A Sentence-Composing Approach--A Student Worktext
For a long time now, the renowned sentence-composing approach pioneered by Don and Jenny Killgallon has been touching and changing the way in which writing is being taught in a myriad language arts classrooms. They have helped students from all over America in acquiring a deepened proficiency and sophistication in their writing. Finally, the Killgallons have compiled this highly effective method into a compelling textbook, one that truly fleshes out good writing in terms of its ever-so-unpleasant to teach cousin, grammar.
Grammar for Middle School: A Sentence-Composing Approach offers your class the opportunity to experience and emulate grammatical structures employed by the best writers of our times. There are over 150 featured authors, who have written in excess of 200 titles appearing over 400 model sentences in Grammar for Middle School. These authors include award-winning young-adult literature, such as Cynthia Voigt's Homecoming, popular favorites like J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter, and curricular staples such as John Steinbeck's The Red Pony and The Pearl.
Fourteen grammatical structures are played out in familiar, repeating, recognizable patterns, making use of the sentence-composing approach. Tools are promptly and unambiguously defined as well as characterized upon introduction to the student. Five activities then reassert the acquired tool immediately thereafter: matching, unscrambling, combining, imitating, and expanding. Afterwards, creative writing plunges the student into the field of writing, whether composing or revising a paragraph, by making independet use of the sentence-composing tools they have learned thus far. Conveniently, review activities finish off each section, and are ideally suited for practicing all skills together at once, as well as for grading as partial or final tests.
There is also an online teacher's guide that accompanies Grammar for Middle School--it includes advice, tips, resources, answer keys, even curricular plans for new teachers to the Killgallon approach as well as sentence-composing veterans.
Time and again it's been said that grammar and writing are paired together in education by Don and Jenny Killgallon in a manner unseen elsewhere. You too can try for yourself or rediscover how sincerely powerful the sentence-composing approach can be, and simply observe your students grasp grammar like never before--while writing better sentences too.
