Category: Printables

Do you ever feel that you spend hours grading student essays for the same grammar mistakes to reappear on the very next paper?

As a voracious reader, I did well in any subject related to language arts. But I did not cement the rules of grammar in my mind until I took dual enrollment English composition, during which I opted to do “corrections” to reclaim points squandered on grammar errors. I was glad to discover that many of my university professors also allowed me to do corrections to earn back points (and, of course, strengthen my grammar skills), and I soon realized how much the reflection process helped with long-term retention.

Later, as an English teacher, I gave all writing assignments a mechanics grade alongside a content grade, and I allowed students to do corrections to earn back points on their mechanics grades. I had a number of students tell me that this practice was more helpful than any grammar activity we did.

In fact, my own homeschooled middle schooler–a precocious kid who actually enjoys reading grammar textbooks–does these corrections today and admits they help her more than standard grammar lessons.

HOW THE CORRECTION PROCESS WORKS

Corrections are simple independent (out-of-classroom) assignments in which students review their grammar errors, research and cite the applicable rules, and rewrite their sentences correctly. Just as with writing, the process is the point. This activity draws from the fact that we learn more from our missteps than from successes and that active reflection aids with retention.

WON’T CORRECTIONS DOUBLE MY GRADING LOAD? (SPOILER: NO)

Corrections are not hard or even tedious to grade. My dual enrollment professor required that we list the page numbers of cited rules from our textbook, but I have dropped this requirement. I check just two factors:

• Was the rule correctly cited?
• Was the error corrected?

If yes, the student earns back 50% (half) of the points lost on the original mechanics grade for the error. I don’t offer a ton of feedback on these, just a check if the correction is acceptable and a new score at the top. To be candid, I frequently graded these while on hallway duty!

To keep the workload manageable, I set two clear boundaries:

• No “corrections of corrections.” On occasion, a student introduces another grammatical error in the correction. Either the students succeeds on the first try or does not.
• Strict deadline. I don’t allow corrections to hang out in the ether for long; corrections are due within a week after the graded assignments are returned.

GRAB THE FREE STUDENT GROUND RULES PRINTABLE

If you’re interested in setting up your own system for corrections, I’ve included my own ground rules handout in the subscriber vault this week. You’ll need to be a subscriber to access it.

ANY QUESTIONS?

That’s all for today! If you have any questions, please let me know.

Never stop learning,
Erin

Happy Friday!  I’m finally back with another Filing Cabinet post. 

Today I’m lauding the use of KWL charts. As a homeschooling mom, I’ll admit that KWL (know-want-learn) charts aren’t my own kids’ favorite activities. But they are genuinely important both in homeschooling and classroom teaching for a few key reasons.

WHAT IS A KWL CHART?

A KWL chart is a simple organizer that aids students in previewing a topic before diving in and reflecting on their learning once finished. The acronym stands for know-want-learn:

• Know: What students already know about the topic
• Want: What students want to learn about the topic
• Learned: What students actually learned about the topic

Beyond being easy to implement, KWL charts offer a host of learning benefits.

KWL CHARTS ACTIVATE PRIOR KNOWLEDGE

Through the KNOW (K) section of KWL charts, students recall prior knowledge and teachers ascertain that prior knowledge as well. I didn’t understand until I graduated from law school–LAW SCHOOL!–how much content I memorized earlier in my academic career only to forget it after the test. Many of my teachers never continued building on the foundations that other teachers had constructed. Students who can’t find relevance to their pre-existing knowledge frequently memorize and forget rather than learn. When we don’t continue building on the foundation, students memorize and forget rather than truly learn.

As an educator, I appreciate seeing what prior knowledge students bring to the table because that information highlights what hasn’t quite taken hold. For example, as a young English teacher, I was shocked at how many high school students memorize a list of prepositions without understanding what prepositions actually are–or how many students rely on the “anything a rabbit can do to a log” fallacy. Seeing my students’ prior knowledge helps me know that I need to go backward and lay a stronger foundation or if they have already mastered the basics and we can move on to other more advanced topics! Either way, everyone wins.

KWL CHARTS ENCOURAGE STUDENTS TO OWN LEARNING

Through the WANT (W) section of KWL charts, students determine their own objectives for learning. Sometimes these objectives will mirror your own; sometimes they will not. Sometimes you uncover fascinating side paths you wouldn’t have thought to explore.

KWL CHARTS IMPROVE KNOWLEDGE RETENTION THROUGH REFLECTION

Through the LEARNED (L) section of KWL charts, students reflect on what they have actually learned in comparison with what they hoped to learn, helping them evaluate whether they need to revisit the material. They also tend to retain the knowledge through that deliberate reflection.

FREE RESOURCE: KWL CHART

To be honest, I didn’t use KWL charts when I first started teaching because I viewed them as some esoteric education trick that “real” classroom teachers don’t actually use. But over the years I learned that some method of previewing and reflecting is valuable to students. As a homeschooling parent, I designed my own minimalist KWL chart, and I am sharing it in my subscriber vault. Make sure you subscribe to the mailing list so that you have first access to printables like this one!

ANY QUESTIONS?

That’s all for today! I’ll have another printable for you next week. (It’s already in the queue.)

If you have any questions, please let me know.

Never stop learning,
Erin

ON THE ROAD AGAIN

I’m writing to you from the road tonight. This weekend I’m visiting a city with historical and literary significance, and I’ll post a bit about the trip another day.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT IS IMPORTANT

In the meantime, I wanted to post a bit about my own high school language arts experience. I was blessed to have a couple of excellent English teachers in high school. But I had a few teachers who did not discuss the historical context of the literature they taught. I didn’t understand until I was older what a huge failure that was. Anyone who teaches literature–public school teachers, homeschooling parents, Outschool teachers–should teach historical context.

