Caught Ya! Grammar with a Giggle

You know an approach to grammar is different when students and teachers are giggling. Indeed, Jane Kiester's 10-step approach to teaching grammar is rather amusing, with the bonus of being extremely effective, which certainly sets it apart from many other grammar books! How does Jane keep her classes giggling through grammar? The Caught'ya. In essence, the Caught'ya is one or two sentences of a continuous, humorous story, filled with grammar errors that the teacher wants to eliminate. In this book, Jane walks you through how the Caught'ya works and exactly how to integrate this approach in your own classroom. She starts by "inviting" you into her classroom to see how she uses the Caught'ya and then breaks down the process into ten easy steps. Ten steps may sound intimidating, but each one is a very small piece and the entire task only takes 5-10 minutes a day. In short, the ten steps consist of composing the daily Caught'ya sentence by deciding on a plot, the skills and a vocabulary word to address that day, writing the sentence down incorrectly on the board and critiquing students as they copy the Caught'ya on their own paper correctly, and concluding by checking the sentence together with the whole class, then having the students mark their mistakes, count up their own errors, and turn in their work. The complete, detailed explanations of each step are found in chapter 2. The third chapter focuses on how to evaluate the Caught'ya, with thorough directions on checking and grading the content as well as the format, using real student's Caught'yas as examples. Chapter 4 goes beyond the basics and describes how to use Caught'yas as a tool to teach other grammar skills such as spelling, diagramming sentences, and writing, among other tips. This chapter also holds sample spelling practices and Caught'ya grammar tests with answer keys. Assuming that many teachers may find the idea of creating their own funny story plot and outline a bit daunting, Jane includes six sample story ideas in chapter 5, two each for elementary, middle, and high school classes, tried and very successful in classrooms. These suggestions serve as a plot for you to flesh out through your daily Caught'ya sentences, each one offering a tidbit of the funny tale to anticipating students. If the task of writing your own sentences based on a given outline still sounds too hard, then you'll appreciate chapters 6-8, which each hold 100 daily Caught'ya sentences for your use until you are comfortable writing them yourself. Each of these chapters holds sentences for one of the sample stories from each grade level and gives you the passage written incorrectly and correctly, with the skills covered and vocabulary word. With her helpful, personal writing style, Jane Keister leaves you encouraged and fully prepared to "catch" your own giggling grammar students. ~ Steph