Sample Practice: Level 1
Level 1 begins gently but takes your child through a wide range of grammar and punctuation sentences quickly, with minimal kill and drill and an emphasis on actual writing and editing. Our goal is to have your child write at least five to 10 creative, clean, complex (multi-clause) sentences with ease by the end of Level 1—emphasis on clean.
Practice 1.10.3: Comma Lego, which is in the last lesson of the level, asks your child to visualize the grammar structure of complex sentences. Comma placement is generally the trickiest skill for young writers to pick up (and adults). Many gifted kids successfully use their ear to place commas—to a point. But almost all kids, however bright, need to learn the basic grammar elements of a sentence to place commas, particularly in trickier situations. For example, is it “The cat who is covered in spikes likes to sleep on my face” or “The cat, who is covered in spikes, likes to sleep on my face”? Answer: It depends on the number of cats in the author’s life. We ask kids to turn down the volume on their dependence on their ear and switch to looking at sentences through the lens of sentence grammar because it helps kids notice even more subtle details as they read. It makes them better writers and critical readers.
Lesson 1.10: Commas introduces the key elements of complex sentences: independent clauses, dependent clauses, appositives, introductory words and phrases, and conjunctions, and has your child work on manipulating these elements in various ways. SeeSaw is a great tool for using color to reinforce grammar concepts, and we make good use of the resource. Most of our practices also include an editing problem or some other way of looking at the concepts, as well as multiple-choice questions that test your child’s comprehension of a topic in the lesson. Your child can try to answer the question multiple times, learning as they go. They then can move the sleeping cat at the end of the practice to check the answers and explanations.
If this looks like a lot of physical writing for your child’s current level, keep in mind that we gradually ramp up the amount of writing we ask your child to do over the course of Level 1 from a few phrases to many sentences. In addition, almost all of the writing your child will do is storytelling or creative expression in this level. It’s in Level 2 that kids ease into analytical writing/argumentation.
The orange boxes at the bottom of the first two slides give your child extra tips if they are not sure how to complete the challenge. For example, these boxes remind your child of the definitions of each grammar term and include tips on how to brainstorm trickier types of elements. We also include definitions and pronunciations of challenging words on relevant slides. In many practices, we include additional videos or recordings of texts (that visually track the words to reinforce reading skills) to help your child absorb new information or instructions that we don’t cover in the initial lesson video.
Ready to get your child started on mastering commas and other foundational sentence writing? Sign up here.
