Research has shown that when kids are not involved with learning activities over the summer, their skills don’t just stay where they were at the end of the school year. Instead, your kids lose ground and retention of what they learned over the prior school year. So, one thing you can do to prevent this learning slide, is to play learning games over the summer.
Here is a Review of Bonnie Terry’s learning grammar game The Sentence Zone written by Lori Seaborg of http://www.FreelyEducate.com:

We are having a great time learning grammar.

“What?!” you say, “You’re having great time in grammar class?”

Why, yes. That’s exactly what I meant. Thanks to The Sentence Zone, a grammar game designed by Bonnie Terry Learning, grammar can not only be bright and colorful, but as much fun as a game of Monopoly. Here is how it works, as described by Bonnie Terry:

If you’re looking for a fun way to improve writing and grammar skills, this game is for you! For 2 to 6 players, grades 1st and up. Rules are easily mastered. The Sentence Zone can be played at six levels – from Level 1 in which the player builds a subject and verb sentence, to Level 6 in which the player builds complex sentences with independent and dependent clauses. With over 500 color coded cards, students are sure to be unique and entertaining every time. A great reinforcing individual activity where a player keeps track of his score from day to day, trying to top his previous score, or a great group activity where competition drives creativity and learning.

It took me a little while to figure out The Sentence Zone. It wasn’t a game that we could play right out of the box. But after reading the directions, and realizing the many directions the game could go, we got started learning our grammar and – enjoying – it! Since enjoyment leads the way to a love of learning, The Sentence Zone is a success in our home.

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So, do yourself a favor, check out The Sentence Zone and Bonnie Terry’s other reading game and math game too!

However, writing poetry doesn’t have to be so-o-o hard! There are many different types of poems, and I’ve found one of the easiest types of poetry to teach my kids is the Haiku, specifically the Cinquain type of Haiku Poem. Learn how to use the Sentence Zone for writing poems.  This is made really easy using The Sentence Zone game because you can write the poem with colors.

Using The Sentence Zone game makes writing poetry easy for kids with LD, dyslexia, ADHD, or even gifted.

Hope this is helpful! Don’t forget to sign up for the FREE teaching and homework tips!

Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCET

I have always told everyone that it was used at multiple ages, because it is, but I didn’t think of using the game for SAT prep until Patricia Lara stopped by my office a few weeks ago. She was telling me how useful the game was in her work with SAT prep with her juniors and seniors in high school.

In addition to helping them with the grammar portion of the exam, she told me how it really ‘broke up’ the prep sessions. Her students were able to get a break from the intensity of preparing for the exam but still learn at the same time. So, I asked her to show me how she was using the game. I think you’ll enjoy this additional use. Watch and see for yourself how easy it is to learn with The Sentence Zone. It is a great test prep tool for tutors, families, homeschoolers, and teachers. 

Hope this has been helpful. Don’t forget to sign up for the FREE Teaching and Homework Tips! And, PLEASE, Pass this post along to others!

Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCET

Remember, I work with students from 1st grade through adults. Some have been identified with dyslexia, or a learning disability. Some of my students are falling through the cracks. Some are even gifted. Even my wiggly ADHD students do well with it since it’s hand-on. But, it doesn’t matter. When I can improve a student’s retention with using a color coded game I’m going to do it.

I like to have my students sort out the cards so they start to get a feel for the types of words that are in each category. For instance, they might not realize that the word about is an adverb. When they initially sort out the word cards by color, they get an idea of what types of words are in each part of speech.

Then I have them look at the cover of the box so they see how to set up the game and that  the game strip is just there so they will have an easy reference point for placing the cards. It is NOT a game board, it is not used for making sentences. It is just used as a reference for placing the cards. They know they will be making their sentence in front of themselves while I make mine in front of me.

I use this game with students from 1st grade on up – even high school students and adults. With my advanced students (any age) we do more sophisticated sentences and grammar work. But, back to the basics…

My younger students soon realize they need to have a gray card (capital letter), a blue card (noun), a red card (verb), and a buff card (punctuation) in order to have a sentence.
They learn they can add adjectives, adverbs, or prepositional phrases to their base sentence to make it more interesting, but they need to only have one subject and one verb for the first round of the game.

