I purchased a copy of Janet Allen’s Inside Words this summer at a workshop. Among the AMAZING activities in the book I discovered the Frayer Method. (Click HERE to see a demonstration of the Frayer method with vocabulary).

When I saw it, I immediately thought of how useful it would be to use this to teach voice/style within your students’ writing. If you had them fill out a graphic organizer like the one used with vocabulary above, you could really get them thinking about their own writing.

Then I started thinking about how useful it would be in teaching the differences between the literary periods I teach (everything from romanticism to modernism). Because the influence of these period is often subtle and lacking a strict definition, this will certainly be useful for me next year.

Anyway…this post was more for me than my readers. Just thought I’d share, though.

Here are some PDF worksheets that feature the Frayer methods:

What is the Frayer method?

Frayer Vocabluary PDF

Be sure to watch the video about this at the bottom.

I am very excited about the possibilities with Google Voice.  After waiting about two months, I finally received an invitation today.  It is basically like having a phone number that does not connect students/parents to your personal life. And it emails you transcripts of your voicemails. Therefore, you can always have a record of student/parent phone messages.  Or you can record the actual calls as documentation (check on local laws for that).  I believe that as long as you say you are going to record the call, you are okay.

Here are all the things Google Voice does:

First, you get a number that you pick from a list.  Mine incorporates my school’s initials.  I decided on that so that it would be easy to remember.  When people call my my Google Voice number, it goes to my cell phone, where I can do all of the following:

(ALL OF THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION CAME FROM THE GOOGLE VOICE WEB PAGE.

One number for all your calls and SMS

• Call screening - Announce and screen callers
• Listen in - Listen before taking a call
• Block calls - Keep unwanted callers at bay
• SMS - Send, receive, and store SMS
• Place calls - Call US numbers for free
• Taking calls - Answer on any of your phones
• Phone routing - Phones ring based on who calls
• Forwarding phones - Add phones and decide which ring

Voicemail as easy as email, with transcripts

• Voicemail transcripts - Read what your voicemail says
• Listen to voicemail - Check online or from your phone
• Notifications - Receive voicemails via email or SMS
• Personalize greeting - Vary greetings by caller
• Share voicemail - Forward or download voicemails

More cool things you can do with Google Voice

• Conference calling - Join people into a single call
• Call record - Record calls and store them online
• Call switch - Switch phones during a call
• Mobile site - View your inbox from your mobile
• GOOG-411 - Check directory assistance
• Manage groups - Set preferences by group

Because of the nature of English, it is difficult to give concrete definitions to parts of speech (verbs can work like nouns; nouns can be verbs), but grammar books tend to avoid this fact, thereby leaving students completely confounded when they return to the texts to complete assigments. I have found the MOST AMAZING grammar book ever; it has helped many students who couldn’t quite get this often loathed aspect of the English curriculum.

Analyzing English Grammar by Thomas Klammer is be an awesome resource for those students who cannot get past the inconsistencies of grammar. EVEN BETTER NEWS: It is in its 5th edition, but there have only been very minor changes, so you can find really cheap copies (here it is on amazon.com or half.com).

The reason it is so good is because it provides different tests to go through to figure out if a word is a noun, verb, etc.  These tests are kind of like the duck test (if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and waddles like a duck, it is a duck). This works because the authors focus on the FORM and FUNCTION of each word.  They look at how the word appears (FORM) as well as how the word works in the sentences by using frame sentences (fill-in-the-blank sentences that you can insert the word being examined into to figure out what it is).

Here is the noun chart from the book:

TESTS FOR NOUNS

Formal Proof:

1. Has a noun-making morpheme (governMENT)
2. Can occur with the plural morpheme (governmentS)
3. Can occur with the possessive morpheme (government’S decision)

   Function Proof:

1. Can directly follow an article (THE government, A government)
2. Can fit in the frame sentence: (The) ________ seem(s) all right.

Here is the verb chart from the book:

TEST FOR VERBS

Formal Proof:

1. Has a verb-making morpheme (criticIZE)
2. Can occur with present-tense morpheme (criticizeS)
3. Can have past-tense morpheme (criticizeD)
4.  Can occur in present tense (criticizING)
5. Can occur with past-participle morpheme (had fallEN, was citicizeD)

Function Proof:

1. Can be made into a command (CRITICIZE the novel!)
2. Can be made negative (They did NOT criticize the novel)
3.  Can fit in one of the frame sentences
   1. They must ______ (it).
   2. They must ______ good.

The book does the same thing for clauses and phrases.  I love this book so much that I have purchased two copies of it.