Teachers Guide and Analysis Keys s2

Teachers’ Guide and Analysis Keys

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Introduction and Unit 1 - Review

The Third “Ideal” KISS Grammar Book

The study of grammar is a science.

The teaching of grammar is an art.

People who are not familiar with the KISS Approach will look at this book and say that it is impossible for students to learn the material. Their view is understandable because all they are familiar with are the grammar books that teach simplistic, isolated constructions. If your students have passed the Assessment tests for Books One and Two, they should be fairly good at recognizing subjects, verbs, the five types of complements, adjectives, adverbs, prepositional phrases, and compound sentences. In other words, much of what students have to do in this book is already automatic for them. They can do it quickly and (usually) correctly. This book enables students to build on what they have already learned. To my knowledge, no other approach to grammar builds in this meaningful way.

Units Seven and Twelve (“Statistical Stylistics”) are not complete and may take some time to make. They will be based on samples of the writing of third graders.

Note: Many of the links in these Teachers’ Guides lead to pages on the KISS internet site. These links are intended to give you more explanation and examples about something in an Analysis Key. If you are not connected to the web, the links will not work.

For more information about the KISS Grammar “Ideal” books, go to:

http://kissgrammar.org/Ideal_Sequence/index.html

Introduction 3

Major Objectives 3

The Texts on Which This Book Is Built 6

An Overview of the Exercises 7

The Focus on the Grammatical Concepts 7

Reading, Writing, Vocabulary & Style 10

The Importance of Listening and Reading 10

Vocabulary 11

The Focus on Writing 11

Important Reminders 13

Unit 1 – Review 14

Constructions 14

Nouns Used as Adverbs, Interjections, and Direct Address 14

Ex. 1 - From The Tale of Samuel Whiskers [AK] 14

Verbs 15

Ex. 2 - Helping Verbs Adapted from The Velveteen Rabbit (AK) 15

Ex. 3 - Phrasal Verbs from My Book of Favorite Fairy Tales (AK) 16

Ex. 4 - Palimpsest Patterns from The Fairy Reader [AK] 17

Ex. 5 - Varied Positions in S/V/C Patterns from My Book of Favorite Fairy Tales [AK] 17

Prepositions 18

Ex. 6 - Is It a Preposition? from My Book of Favorite Fairy Tales [AK] 18

Ex. 7 – The “To” Problem - The Velveteen Rabbit [AK] 19

Ex. 8 - The Meanings of “Too” from Pinocchio [AK] 20

Ex. 9 - Writing Sentences with “To” and “Too” [NA] 21

Ex. 10 - Embedded Prepositional Phrases from The Velveteen Rabbit [AK] 21

Mixed Complements 22

Ex. 11 – Mixed Complements - From Pinocchio [AK] 22

Ex. 12 – Mixed Complements based on “The Cat and the Fox” [AK] 22

Clauses 23

Ex. 13 - Compound Main Clauses from The Velveteen Rabbit (#1) [AK] 23

Ex. 14 –Just for Fun: Q & A Puns [AK] 24

Punctuation & Writing 25

Ex. 15 - Apostrophes for Possession from The Fairy Reader [AK] 25

Ex. 16 - Apostrophes in Contractions from Pinocchio [AK] 26

Ex. 17 – Punctuation: The Opening of “The Cat and the Fox” 26

Ex. 18 – Writing Topics (“The Cat and the Fox”) 27

Introduction

It’s time to take stock of where we are and where we are going. When I taught KISS grammar to college students, the things they found most difficult were identifying subjects, verbs, and complements, and identifying prepositional phrases. That means that students who passed the assessment quizzes for KISS Books One and Two have fairly well mastered what gave my college students the most trouble. (And the students will continue to identify all of these constructions in every analysis exercise.) The question, therefore, is what do we add next?

Major Objectives

There are two directions that instruction can take at this point in the students’ work. We could focus on subordinate clauses (adjectival, adverbial, and noun), or we could focus on verbals—verbs that function as nouns, adjectives, or adverbs. I have opted to focus on verbals in this book and on subordinate clauses in Book Four. The exception is subordinate clauses that function as direct objects. In Book Two, students learn to distinguish compound main clauses, and Unit Three of this book introduces subordinate clauses that function as direct objects. The reason for this is that these clauses function as complements in many sentences that the students read or write:

He said [DO he didn’t want to play (DO)]. |

Note that the direct object of “didn’t want” is a verbal, in this case a verb that functions as a noun, but students have already been introduced to verbs that function as subjects or as complements in Unit Six of Book Two. Subordinate clauses as direct objects are very common, so introducing them here shows students that one clause can be part of another clause, and this prepares students for the focus on subordinate clauses in Book Four.

There are three reasons for delaying most subordinate clauses until fourth grade. First, students using KISS Grammar are already far ahead of those students who are not. Second, fourth grade teachers have told me that they “have to” teach subordinate clauses to their students—and half of their students “just don’t get it.” In other words, delaying most instruction in subordinate clauses until fourth grade will not keep KISS users “behind.” Third, and most important, in order to understand subordinate clauses in real texts, including their own writing, students have to be able to distinguish “finite” verbs from “verbals”.

Any verb in any sentence functions either as a “finite” verb or as a “verbal.” There are no exceptions. “Finite verbs” are the essence of the S/V/C sentence pattern, and thus the essence of clauses. They are, however, extremely difficult to define. Some texts try to do so by discussing person, number, and tense—three concepts that are not easy for most students to grasp, especially “tense,” and especially in the limited attention that is given to them in the textbooks. By now, however, KISS students have been underlining finite verbs twice for two years. They have, in other words, a sense of what verbs can make a sentence. Those are the finite verbs.