Indulge me while I give you examples from my own high school years.

• My freshman language arts teacher assumed that her students were well-versed in the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror and did not review those before she taught A Tale of Two Cities.
• Similarly, my senior AP English teacher did not ask for a show of hands of students with even cursory knowledge about the exploitation and genocide of the Congolese people by King Leopold II before we read Heart of Darkness.

In both situations, we were advanced-level students, but our school employed coaches as history teachers, the Internet wasn’t yet widely available, and our school library was inferior. The end result: Very few of my classmates understood the full context of those two literary works. Let me be candid: I didn’t, and I was better educated than many of my peers.

In contrast, my two favorite English teachers did an excellent job prefacing novels and novellas:

• My sophomore English teacher set up The Pearl with not only historical context but also John Steinbeck’s personal history.
• My junior English teacher extensively covered the Puritans and their literature–and even Nathaniel Hawthorne’s family ties to the Salem Witch Trials–before we studied The Scarlet Letter.

Literature is a reaction to the world. Authors do not write in a vacuum; they respond to history, politics, and current events. The Grapes of Wrath cannot be fully understood without understanding Black Tuesday, the Depression, and the Dust Bowl.  Fully comprehending The Sun Also Rises requires some knowledge about World War I, the Spanish Civil War, and The Lost Generation.  Knowledge of the Civil War and the South post-war inform reading of just about anything by William Faulkner.

As teachers, we hammer into students that setting is the time and place a literary work occurs. But we sometimes forget that setting has another prong, social milieu, which includes complex information like economic conditions, social classes, and cultural norms. Our students need a prior understanding of history and social milieu to better understand what they are reading.

THIS WEEK’S PRINTABLE

This week I’m offering my subscribers a template that will allow students to map literature and its historical setting on a single page. Enter your e-mail in the box below to subscribe and receive a password to my vault, which holds this and other printables.

ANY QUESTIONS?

If you have any problems accessing this printable, send me a message. Otherwise, have a great weekend!

Never stop learning,
Erin

Happy Friday!  Today marks the beginning of my first Filing Cabinet post.  Every week, I’ll post language arts ideas, tips, and resources I used successfully in my classroom and in my own homeschooling.

BOGGLE IN THE CLASSROOM

When I taught high school juniors, we played board games after our weekly Friday test.  One of the games we loved most was Boggle.  Sometimes we played as a class; sometimes we played different games–Boggle but also Scrabble, Upwords, etc.–in groups.

Boggle is better than Scrabble or Upwords in a classroom because it is fast.  You can play a round in a few minutes and then assess who wins just as quickly.  Moreover, Boggle can be used as an incredible motivator if you award bonus points–for my classroom, on that day’s Friday test–to the student with the most words or to the student who forms the longest word or who finds a word that has been in your vocabulary unit or in one of the works of literature you’ve studied.  (I found calculating points this way a lot faster than typical points scoring.)  You can use a standard 4×4 Boggle board, but these days Amazon also offers larger boards of 5×5 (Big Boggle) and even 6×6 (Super Big Boggle).

I’m including affiliate links below under “Recommended Resources” if you are interested in buying one of these games.  (As an Amazon associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.  The commissions I receive from Amazon help me buy resources to develop this site further.)

A LESS EXPENSIVE OPTION

But if you are on a budget–who isn’t?–I have another solution.  (Also, this solution is better for “traveling” teachers who don’t have their own permanent classrooms.)

You can create your own Boggle boards.  I wouldn’t recommend using artificial intelligence to create your own; I’ve tried it, and the words almost never connect because the letters aren’t actually adjacent.  But you can find Boggle board generators on the Internet.  As a teacher, one time I printed Boggle boards on an overhead projector transparency for semi-permanent use (although we all know the ink still rubs off sooner than we’d like), and students would use scrap paper for their lists.  You could also display these without ink or paper in a PowerPoint or on a SMART Board.  These boards can be used with every class, every year.

Most of my students loved Boggle–provided we didn’t have one student who won all of the games, but I found that situation rare, particularly given the competitiveness of my students and especially where bonus points were involved.  Do you have seven minutes at the end of class?  Did your lesson not last as long as expected?  Boggle is a great filler.

LITERACY BENEFITS

By playing Boggle and modeling your own thought processes as you seek to find words yourself, you can guide your students to understand that looking for syllables and specifically roots, prefixes, and suffixes is key to winning Boggles games.  You can even make your own Boggle boards to focus on specific roots or affixes.

FREE RESOURCE: BOGGLE/WORD FINE BOARD

In fact, I start my vocabulary classes with a Boggle word find that focuses on the root PORT (which means “to carry”).  If you’re interested in a copy of this resource, you’ll need to join my newsletter.  Just enter your e-mail address at the link here.  (I promise not to spam you, and you can unsubscribe at any time.)  After you confirm your e-mail address, you should receive a password to my vault. The printable is posted in the vault and includes a permanent link to the solutions for this particular puzzle.  The printable also includes notes about suffixes you’ll want to highlight and other literacy tidbits–like forming plurals of nouns that end in the letter O and about the word origin of portare.

I expect to send sending more of these boards for other roots and affixes in the future.  Make sure you subscribe to the mailing list so that you have first access to these!

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES

As I promised, I’m including direct (affiliate) links if you’d like to buy an actual Boggle board for your home or classroom.  (And again, as an Amazon associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.)

Boggle

Big Boggle

Super Big Boggle

Boggle Vintage Bookshelf Edition

ANY QUESTIONS?

That’s it for today!  If you have any questions, please let me know.

Never stop learning,
Erin