Language FUNdamentals Book 1

E I Challenging and Enjoyable Lessons in English Usage by R.E. Myers illustrated by Bron Smith Teaching & Learning Company ii TLC10450 Copyright © Teaching & Learning Company, Carthage, IL 62321-0010 Cover design by Sara King Illustration on page 56 by Ernie Hager. Used with permission. Copyright © 2005, Teaching & Learning Company ISBN No. 1-57310-450-7 Printing No. 987654321 Teaching & Learning Company 1204 Buchanan St., P.O. Box 10 Carthage, IL 62321-0010 The purchase of this book entitles teachers to make copies for use in their individual classrooms only. This book, or any part of it, may not be reproduced in any form for any other purposes without prior written permission from the Teaching & Learning Company. It is strictly prohibited to reproduce any part of this book for an entire school or school dis- trict, or for commercial resale. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. This book belongs to ____________________________________________________________ This book is dedicated to David Kwiat with sincere appreciation and admiration. 978-1-4291-1285-7 Teaching & Learning Company Dayton, OH 45401-0802 www.LorenzEducationalPress.com TLC10450 Copyright © Teaching & Learning Company, Carthage, IL 62321-0010 iii Table of Contents Progressions Sequencing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 A Trip to Remember Sequencing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Moths Fly at Night Mostly Sequencing . . . . . . . . 10 Unscramble the Letters Following Directions . . . . . . . 11 Unscramble More Letters Following Directions . . . . . 13 Susan Capitals, Punctuation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Paddy Punctuation, Vocabulary Building . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Sounds and Syllables Alliteration, Syllabication . . . . . . 16 Maria s Problem Homonyms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 In Contrast Antonyms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Bankers Aren t So Dumb Similes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 It s a Pleasedness to Do Business with You Suffixes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Nouns Name Nouns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Fitting Partners Proper Nouns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Dynamic Verbs Verbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Motoring with Nervous Nellie Verbs: Gerunds . . 29 Phrases with Prepositions Prepositional Phrases, Nouns, Sentences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Agreeable and Disagreeable Verbs Agreement . . . 32 The Word Game Rhyme, Synonyms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Ice and Fog Spelling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Mindy s Annual Checkup Spelling . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 A Lot of Alliteration Alliteration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Either Way Palindromes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Occupational Names Word Play . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Natural Riddles Riddles, Puns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Tons of Soil Spoonerisms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 Shuffled Syntax Predicates, Subjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 Sentence Sense Sentences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 More Sentence Sense Sentences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 Impressions Vocabulary Building . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 Categories Categories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 Im Thinking . . . Vocabulary Building, Abstracting . . . . 59 Magic Squares Vocabulary Building, Word Usage . . . . . 60 What Do They Have in Common? Abstracting . . . 61 Brieflies Adverbs, Puns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 Buzz, Swish and Slurp Onomatopoeia . . . . . . . . . . . 64 Statements to Ponder Ambiguity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 Ready by Five Proofreading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 Tito s License Game Subjects, Predicates, Paragraphs . . 70 Practice Makes Perfect Proofreading, Self-Evaluation . . 73 Mixed-Up Maxims Maxims, Subjects, Predicates . . . . . 74 The Sow s Plow Quatrain, Rhyme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 Time Lines Titles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 The Game of Naming Naming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 Answer Key. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 iv TLC10450 Copyright © Teaching & Learning Company, Carthage, IL 62321-0010 Dear Teacher or Parent, This book is a collection of activities that combine the elements of grammar, syntax and sentence structure instruction in a palatable way, by adding humor and whimsy. Students are encouraged to use their own ideas and language as they learn through old-fashioned language instruction and creative thinking. E. Paul Torrance has offered some excellent advice to teachers who want to motivate their students to learn. In effect, he tells them to set the stage in order to get them ready to think and to act. To prepare your students for a meaningful learning experience, Torrance advises you “heighten anticipation.” This state of the pedagogical process has also been called the “warm-up.” The following expressions he uses to describe this process are highly suggestive: Create the desire to know. Heighten anticipation and expectation. Get attention. Arouse curiosity. Tickle the imagination. Give purpose and motivation. As he points out, you need to have your students’ attention. Without that, the “warming up” will be ineffectual. Capture the attention of your students. You