| Adjectives
- Counting and Teaching of
I would not expect students to
identify predicate adjectives (or post-positioned adjectives) until those
specific constructions are studied. In this section, therefore, they are
left unexplained and uncounted.
Apostrophes
for Contractions of Verbs
Having suggested, in the discussion
of Possessive Nouns, that the
apostrophe in them might be taught to second graders, I would here suggest
that the apostrophe in contractions of verbs should not be formally taught
before fourth grade -- when, in the KISS Approach, students would begin
to study S/V/C patterns. When an apostrophe is used incorrectly in the
writing of second or third graders, I would correct it, but not explain
it unless a student asked for an explanation. In that case, I would say
something such as "'It's' means 'it is, so we put in an apostrophe to stand
for the letters that have been left out."
Of course, when they get to
fourth grade, the situation changes -- the students, in identifying S/V/C
patterns, will have to learn to identify the subjects and verbs in such
contractions.
Possessive
Nouns
In W4N01, the student referred
to "my mom and dads room." The phrase, of course, should be "my mom and
dad's room" (or "my mom's and dad's room"). As I write this (12/27/99),
I'm wondering if second graders could be usefully taught to identify
nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, -- and possessive nouns. I would not
expect second graders to master these concepts, but some formal instruction
and simple exercises could provide a useful background for correcting apostrophe
errors from second grade on.
Possessive nouns function as
adjectives, but they themselves are modified by adjectives. This is the
same principle that we see in verbals,
which are modified by adverbs but which may function as nouns. In "Eating
fast is not good for your health." "fast" is an adverb modifying "eating,"
a gerund which functions as the subject of "is."
Subjects and Verbs
I don't see any reason for teaching
third grade students to identify subjects and verbs. When, in writing,
students make a mistake, teachers can simply note it with a checkmark or
orally help the student fix it. For example, in W4N01, the student wrote:
"I'll tell you about my brothers room. It is cream color walls, and brown
carpet." Orally, I would ask the student, "It IS cream colored walls?"
If the student did not catch the clue in my emphasis, I would go on to
ask, "It is?" or "It has?" I would treat errors in agreement the same way.
The same student wrote, "My mom and dads room have cream walls and green
carpet." Note that the error is probably caused by interference from "mom
and dads" -- both the combined plurality and the problem of the apostrophe.
So I would simply ask, "The room HAVE cream walls?"
Once they
are in fourth grade and have begun to study S/V/C patterns, the teacher's
approach should change. In the "It is cream color walls" example, I would
ask the student to identify the S/V/C pattern. If the student had trouble,
I would ask for the verb, then the subject, and then the complement --
and its type. In the process of giving me these, the student might well
see and fix the error, but if he did not, I would then ask if the room
equals the cream colored walls. Once the student sees that it does not,
I would ask the student how he might say what he meant. The odds are that
this would lead to his replacing "is" with "has."
In the "My mom
and dads room have cream walls and green carpet" example, I would again
begin by asking the student to identify the S/V/C pattern, if necessary
helping by asking for the verb first. Once they see the pattern, most students
correct subject-verb agreement errors such as this all on their own. If
the student did not, I would ask, "The room HAVE?" [We need to remember
that all children have, all on their own, mastered the basics of subject-verb
agreement before they get to school. They have, in other words, basic competence.
Their performance errors usually result from some type of interference
(such as that noted above). The KISS approach enables students to break
sentences down, thereby eliminating much of the interference.]
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