For example, the following are all legal 1st round sentences.

The dog barks.            The dog barks loudly.               The dog barks loudly at the park.

When a student makes a 3-word sentence I often start asking questions to encourage them to make more interesting sentences. This helps them to see how to improve and expand their sentence.

Example with prompts:

The dog barks.

(What kind of dog is he? Let’s use these adjective cards to find out. How does he bark? Let’s use an adverb to tell us how.)

The big dog barks loudly.

(What color is the dog? Use another adjective to tell us. Where does he bark? Use a preposition, article, and a noun to tell us.)

The big brown dog barks loudly at the park.

This type of conversation helps to equalize the game with more proficient learners and helps that younger student to become proficient more quickly.

(Sometimes making funny sentences makes the game even more fun and sentence writing is no longer work.)

The long hairy dog barks loudly at the tiny ant.

Then the magic happens! I have my students go to their bookwork where they are supposed to underline the subject once and verb twice. Instead I have them use colored pencils (blue and red) and underline their subjects with the blue pencil and underline the verb with the red pencil. (They are able to identify the subjects and verbs more readily because they have been playing with blue nouns and red verbs.)

Nouns and verbs start to almost jump out at them as a result of playing the game. Additionally, they are much better at not confusing the assignment. For example, when the assignment was to underline the subject one and verb twice, I can’t tell you how many times my students used to underline the subjects twice and the verbs once. They say to me, “Well, I underlined them, what more do you want?”

When I have them use a colored pencil it takes that away and impresses on their brains which word is the noun (subject) and which is the verb. We even color code whole sentences according to the colors in The Sentence Zone, identifying the prepositional phrases or dependent and independent clauses.

I find that students who are just beginning to write sentences soon find that they can write more interesting sentences after playing the game because they start to make sentences that are worth more points. They often compete against themselves, keeping a running tally from turn to turn or day to day.

Also, when a student has a writing assignment and his sentences are all about the same length, I just have to say, “You need to have some small point sentences and some big point sentences to be a good writer. Remember, good writers vary the length and type of sentences they write.” They know what I’m talking about because they have seen small point sentences and big point sentences.

Students who are proficient with basic sentences start to learn more complex grammar nuances such as subject – verb agreement, or needing to compose a sentence with a direct object and an indirect object in it etc. In fact I also use it for SAT prep.

Hope this gives you some new ideas for teaching and improving sentence writing and grammar. Learn more about The Sentence Zone.

Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCET

May 1, 2009 (WLS) — Many parents know about reading disabilities such as dyslexia. But there has been little research into writing disabilities.

Now a new study suggests writing disorders are just as common as reading disabilities and are most likely to affect boys. One such disorder is dysgraphia, which includes problems with handwriting, spelling and organizing thoughts on paper.

While the majority of children diagnosed with a writing problem also had a reading disability, researchers say one-fourth of those studied only had a writing issue.

As for why boys have more writing problems than girls, the study in the journal Pediatrics says the gender gap issue needs more research.

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Learn more about writing difficulties and what to do about them…

Bonnie Terry, M Ed., BCET

Thank you,

Theresa

Today I’ll address the writing problem. Children are often fearful of writing. They think that their writing won’t be any good. This happens to most children at one time or another. It doesn’t matter whether your child is LD, dyslexic, ADHD, CAPD, or gifted. Most children do not feel very competent when given a writing assignment. The good news is, the more often they write, the better they will get. But, what do you do in the meantime to encourage and help them improve their writing? This is what I did.

I’ll never forget the day one of my kids had a friend over during the evening while his mom was at a meeting. He had just broken his arm and had a homework assignment to complete. He was at a loss on how to get his assignment done because he had broken his right arm.

His assignment was to use his spelling words in a story. I told him, no problem. Let’s see the words you need to put into the story. He slowly took out his speller and showed me the words.

Following is the step-by-step sequence of how we worked on his homework assignment.

• I listed the words on a separate sheet of paper, so we could underline them when he used them.
• We started talking about how he could put them into a story.
• We talked about where the story would take place, the time of day, who would be in the story, and what the character might be doing. That covered the who, what, where, and when that is needed when writing a story.
• As we talked about those things, I jotted them down.