are probably an expert in several ways. (We don’t advise you to go at it in a high-handed fashion, however. The mood for any of these units would therefore be destroyed.) After you have their attention, heighten anticipation with some introductory remarks. Tease students with an item from one of the activities. For example, you might allude to the way headline writers regularly use puns in the sports pages. Ask students to react to a headline such as “Oilers’ defense too slick for Jets in clutch” (as in the “Twisters” activi- ty). Or read a pun in a newspaper. Leading into a unit this way will get your students in the mood for it. To arouse their curiosity and get them in the mood to think whimsically, present a verbal statement such as: “The girl was heaply dirt by the insult.” Ask them what the statement means. This is the kind of “spoonerism” they will deal with in “Tons of Soil” (page 48). Your students may do a mental double-take at such mixed up language, but it will “tickle the imagination.” You will probably have your own ideas about how to introduce the lessons after looking them over. You’ll want to modify and improve the lessons to make sure they suit your students. Sincerely, R.E. Myers TLC10450 Copyright © Teaching & Learning Company, Carthage, IL 62321-0010 5 Victor Borge proved that punctuation can be funny when made audible. This book is an attempt to consider grammar, capitals and sentence fragments in a similarly humorous way. Teaching basic language skills in a way that involves your students thinking abilities as well as their funny bones will help them remember important facts. The intent of these activities is to cause students to ponder, evaluate, imagine, reconsider and inquire. Critical and cre- ative thinking skills as well as the application of rules are also required. Since an author of educational materials has no way of knowing exactly who the targets of his or her ideas will be, the teacher should alter, delete or supplement any of the ideas in this book in order to fit the needs of the students in the class. Introduction 6 TLC10450 Copyright © Teaching & Learning Company, Carthage, IL 62321-0010 Name_____________________________________ Progressions Sequencing Activity 1 If you were asked to put these words in a logical order woman baby girl, you would probably quickly arrange them this way: baby girl woman. That would be putting the words in a kind of chronological order with the youngest first and the oldest last. There are other ways to order things logically. For example, animals can be ordered by size, speed, intelligence and by many other ways. Arrange each set of three words in a logical order. 1. lunch, breakfast, dinner ________________________ ________________________ ________________________ 2. dollar, penny, quarter ________________________ ________________________ ________________________ 3. strolling, dancing, racing ________________________ ________________________ ________________________ 4. tortoise, porpoise, sparrow ________________________ ________________________ ________________________ TLC10450 Copyright © Teaching & Learning Company, Carthage, IL 62321-0010 7 5. breeze, tornado, gale __________________________ __________________________ __________________________ 6. copying, scribbling, composing __________________________ __________________________ __________________________ 7. yelling, whispering, speaking __________________________ __________________________ __________________________ 8. daydreaming, inventing, sleeping __________________________ __________________________ __________________________ 9. quatrain, couplet, triplet __________________________ __________________________ __________________________ 10. letter, e-mail message, telegram __________________________ __________________________ __________________________ 11. paragraph, sentence, story __________________________ __________________________ __________________________ 12. stranger, acquaintance, friend __________________________ __________________________ __________________________ Name_____________________________________ 8 TLC10450 Copyright © Teaching & Learning Company, Carthage, IL 62321-0010 A Trip to Remember Sequencing Activity 2 We left our home in the Marina District of San Francisco on Monday. Our family Dad 36, Mom 32, me 11, Lisa 7 and Brad 5 had gotten up at 5:30 because Mom wanted to get an early start on our trip to Chicago. That was the first mistake, but there were lots more. Maybe I should say that going to Chicago was our first mistake. Somehow I don t really know why Dad forgot to fill up the gas tank of our old Ford station wagon, and we ran out of gas just two miles after we d passed the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge toll plaza on the Oakland side. He had to walk nine blocks and then wait 20 minutes until a service station opened up. It was 7:30 when we ran out of gas. Remember we got up real early! As luck would have it, after Dad got the gas and began walking back to the car, it started to rain hard. That made him almost as mad as when we were in a motel in Omaha and the handle came off the hot water faucet in the shower and he scalded his hand. That experience must have made him decide we could make it all the way to Chicago the next day. We should have been prepared for motel problems because the night before, in Cheyenne, the desk clerk said they didn t have any reservation for our family. There was a convention in town, and there wasn t a room to be had in any motel or hotel. We slept in the car. Uncomfortably, I might add. It was lucky we had a good motel room in Reno after running out of gas in Oakland because I think Mom would have made Dad turn around and go home if it had been a bad one. She didn t want to go to see the Chicago Cubs