Tips When Grading Assignments to Help Your Students Achieve Success

If you are using one of my Simple Steps to Sentence Sense ebooks to teach grammar and usage, I hope you have discovered that students can succeed, make good grades, and even enjoy learning. 

What a wonderful feeling it is to give students frequent chances to succeed and feel good about themselves!

The way to achieve this is really simple, no matter what concept you're teaching. If you are using my books, break each lesson into several components when grading students’ group and individual practice exercises. (I always let my students trade and grade except on tests.) 

For example, when you do Step 3: Finding the Subject, don’t just check for the subjects that students find in each sentence. That would only give students 20 answers at 5 points apiece and make it easy for them to get a low score. 

Instead, count the prepositional phrase(s) in each sentence as one point, the verb phrase as one point, and the subject as one point. Voila! Now, there are over 60 answers, and students can miss several and still get a decent score. 

Of course, these tips work with any assignment you give your students, whether or not it comes from one of my books. 

For each step, you can decide which parts of the sentence are the key parts. For example, when working on Step 4: Finding the Complements, the key is deciding if the verb is action or linking before looking for the complement. When grading each paper, be sure to count the verb and whether it is an action or a linking verb, along with the complement as key elements in the score. 

Use the answer pages in the back of the book to count the number of elements you plan to score in each lesson. Make your directions clear about which parts of the sentence students are to mark when scoring papers. This is another opportunity for the teacher to re-teach and emphasize that sentence analysis must be done in steps and that the steps must be done in order. Skipping a step is a recipe for confusion and disaster. 

This method could become a bit too much of a hassle if the teacher has to do the math each time papers are graded and figure out the correct score for papers with 63 answers or 71 answers, etc. It could, but it won’t if you download my Grading Scale Chart. 

You can print the chart on both sides of a sheet of paper, slip it into a plastic folder sleeve, and take it with you anywhere. You can even give your students a copy if you so desire. 

Simple Steps to Sentence Sense is an easy and enjoyable way to teach grammar. You will find the books HERE. You know you are successful when you hear students say, “This is fun.” Grammar? Fun? Well, all right! 

Please tell your friends and colleagues about my book. Simple Steps to Sentence Sense is also a useful tool for foreign language teachers, and it is helpful for special education and ESL students.

Visit my store for more helpful resources.

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Make an Old Story New Again

Some say there are only three types of plots:

The happy ending, the unhappy ending, and the classical Greek tragic ending in which events are controlled by fate.

There are many variations on these three plots, of course, and plots are always controlled by the conflict between the characters. 

Remember the conflicts taught in high school literature classes?

• character vs character
• character vs nature
• character vs the environment
• character vs machine
• character vs the supernatural
• character vs self
• character vs religion

The point? It is not necessary to reinvent the wheel. Coming up with a new plot that has never been written is improbable. So, take a cue from many modern writers and rework a plot from a story you've read or a movie you've seen.

There are many examples of revised plots. For example, Romeo and Juliet was adapted as the musical, West Side Story, and the typical spaghetti western novel was transformed into Star Wars. The same classic plots, but oh so different in every other way.

So, if you have trouble coming up with an idea, just work with a classic plot and start changing all the other elements to make it your own story.

• Change the setting.

• Change the point-of-view. Tell the story through the mind of a different character than in the original story. 

• Choose a classic plot and bring it into the modern age. Choose a fairy tale, an epic poem, a classic novel, a Bible story, or a myth. 

• Keep the conflict from a novel or play or movie and change everything else. (Change characters, point-of-view, plot, setting, etc.)
• Change the protagonist from male to female or child to adult.

In my creative writing classes, I had my students watch both True Grit and Shane. Then they had to outline two original stories using the same plots as the movies but the settings would be in the present day. They had to invent their own characters and settings, but the basic plot and the themes were to remain the same as in the movies they saw. My students wrote some great stories and told me they loved doing the assignment.

Remember, if you base your writing on a plot and then make it your own by using your own words, you will not be plagiarizing. An idea cannot be copyrighted.

So, don't take too much time reinventing the wheel. Just think of books and movies that you really enjoyed. If you liked the plot or the theme, use it, but change all the other elements.

You will find many creative writing ideas and resources in my TpT store. Take a look. You will save 20% if you purchase the resources in a bundle. 

Thanks for reading,

Charlene

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Use Active Verbs When Writing Sentences

Here's a sample page from Simple Steps to Sentence Sense for Middle School. After students have completed the eight simple steps in the book, they have an opportunity to use their knowledge in a series of writing activities. This activity is on using active verbs when writing sentences.

For more lessons and all of my Simple Steps to Sentence Sense eBooks, visit my store.

Thanks for reading,

TpT Cyber Monday and Tuesday Sale

TpT Cyber Monday and Tuesday Sale Starts Tomorrow!

All of my materials will be on sale for 20% off. 

Use the code CYBER at checkout and you will save 28%.

All the best,