He was ready to start telling me the story.

• He recited the story, putting in his spelling words, as I wrote it down for him.
• Every once in a while he’d get ahead of himself and I’d say, “Wait a minute, how did he get from here to here? You need to tell us.”
• So, he filled in the transition.
• After this session [about 20 minutes], he had his story done.

Had his hand not been in a partial cast, I would have had him copy it in order to turn it in. But since he couldn’t copy it, I recopied it for him with the transitions put into the correct places.

When his mom came to pick him up, she was amazed that he had gotten the assignment done. Up to now, whenever he had to write a story using his spelling words, he felt totally defeated, like he would never be able to hit a nail on its head. He hated this assignment and got it every week. A major battle ensued.

I explained to her how we did it. She never thought that you could have your kids write a story that way. Now, he’ll always hit the nail on the head! Her son is no longer left to his own devices. He has a strategy that works and will help him to always be successful.

How Does This Strategy Work?

This strategy of dictating stories works because kids minds are usually working faster than their hands. Using this technique to help empower your kids will give them instant success as a writer.

When kids write at the same time as they are creating the story, typically there are many holes in the story, places where words have been left out. That is because they may be writing the first few words of the first thought and then the second thought comes to them and they start writing it as the second half of the first sentence.

What they have now is a mess and they don’t know how to get out of it. They just feel deep down into their bones that they aren’t any good at writing anyway; when in reality they may be very creative writers.

Allow Your Kids To Dictate Stories To You

By allowing your kids to dictate an assignment such as writing a story, and then having them recopy it, they are seeing that they can have success. They can do it; they can SUCCEED.

It takes just a few times of doing their writing this way before kids are able to do a whole story on their own because you have shown them step-by-step how to be successful at it.

That is how to tackle one type of writing assignment. But, you know as well as I that your kids will be getting many writing assignments over the years. For more strategies, see Ten Minutes to Better Study Skills.

Hope this has been helpful!

Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCET

I have learned from years of experience and research that game playing helps my students to relax while learning. When you are in a relaxed state you are able to concentrate better and retain information better.

“Relaxation techniques will improve concentration, learning, and overall memory ability.” Gary Small, M. D., Professor of Psychiatry & Bio-behavioral Sciences at UCLA

So, I play two games to work on vocabulary and comprehension. One, The Sentence Zone works on both building vocabulary and grammar skills. In fact, a definition cheat sheet is provided for the more difficult words. In the game the students learn how to make grammatically correct sentences. They also learn the 6 basic sentence types in the English language.

The second game, The Comprehension Zone: Rocket Rap works on helping students with how to pull out the main idea and details of what they read. Both games provide plenty of modeling where students can improve their vocabulary and comprehension while playing. Following is an article I recently wrote regarding The Comprehension Zone: Rocket Rap.

Improve Vocabulary and Comprehension With Game Playing

Do you ever watch your child take notes from what they are reading or read the notes they have taken and wonder why in the world they write that note and miss the important part of the passage? Were they just writing anything down so they could say they were finished? Did they even think about it?

Sometimes my children and my students weren’t sure about which notes to write in the fill-in-the-blank graphic organizing forms. Sometimes they put in a very small detail and left out the most important fact. For instance, they would put down that Jupiter has a ring of dust around it and miss that it is the biggest planet. Or that Washington cut down the cherry tree and didn’t tell a lie but miss that he was the first president.

To help them to become really good note takers, I realized they needed practice with finding the main idea as well as supporting details. I knew that they would really get good at this skill if they had a lot of modeling and practice. So I developed a comprehension game where they would get a lot of practice with both reading and listening comprehension.

In fact, research from the Center for Research on Learning developed a strategy called the Paraphrasing Strategy to improve reading comprehension. The way The Comprehension Zone is played is supported by their research.

The game format helped my kids learn how to read for meaning while they played a game. The object of the game is to either find the main idea, the details, both of those, or to sequence what they had read.

Being able to play a game while learning those skills really helped improved the quality of their note taking and writing. It also improved their understanding of new vocabulary. For discounts, check out The Reading Pack.

I hope this has been helpful.

Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., Board Certified Educational Therapist #10167

P.S.: Feel free to pass this post to anyone you think might enjoy it.