CONTENTS. iii. SECTION 1 Painting Brush Strokes... #

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1 CONTENTS SECTION 1 Painting Brush Strokes # The Five Basic Brush Strokes # Absolute Brush Strokes # Appositive Brush Strokes # Participle Brush Strokes # Adjectives Out-of-Order Brush Strokes # Action Verb Brush Strokes # The Artist s Brush Stroke Palette # Rubric for the Brush Stroke Paragraph # Collect Palette Samples # Fiction into Film # SECTION 2 The Musical Rhythm of Language # Musical Rhythms in Parallel Structures # Three Ways to Create Musical Word Rhythms # Literal Repetition # Pure Grammatical Rhythms # Combined Literal and Grammatical Repetition # SECTION 3 Specific Details: The Close-Up Power of the Zoom Lens... # Paint by Zooming and Layering # Create Interesting Images # Layering with Brush Strokes, Prepositional Phrases, and Adjectives # Creating Humor # iii

2 CONTENTS continued SECTION 4 Strategies for the Grammar of Conventions # How to Correct 91.5 Percent of All Your Errors ## Concept A: Subject-Verb Agreement ## Quick Self Review ## Concept B: Avoiding Sentence Fragments ## Concept C: Avoiding Colliding Sentences ## A Review of Five Ways to Punctuate Two Sentences ## Concept D: Avoiding Word Confusion ## Concept E: Mixed Problems ## Concept F: Avoiding Brush Stroke and Parallel Structure Errors ## iv

3 Improving Writing with Image Grammar Although Image Grammar concepts relate to all kinds of writing, some have especially strong ties to particular writing modes. The chart below shows examples of how Image Grammar concepts can improve writing in the four modes commonly taught. Writing Mode Before Image Grammar After Image Grammar Narrative short story personal experience narrative news story historical account The skydiver glided toward the earth from 20,000 feet. Heart pounding, arms stretching, the skydiver glided toward the earth from 20,000 feet. (Absolute Brush Stroke) Descriptive character sketch image description poetry journal entry The elephant charged the lions. The angry elephant, monstrous and fi erce, charged the lions. (Adjectives Out-of-Order Brush Stroke) Expository informational essay how-to essay comparison/contrast essay defi nition essay The blue whale is the largest animal on the planet. The blue whale, a member of the same family as the humpback whale, is the largest animal on the planet. (Appositive Brush Stroke) Persuasive persuasive essay editorial problem-solution essay critical review People who don t believe in UFOs, ghosts, and angels have a hard time explaining some things. If there are no UFOs, if ghosts really don t exist, if angels are only a myth, then how do you explain the traces? How do you explain the sounds? And most of all, how do you explain the sightings? (Rhythms Using Subordinate Conjunctions) v

4 Introduction In this Teacher Guide you will find explanations, examples, and images to share with students. To make your instruction easier, PowerPoint presentations are included that work in harmony with each section in the student Activity Book. Throughout this Guide, you will find additional commentary and visual clarification of each PowerPoint presentation. Your students will need to know these grammatical terms: nouns, action verbs, linking verbs, adjectives, participles, and prepositional phrases. If your students are struggling with those terms, you may want to help them by playing a review game called Battle of the Tabloids, which is located at the end of Section 1. vii

5 Appositive Brush Strokes (p. 11) Slide 16 STEP 1: Give an oversimplifi ed defi nition of an appositive and review the example in the list of brush strokes. Review the definition of the appositive brush stroke. STEP 2: Demonstrate the selected brush stroke in a one-sentence painting. Illustrate the appositive first with a simple sentence describing the seal and then with the appositive brush stroke added. Slide 17 Point out how the author of this sentence not only added the appositive creature, but embellished the image with a tiny and with snow-white fur. Mention that words other than creature could have been used, such as infant, mammal, animal, critter, etc. Slide 18 Slide 19 5

6 Appositive Brush Strokes Another Example Slide 20 With Slide 20 show the simple sentence: The abandoned house began to collapse. Then show the added appositive in Slide 21. Tell students that the writer could have used several nouns to describe the house: an adobe, a residence, a shack, a dwelling, or a domicile. The choice depends on the image the writer wants to convey. This allows the writer to add a second image with additional details. Note with Slide 22 how a prepositional phrase can be added to an appositive for more detail. Slide 21 Slide 22 6

7 ACTIVITY 2 Paint with Appositive Brush Strokes (pp ) Slide 23 STEP 3: Assign the students to create an appositive using the image of the singer. Show Slide 23 and have students follow these two steps. (1) Create a basic sentence. The singer... (2) Zoom in with commas after the word singer and consider some of the nouns that might be used as a second label. For example, the singer might be labeled with a second noun such as artist, entertainer, performer, woman, or soloist. Use one of these examples or select a noun of your own and build an appositive phrase by adding a few descriptive words. With this image and other images of people, students tend to add a wide variety of structures after the appositive structures of relative pronouns (who, whom, that, etc.) or participles and even absolutes. Don t discourage this. They are learning that language offers a large number of slots where a variety of structures can be added. This is the first step to a more mature writing style. Students who miss the definition of the appositive will often drop in another structure such as The singer wailing a high note... When this happens, remind them that an appositive is a second noun that refers to the same thing as the noun before it. Even though their first effort might be incorrect as an appositive, the error shows that they are beginning to recognize structural slots. 7

8 Collecting Images for Writing With Image Grammar it is helpful to have a collection of images to use for enrichment exercises. Here is how you can collect hundreds easily. First, assign each student to bring two images to class from magazines. Specify that their images should be no smaller than 5 by 6 inches, which is approximately one half of a standard page. You may want to collect library discards from the school librarian at the beginning of the year and allow students to go through those during lunch, study hall, after school, or even in class. If you have 140 students and they each locate two images, you will have 280 images. This will provide you with a resource for additional image grammar assignments as well as for bulletin boards. You can laminate some images or photograph them with a digital camera or slide film and project them for class use. Once you acquire a collection of images, you might also want to sort them into categories action images, character images, setting images, humorous images, etc. You can then have students choose a category to practice their brush strokes. This will allow you to give out bonus points by category for some of the best images and increase the number of students getting positive feedback. 8