Hello, world! Welcome to That Grammar Site, your go-to resource for Common Core grammar standards for grades 6-8. Just like it says on the box, this site is filled with years of researching and teaching grammar for grades 6, 7, and 8.
A few years ago, I was working over the summer (as teachers do) to strengthen my grammar curriculum. The school where I taught had a few generic grammar book options, but they were, to put it bluntly, boring! Beyond that, they didn’t actually target the standards.
I teach in the United States, and my particular state has adopted the Common Core State Standards. For those who don’t know, the Common Core is a set of standards (not lessons) that guide teachers in deciding which concepts should be taught at each grade.
I’ll talk about my strong feelings for the Common Core in another post (spoiler alert: I love the Common Core), but regardless of my feelings in either direction, the truth is I’m still responsible for teaching those skills to my students.
So imagine my consternation when I actually read the standards and realized that I had no idea what a dangling modifier was! And don’t even get me started on verbals! Thus began my summer of research.
Do you want to know what I found?
I found a lot of contradictions, ambiguity, and general confusion. It seemed like for every term I researched, I needed to look up three more.
Making things even more frustrating was the fact that none of the websites I visited targeted the Common Core standards specifically. Now, say what you will about sites like Teachers Pay Teachers, but I didn’t want worksheets, I wanted knowledge. I wanted to really know what an indefinite pronoun was. I wanted to be able to fully explain to my students why they needed to know about noun clauses. None of the sites I found could answer these questions to my satisfaction.
Since I couldn’t find what I was looking for, I decided to make it.
As of this writing, my site is rather bare-bones. It’s remarkably text-heavy, because that’s how I think. (I’m an English teacher, after all!)
I do have plans to build the site over the coming months, and I plan to continue blogging as well. If you have a topic you’d like me to cover, or if you have a question as a teacher, parent, or student, please reach out. I’d love to hear from you!
amanda@thatgrammarsite.com
Happy writing!
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