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Teach Reading And Writing English in Elementary School.

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Plato warned that reading would be the downfall of the Oral Tradition and memory.

It don't mean a thing if you ain't got that swing . . .
~ Duke Ellington

"Make everything as simple as possible,
but no simpler".
~ Albert Einstein

 

Three Stooges Swinging the Alphabet Song.

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CHILDRENS LITERATURE: THE ORAL TRADITION

cur

Teach Nursery rhymes origins and history.
Listen to Curly from the Three Stooges do a better version of the Swinging the Alphabet Song.

It is recommended that you establish the connection and importance between the following:

LITERATURE

LITERATURE ONLINE READING RESOURCES - FOR THE CLASSROOM OR AT HOME

LITERATURE
Here are some of the very best resources for both traditional Language Arts and modern communications sites and applications on the web. You will find that they are in a separate class all by themselves and can enrich and even transform your curriculum

The top 20 titles that created readers were:
(1) Nancy Drew by Carolyn Keene
(2) Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss
(3) Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
(4) Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
(5) The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss

TOOLS

 

 

Readability - Quick Assessment Resources

Reading Research
New language circuit discovered in humans' points out that between 5-7 years of age is when people develop reading and writing skills.

What I Can Do to Comprehend During Reading
Reading Chart for your Classroom

  1. Visualize concepts & situations
  2. Summarize the main events or important ideas
  3. Clarify confusing words, terms, & sentences, sometimes with an outside reference
  4. Question the author & myself, when summarizing & clarifying
  5. Connect the text with your own experiences, or other reading
  6. Predict what will be covered next

TIP Database The Theory Into Practice Database
TIP is a tool intended to make learning and instructional theory more accessible to educators. The database contains brief summaries of 50 major theories of learning and instruction. These theories can also be accessed by learning domains and concepts.

WRITING -
KIDS NEED TO TUNE UP

 

 

Jack Lynch: Guide to Grammar and Style
The English Language: A User's Guide
A much-revised and expanded version of this on-line guide, with hundreds of added examples.

--
"Well, I can't take on all of our hurried society at once, but in the handwriting realm, at least, I'm going to have my say. Because most research and the specialists I've talked to agree that children are generally ready to be introduced to writing -- and have the necessary motor and visual skills -- sometime during kindergarten. In fact, not even every kindergartner is prepared to write, say the experts, all of whom advocate waiting until a student is ready and receptive. "It's easier to learn something when everything is in place," says Newman, who is a perceptual motor therapist, runs movement classes for children and thinks kids need to exercise and move to develop good pre-writing skills. Yet many preschools persist in teaching children to write, and even evaluating that writing, before the students have the skills they need. [...Remember the progression when we were in elementary school? Printing in kindergarten and/or first grade. Cursive in third. Penmanship grades. Most assignments in elementary school were handwritten. Typing didn't come until sometime in middle or high school. Compare that with today's curriculum. Handwriting in preschool, probably in reaction to the tougher kindergarten curriculum. Then, in second grade, sometimes before they have the basics of handwriting down, children are often introduced to typing. Cursive still comes around third grade, but nowadays it's often a rushed program, with some people arguing that one script should suffice, especially since most kids are going to wind up on computers. And forget penmanship; kids are lucky if they are taught to sit properly and form their letters efficiently. In fact, according to the experts, not only do most teachers have no training in handwriting instruction, they don't have the time to teach it thoroughly."
Source http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48366-2002Aug6.html

Write in the Middle a workshop for middle school teachers who teach writing, complete with audio files and Best Practices in Teaching Writing.

Writing Tips:
I was once taught that the first sentence of every paragraph should contain the main idea of the paragraph. Then the following sentences should give info about that topic and the last sentence should be the summary of the main idea.
Write about issues you really, really care about like things that frustrate or make you mad. Try to use the simplest-possible language, write like you talk and use personal experience to the maximum. Listen to yourself read it aloud for how it sounds - is it your voice? Is this what you mean to say? Reread and rewrite until it just "sounds right," which seems to have something to do with rhythm and other stuff. Start reading two or three paragraphs before to get a "running start to that will help you shape the next sentence.
Find a way to hook a big idea to something real and immediate and write about whatever is personal to you about that subject. Your life experience - the more the better. My favorite book is Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. (If you haven't read the book and he seems to be talking about himself as someone else, that "someone else" is him before he had some sort of mental breakdown.) There's a really good description by Pirsig the main character about how he helped a student get around writer's block.The discussion of "quality writing" starts around page 190 depending on which book you have.

Star Teaching / Writing lays out the writing process and also includes K-12 Rubrics and paragraph organizer.