play anyway. We had some excitement in Wyoming. Before we got to Laramie, Brad spotted some wild burros in a field near the road. He talked Dad into let- ting him out of the car to see them better, The teacher asked the class to write a What I Did During Summer Vacation composition. Tawnee Barkas wrote the following narrative: Our Trip to Chicago Name_____________________________________ TLC10450 Copyright © Teaching & Learning Company, Carthage, IL 62321-0010 9 but when one of the burros came right up to him he dropped his peanut butter and jelly sandwich and ran back to the car, yelling like crazy. I guess the burro was interested in his sandwich. Both of the little kids were problems that day. A few hours before, we had to stop for gas at Rock Springs and Lisa left her little purse with two dimes and a comb in it in the restroom. Dad refused to go back for it when Lisa dis- covered she had left it at the service sta- tion. She didn t stop crying until Brad spot- ted the burros. Getting out of the car on the highway did not seem to work out for us, I guess. Before we got to Salt Lake City and a place to sleep as good as the motel in Reno we hoped, Dad thought it would be nice to have a pic- nic by the side of the road. By chance, Brad found a wristwatch with a broken band in the dirt. Mom insisted we take it to the police at the nearest town, which took us 12 miles out of the way. The police there checked it out and said it wasn t working and was a cheap watch you could get at Wal-Mart for $9.99 anyway. Dad insisted that they take it since we had wasted a lot of time trying to do the right thing. When we finally got into Chicago on Friday and located Wrigley Field, Dad found out that the Cubs were in Boston on a five-day road trip. When he told Mom, she turned purple. Dad was a nice shade of red. I don t want to write about the trip back. It was much worse. QQuueessttiioonnss 1. Make a list of the places Tawnee said her family stopped on their trip. Put them in the order in which they occurred. After you have completed your list, check a map to see if you have the places in the correct order. 2. Though Tawnee wrote mostly about the members of her family, you can get an idea of what she is like from reading her account of the trip. How would you describe her personality? Draw a pic- ture of Tawnee on the trip, or tell how you think she might have looked. Name_____________________________________ [...]... 15 pacify 6 pitch 16 explode 7 sail 17 enchant 8 argue 18 scribble 9 abhor 19 diverge 10 participate 22 11 hinder 20 appoint TLC10450 Copyright © Teaching & Learning Company, Carthage, IL 623 21- 0 010 Name _ Activity 13 uns... 9 insane throng 10 stumpy body 11 soaked ladies 12 lovely bouquet 13 lively Franklin 16 TLC10450 Copyright © Teaching & Learning Company, Carthage, IL 623 21- 0 010 Name _ Activity 9 roblem aria’s P M Homony... 10 party 11 shack 12 muddle TLC10450 Copyright © Teaching & Learning Company, Carthage, IL 623 21- 0 010 31 Name _ Activity 18 reeable Ag Verbs... of dancing in particular 9 18 I wish I had a good enemy like that, one who gives me treats, said little Justin TLC10450 Copyright © Teaching & Learning Company, Carthage, IL 623 21- 0 010 Name _ 10 After he had banged his gavel on the table several times, Mr Nutter announced his intention to end the meeting and get down to business in spite of the noise 11 12 Jeff came right up to the... TLC10450 Copyright © Teaching & Learning Company, Carthage, IL 623 21- 0 010 25 Name _ 8 Robert Smoke and Judy Mirrors 9 Mary Waite and Aurelia Service 10 William Neal, Barbara Crouch and Ho Bang 11 E.J Groom and William Dryer 12 Grace Yank and Bruce Pullman 13 David... ing ure TLC10450 Copyright © Teaching & Learning Company, Carthage, IL 623 21- 0 010 21 Name _ Turn the following verbs into nouns by adding suffixes to them You may need to delete or add some letters verb + suffix = noun verb + suffix = noun 1 teach 2 punish 12 advise 3 eat 13 steal 4 locate 14 employ ... that winter 10 You has / have 11 It been teammates for over five years were / was a hundred of them in the woods, chirping away was / were always been my hero, mumbled the little boy one of the proudest moments of his life 12 That was one task we 32 relatively rare was / were happy to perform TLC10450 Copyright © Teaching & Learning Company, Carthage, IL 623 21- 0 010 Name _ 13 The criteria... TLC10450 Copyright © Teaching & Learning Company, Carthage, IL 623 21- 0 010 11 Name _ Make up your own game like the two on page 11 Give five or six directions for filling in the lines When someone has followed your directions correctly, the letters above the lines should spell a familiar word 1 2 ... TLC10450 Copyright © Teaching & Learning Company, Carthage, IL 623 21- 0 010 19 Name _ Activity 11 ’t So Dumb ankers Aren B Similes A simile is a figure of speech that uses like or as to make a comparison Her face was as white as a sheet He fought... 34 TLC10450 Copyright © Teaching & Learning Company, Carthage, IL 623 21- 0 010 Name _ 8 tardy spouse 9 tidy Peter 10 lean epidermis 11 bashful boy 12 negligible altercation Try coming up with a series of . Learning Company ISBN No. 1- 57 310 -450-7 Printing No. 9876543 21 Teaching & Learning Company 12 04 Buchanan St., P.O. Box 10 Carthage, IL 623 21- 0 010 The purchase of this book entitles teachers. to ____________________________________________________________ This book is dedicated to David Kwiat with sincere appreciation and admiration. 978 -1- 42 91- 1285-7 Teaching & Learning Company Dayton, OH 454 01- 0802 www.LorenzEducationalPress.com TLC10450. ____ Name_____________________________________ 12 TLC10450 Copyright © Teaching & Learning Company, Carthage, IL 623 21- 0 010 Make up your own game like the two on page 11 . Give five or six directions for