This page is intended to help high school English teachers (especially Pre-AP and AP Lang) and homeschooling parents who are trying to wrap their minds around how to teach rhetoric and rhetorical analysis.
General Curriculum Resources
This page lists resources I think will help teachers and homeschooling parents wrap their minds around learning expectations.
Grammar Series: Artistic Fragments
Have a bonus video – artistic fragments! I really intended for the sentence types video to be the last in this series for a while, but when the section on sentence fragments took on a life of its own, I decided to make a separate video. I hope you like my celebration of breaking the … Read more
Grammar Series: Sentence Types
Check out my new video on the four main sentence types: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4-C38hxF2o In this video, I go over simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex sentences, including examples from literature. Students have a chance to pause the video, identify the various clauses and how they’re joined, and hit play again to check their answers. Don’t miss the … Read more
Grammar Series: Clause Types
Last time we learned about the parts of a clause; here are the clause TYPES: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJUy9lvZiEo LINKS Independent and dependent clauses, with practice (The Tongue Untied): http://www.grammaruntied.com/blog/?cat=49 Clauses: The Essential Building-Blocks (Capital Community College): http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/clauses.htm Types of clauses (LearningNerd): http://learningnerd.com/2006/09/08/english-grammar-types-of-clauses/ Complex sentences (Adrienne Mitchell): http://media.lanecc.edu/users/mitchella/WR080_online/softchalk_practices/complex_sentences/ Relative clauses (RMIT University): https://www.dlsweb.rmit.edu.au/lsu/content/4_WritingSkills/writing_tuts/sentences_LL/relative.html Relative clauses, including info on … Read more
Grammar Series: Clauses
Next up in the grammar series: parts of a clause! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4PZ-_0i7uA In this video, we go over subjects and predicates and practice identifying the parts of clauses that include a variety of features, including direct and indirect objects, adverbials, participial phrases, and complements (though we didn’t have time to talk much about complements – … Read more
Grammar Series: Phrases
Next up in the grammar series: phrases! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFU3BlueJ60 You might notice that I didn’t cover participial phrases (sometimes a.k.a. participle phrases) in this video. I thought about it, but a) it would have made this video a lot longer, and b) I’ll cover them when I talk about dangling participles in the editing series (coming soon!) If … Read more
Grammar Series: Conjunctions
Parts of speech are now complete! Check out CONJUNCTIONS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ag2fScTTuGk That’s not all for this series, however — coming next are phrases, clauses, and sentence types. And then, of course, we’ll look at other grammar topics, including common editing errors. FREE DOWNLOAD – PRACTICE Here are the excerpts used for practice near the end … Read more
Grammar Series: Objects
New grammar video — objects. This video reviews objects of the preposition and then focuses on direct and indirect objects (of the verb): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODnhxet4A-s FREE DOWNLOAD – PRACTICE Here are the excerpts used for practice near the end of this video if you’d like to download it and mark it up: Practice: Identifying Objects LINKS: Direct … Read more
Grammar Series: Prepositions
Check out my PREPOSITIONS video – the latest installment in the ELA Academy grammar series: FREE DOWNLOAD – PRACTICE Here are the excerpts used for practice near the end of this video if you’d like to download it and mark it up: Practice: Identifying Prepositions And here is a list of some of the most common prepositions … Read more