Sentence Family

Born out of a teacher's desire to engage her young students in grammar basics, The Sentence Family tells a story. The family names are a bit unusual but each has his own distinct personality (and clothes color preference), so abstract terms like "declarative sentence," "exclamatory sentence," "verb," "noun," etc. all come to life. More importantly, students learn and remember how they interact one with another. Each "fact" (meaning the types of sentences and the parts of speech) is introduced with a little story and a drawing. For instance, "Adjective's twin sister is named Adverb. She is very fond of her brother, Verb, and likes to paint pictures of what he is doing. Because Adverb's favorite color is orange, she always wears an orange dress. . . ." You can see how this story flows naturally into identifying the words that modify verbs and prepares the student for underlining or highlighting those words in orange. Such identifications also help prepare the student for diagramming, which is also covered. This is a manual for the teacher rather than a worktext for the student. There are exercises outlined for the student but they result from the teacher-student interaction. In some instances, the teacher may need to write sentences out for the student. Four types of sentences and nine parts of speech (articles are included as a separate part of speech) are introduced along with beginning diagramming. Full-size, full-color pictures (for the teacher to re-create or share) are also included for each fact. 77 pgs, spiral-bound ~ Janice