…
How and When to Teach Adverbs
Adverbs are tricky. Knowing the definition of this basic part of speech only gets us so far. Yes, we do need to know what we are…