Recent Posts

In our yearly circle around the sun, Pi Day comes but once a year. Pi Day is March 14, or 3.14, to celebrate the first three digits of everyone's favorite irrational number. (Do places that write the date Euro-style celebrate it, too? Or do they celebrate Pi on 31/4? Hmmm, that isn't a date.) Celebrate Pi Day with these activities: 1. Watch the video at the top of this post. One person made a massive domino spiral celebrating pi. Have your students use pi to estimate how many dominos are in the spiral. (10,059, according to the creator.) 2. Bake…

Are you in need of a transition word? They will certainly help make your writing clearer. Here's a list of common transition words and phrases: first, nonetheless, consequently, indeed, meanwhile, then, equally important, immediately, of course, so, such as, despite, on the other hand, to conclude If you need help to remember any one of these transition words, listen to this song, in which we tell the history of video games using transition words. Here's a snippet: Kids wanted to play. Consequently, Machines appeared all over the place, Indeed Atari fulfilled lots of orders, And made 2 billion dollars in quarters. Meanwhile, you have…

Prepositions demonstrate temporal, spatial or logical relationships of a word to the rest of the sentence. That's a mouthful, right? In this prepositions song, Flocabulary breaks it down for you. Here's a story about a boy, his dog and a would-be bully. Can you spot all the prepositions? I woke up. Got out of bed, Put my favorite cap on my head. Grabbed my dog's leash in my hand, While I tied the other end to him. Got onto the skateboard, I hopped, And my dog started running down the block. My dog moves fast like a bobsled, At least that's what my mom said. How many did you get? Let's count them…

Commas are an important part of your writing. How would you punctuate this sentence? "Let's eat grandma!" If you said add a comma between eat and grandma, wonderful! Dinner's on the table and you're ready to eat. If you forgot a comma however, you change the whole meaning of the sentence into a very troubling one... Here's a short list of comma rules: Use a comma in between the city and state when writing an address. Use a comma in between the day and year when writing the full date. Use a comma after the salutation of a letter. Commas should be…

As our new adverb song notes, adverbs can provide more detail about the verbs in your sentence. How did you eat at Thanksgiving? You ate ravenously. How did you trip on stage at the talent show? You tripped clumsily. But sometimes, adverbs actually do the opposite. Many writers use adverbs as a crutch when they aren't exactly sure about what they're saying. Take this article from this morning's New York Times: The writer can't assuredly say that Romney won, so he uses adverbs to hedge. (He also rhymes a little, channeling his buddies over at Flocab). When it comes to…