Grammar with Tech

The TL Advisor Blog is always packed with useful information, like Ozge Karaoglu’s suggestions for great grammar tech tools.  Some of those recommended are the Grammar Ninja, Free Rice, Road to Grammar, and Grammaropolis. There’s also Noredink.com (No Red Ink) where you can create classroom materials featuring apostrophes, fragments, hyphens, subject-verb agreement, and all those confusing words such as its, it’s, accept, except, affect, effect, than, then, and loads more.

Fun With Language Arts

The Children's University of Manchester in the United Kingdom hosts a very nice language arts site for students and parents. On the site, you'll find an introduction to words, a world language map, jigsaw puzzles, and fun with nouns, adjectives, pairs, and much more. There's even a timeline of the English language. —And, if you don’t know what an EPONYM is, you should head to this very nice site, which also includes fun with history, science, and art and design.

StraightAce: English, Writing & Mathematics

StraightAce Learning, by Benesse, provides a review of mathematics, writing, and English (grammar and vocabulary) topics for Middle School level students and encourages students toward positive study habits. The programs can be used on computers and with mobile devices as long as there is Internet access. When using StraightAce, students are given “targeted” practice that is fun to use and supplementary to the regular curriculum. Teachers can track student progress as their students move through programs that feature hundreds of topics (105 in writing, 450 in math, and 105 in English) and thousands of assessment questions (1,050 in English, 4,500 in math, and 1,050 in writing).

Grammar Gorillas: Parts of Speech—Still Important

Practice in reading, speaking, and writing is essential for today’s students, but have we forgotten to include the rules of grammar and word use in Grades 1-5? Often, when I review Reading and Language Arts programs for software awards, I find great practice in reading and writing, but almost never in grammar.  Students who come from families who speak correct English, start steps ahead of others, but all students seem to profit from elementary school lessons targeting parts of speech and sentence structure.  If you are looking for digital material emphasizing grammar for young students, you might want to try searching for links at 19pencils.com and learni.st.com. Funbrain includes Grammar Gorillas games for beginners (nouns and verbs) and advanced students of grammar (all parts of speech). The Texas Computer Education Association provides an iPad list of grammar and vocabulary apps for all grade levels. A few other places you may want to look for grammar lessons for your students are Thinkonline, Softschools, Appfinder, Funeducationalapps, and LearnEnglish Grammar.

Don’t Forget Grammar Girl

When Grammar Girl’s podcast first came out, we looked to her to help us and our students with grammar. Maybe, we even have her book in our classrooms and offices. The good news is that Grammar Girl, Mignon Fogarty is still around reminding us about such grammar goodies as there’s a difference between i.e. and e.g., how to know when to use affect and effect, and that “different from” is preferred over “different than”. You’ll find her on iTunes, on Facebook, you can subscribe to her newsletter, you can order her audio books, and you can access her Quick and Dirty Tips online. Did you know that Grammar Girls says it’s okay to use sentence fragments on Twitter—if the meaning is clear.

Straight Ace English: Grammar & Vocabulary

Straight Ace English, designed to improve grades by making learning manageable, can be used on digital devices and computers. The program features 1500 questions, all coordinated with common core standards, which can be integrated into any school program. Because learning is divided into manageable chunks to help students progress easily, fifteen minutes a day is all that is needed with Straight Ace English. The program is part of Benesse America’s Straight Ace Learning for middle school students.

Mastering Language Arts Anywhere

Benesse America has launched StraightAce English: Grammar and Vocabulary, a language arts program for middle school students. According to Shigeki Matsuo, president of Benesse America, “Just 15 minutes a day studying with StraightAce is enough to show positive improvements in test scores, and encourages struggling students to succeed.” StraightAce, aligned with Common-Core standards, features 1500 questions complete with explanations that can be integrated into classroom courses.  This mobile tutor is also available for math.

Online Plagiarism Checker

WriteCheck, by Turnitin, is a great way to help your students avoid plagiarism. Using WriteCheck, student papers are scanned for plagiarism against over 200 million student papers, 90,000 publications, and over 20 billion Web pages. Once they submit a paper, they’ll usually get their results within five minutes, but not longer than ten to fifteen minutes. The results also include a check for grammar, style, and spelling errors.  Papers are returned in their original form, which allows students to better understand what changes need to be made.

Fees for the service run from $6.95 for a one paper credit (papers 5000 words or less); $24.95 for five paper credits, and $59.95 for twenty paper credits. With each paper credit comes three resubmissions per document.

Our Students Can’t Write

In the writing portion of the National Assessment of Education Progress, girls scored better than boys, as did those students whose teachers required them to use word processing and editing on computers for their assignments. BUT, the results were not glowing, because out of all of the eighth and twelfth graders who took these tests, only 27 percent scored at, or above, the proficient level. Even more disturbing was that at the twelfth grade level, only 9 percent of blacks and 12 percent of Latinos were at or above the proficient level.  Most students tested were unable to write “well-organized stories with strong details, precise word choices, and varied sentences.” The results suggest that there needs to be a focus on writing skills beyond the basics and that, with greater use of word processing, students will understand how this tech tool can help them improve their writing.

Teacher’s Assistant; Student Tutor—Writing

English teachers know that it’s not easy to include writing in their courses especially considering the many other facets of language arts they need to cover. Writing takes time to teach, time for edits, and time for rewrites—plus evaluation. Although students need practice in writing skills, many don’t get the guidance they need to become better writers. Prentice-Hall offers an online Writing Coach (Grades 6-12), which has the ability to help students with writing and teachers with the grading of student writing. Through practice in writing, students learn such skills as varying sentence patterns and length and putting correct grammar to use. I had a good time trying out my writing in the program because it was fun for me to see what this digital coach thought of my work. Of course, Prentice-Hall Writing Coach can’t replace teachers, but it could be a big help to teachers and give a writing boost to students.