A “verbal” is a verb that functions as a noun, adjective, or adverb within a clause. Students who do not know this will have serious problems even with very simple clauses. There are three, and only three types of verbals—gerunds, gerundives, and infinitives. Gerunds always function as nouns—subjects, direct objects, predicate nouns, or objects of prepositions. Because gerunds have these functions—which students are already familiar with—students have little trouble in identifying their functions. But they will have problems with the complements of gerunds. For example, in the sentence

Playing baseball is fun.

many students will consider “baseball” to be the subject of “is,” and they will be confused about “Playing.” The real subject of “is” is the gerund “Playing,” and “baseball” is the direct object of “Playing.”

Gerundives function as verbal adjectives. For example:

We saw Billy swimming in the park.

The problem here is that students are usually taught that verbs express action, and, told to underline verbs twice, they would logically underline “swimming” twice. Then they would be told that they are wrong. This is the primary reason that current instruction never attempts to teach students how to analyze the subjects and verbs in their own writing. KISS statistical studies (which take a long time to make) have small sample numbers, but the Statistical Studies of Natural Syntactic Development include twenty samples of the writing of third graders. Only one of those samples includes a gerundive, but that suggests that five percent of third graders would run into this problem. I also suggest that the texts that these students read include far more gerundives. In other words, if we want students to analyze samples from their reading, they will need to be able to distinguish gerundives from finite verbs.

Infinitives can cause even more of a problem. Infinitives can function as nouns, adjectives, or adverbs. As is the case with gerunds, the infinitives that function as nouns don’t cause a major problem. But infinitives that function as adjectives or adverbs do. Fourteen of the twenty (70%) of the KISS statistical samples include infinitives. For example:

Martha went to the store to buy bread.

Students who are just taught to underline subjects once and verbs twice will underline both “went” and “buy” twice—they are both verbs. “To buy,” however, is a verbal (that functions as an adverb of purpose to “went”) and should not be underlined twice. In other words, what the textbooks really mean is to underline subjects once and finite verbs twice. They do not say so, and they get away with it simply by including only sentences that do not include verbals. (Hence, students cannot transfer what they learn in grammar textbooks to their own writing and reading.)

For the preceding reasons, I decided to delay most subordinate clauses until the fourth book and made the distinction between finite verbs and verbals a major focus of (this) Book Three. The primary units in this book are therefore units three, five, and nine. Unit Three introduces subordinate clauses that function as direct objects. Unit Five adds three relatively simple tests for distinguishing a finite verb from a verbal. (Students are not introduced to the three types in this book, simply because they do not yet need to know them.) Unit Nine expands on Five and explores how verbals function in sentences as nouns, adjectives, or adverbs. The latter is important because it helps students see how every word (except Interjections and Direct Address) in any sentence chunk to the main S/V/C pattern. This is very important for reading comprehension. (Don’t forget that once a construction is introduced, it appears in many, if not all, of the later exercises.)

The Texts on Which This Book Is Built

Originally, many of the exercises were developed based on C. Collodi’s Pinocchio and on The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams. [The links are to free versions at the InternetArchive.] Some of these are still in the book, and others have been removed. I strongly suggest that students read these two books, but I had trouble coordinating those exercises with the writing exercises. Therefore, most of the exercises in this book have been newly done based on The Fairy Reader by James Baldwin. The text used is available at the InternetArchive. In preparing the exercises, I made an MSWord version that you can also use. Many of the grammar exercises and most of the writing assignments are based on one of the ten stories in this book. I strongly suggest that you have the students read (and reread) each story.

My MSWord version does not include Baldwin’s introduction and end notes that are written for teachers, but I’d like to quote from “An After Word: For the Teacher”:

The stories of both Andersen and the Grimms were translated into English and have given pleasure to thousands of people, both young and old, in America as well as in England. But these translations, when given literally, are hard reading for most children — much too hard for beginners. And then, not all of them are suitable for use in well-conducted American schools; some fairy tales have outlived the times and the conditions for which they were written, and there is nothing to be gained by reading them.

There are certain stories, however, that teach valuable lessons of contentment, obedience, patience, gentleness, respect for authority, and kindness to all living things. These should be known and read by all children, for there is no pleasanter method of learning great truths. Most of the tales in this volume are of this class. Each one teaches its lesson, although in some the moral is less obvious than in others. Five are written anew from Andersen's collection, five from that of the Grimms, There are changes in the language and in the thought, to suit the needs of those who are to read them; but the main thread of the narrative is left unaltered.

The forms of expression are such as are easily understood by the youngest pupils. The words, too, are easy—most of them being the same as those used in Baldwin’s First Reader. Such as are new or are likely to prove difficult are put in lists at the heads of the chapters or sections where they occur. [I left these out. EV]

Children who have completed half of the regular work of the first-year grade, and who have learned to read with some fluency in any standard First Reader, will read these stories without difficulty. The book is designed to be used both as a supplement to the First Reader and as an easy introduction to the Second Reader. (189-190, my emphasis)

As more books in the KISS sequence are developed, you’ll find that literature is very important for extending students’ social and moral perspectives.

An Overview of the Exercises

Unlike the first two books, in this one most units have two parts—first come the grammatical concepts; second, “Reading, Writing, Vocabulary, and Style.” The second parts include punctuation exercises; revising exercises—adding adjectives, adverbs, and prepositional phrases; vocabulary exercises—fill-in-the-blanks vocabulary exercise, and finally suggestions for writing assignment. Beginning in Unit Six, they also include an exercise on prefixes, roots, and suffixes.

The Focus on the Grammatical Concepts

Unit 1 – Review provides exercises, some or all of which may be skipped. (The teaching of grammar is an art.) Most of these focus on concepts that were studied in the previous book, or aspects of usage or punctuation that give students some problems. (For example, many of my college students have trouble with apostrophes.)