The easiest way to improve writing scores is to use the Fry Formula. The
students must write at grade level. It only takes a few minutes to show the students how to use this formula. Next, you spend an extraordinary amount of time on making sure that the opening sentences don't start with the, a, and, I or any other simple word. They must start with the most important part of the topic sentence by using a phrase. Fry Graph for estimating reading ages (grade level) avg. number of sentences per 100 words. If this is of interest just email me for additional details. ~ Al Haskvitz

Directions for Use of the Fry Readability Graph

Listen to Writer William Bourroughs leads a class. "Language is a virus from outer space." and  "Paranoia is just knowing all the facts." ~ Willam S Burroughs, Jr.

Essay Writing sites

English Rules of Thum (sic)

  1. Don't use no double negatives.
  2. Make each pronoun agree with their antecedents.
  3. Join clauses good, like a conjunction should.
  4. About them sentence fragments.
  5. When dangling, watch your participles.
  6. Verbs has got to agree with their subjects.
  7. Just between you and i, case is important.
  8. Don't write run-on sentences when they are hard to read.
  9. Don't use commas, which aren't necessary.
  10. Try to not ever split infinitives.
  11. It is important to use your apostrophe's correctly.
  12. Proofread your writing to see if you any words out.
  13. Correct speling is essential.
  14. A preposition is something you never end a sentence up with.
  15. While a transcendant vocabulary is laudable, one must be eternally careful so that the calculated objective of communication does not become ensconsed in obscurity.
  16. Eschew obfuscation.

Plain Language Humor: How to Write Good
http://www.plainlanguage.gov/examples/humor/writegood.cfm
We don't know where this came from, but some is derived from William Safire's Rules for Writers.

1. Always avoid alliteration.
2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
3. Avoid cliches like the plague--they're old hat.
4. Employ the vernacular.
5. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
6. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.
7. Parenthetical words however must be enclosed in commas.
8. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
9. Contractions aren't necessary.
10. Do not use a foreign word when there is an adequate English quid pro quo.
11. One should never generalize.
12. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."
13. Comparisons are as bad as cliches.
14. Don't be redundant; don't use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous.
15. It behooves you to avoid archaic expressions.
16. Avoid archaeic spellings too.
17. Understatement is always best.
18. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
19. One-word sentences? Eliminate. Always!
20. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
21. The passive voice should not be used.
22. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
23. Don't repeat yourself, or say again what you have said before.
24. Who needs rhetorical questions?
25. Don't use commas, that, are not, necessary.
26. Do not use hyperbole; not one in a million can do it effectively.
27. Never use a big word when a diminutive alternative would suffice.
28. Subject and verb always has to agree.
29. Be more or less specific.
30. Placing a comma between subject and predicate, is not correct.
31. Use youre spell chekker to avoid mispeling and to catch typograhpical errers.
32. Don't repeat yourself, or say again what you have said before.
33. Don't be redundant.
34. Use the apostrophe in it's proper place and omit it when its not needed.
35. Don't never use no double negatives.
36. Poofread carefully to see if you any words out.
37. Hopefully, you will use words correctly, irregardless of how others use them.
38. Eschew obfuscation.
39. No sentence fragments.
40. Don't indulge in sesquipedalian lexicological constructions.
41. A writer must not shift your point of view.
42. Don't overuse exclamation marks!!
43. Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 or more words, to their antecedents.
44. Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided.
45. If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.
46. Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
47. Everyone should be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their writing.
48. Always pick on the correct idiom.
49. The adverb always follows the verb.
50. Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing metaphors.
51. If you reread your work, you can find on rereading a great deal
of repetition can be by rereading and editing.
52. And always be sure to finish what

Pronunciation in the English language
The author, Prof. H. L. Chace was a professor of French and wrote these in 1940 to to demonstrate that intonation of spoken English is almost as important to the meaning as the words themselves. He is the originator of ANGUISH LANGUISH, for you, your friends, and your family to half pun wit. Example: Fairy Tales Little Red Riding Hood becomes this title Furry Tells Ladle Rat Rotten Hut.


Welcome to the The Little, Brown Compact Handbook and The Little, Brown Compact Handbook with Exercises by Jane E. Aaron. Students can find material to enrich their learning experience, including video tutorials, exercises, downloads from the textbook, and links to additional resources on the Web. Instructors can make use of all of the resources for students as well as find other teaching-oriented materials.
About the Book - The Writing Process - Writing In and Out of College - Sentences - Punctuation, Spelling, and Mechanics - Research Writing - Documenting in the Disciplines - Usage Flashcards - Instructor Resources

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