Spelling & Grammar » Rules of the Game

Rules of the Game
Grammar through Discovery
by Mary Page, Peter Guthrie, Sloan Sable
Grades 5–10

Lessons on topics such as sentence fragments or parts of speech begin with several pithy examples, and follow them with directed questions that help students arrive at a grammatical principle or rule. Following the questions and a brief discussion, each lesson has a Definition, set in a box for emphasis. Lessons also contain boxed Hints that aid students in understanding and retaining points of grammar.

Exercises are both traditional and innovative, and provide practice as well as increase general knowledge. Students read sentences and pick out various points of grammar, but they also follow sentence patterns, write their own sentences, choose effective modifiers, or combine sentences.

In one particularly original and interesting kind of recurring exercise, the sentences form a narrative about a particular subject—Strange but True Baseball Facts, or Women’s Struggle for the Vote, for example.

In all books, lessons build on each other: the lesson on compound sentences, for example, appears not long after students have learned what constitutes a sentence and right after they have been introduced to the conjunction. Each book also contains a Comprehensive Exercises section that provides review exercises and includes errors for students to correct.