Keith Polette (English, U. of Texas, El Paso) and Nancy Polette, an author, presenter, and speaker, provide 45 reproducible stories that contain spelling and grammatical errors, with corrections, to teach children in grades three to eight editing skills. These are "Shaggy Dog" stories based on classic literature--humorous versions of them that end with a joke or pun. The stories, such as "Rapunzel," "The Yellow Brick Road," and "The Frankenstein Monster," instruct students what usage errors to watch out for and each has the same narrative structure. Their length is one page or less. There is no index. Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
Students will enjoy these fun shaggy dog stories and then be able to apply what they have learned to the editing stage of their own writing process. Grades 3-8.
Using "shaggy dog" stories based on classic literature, the Polettes address common spelling and grammatical errors and the ways in which children can be taught to read critically to recognize them. Each full-page reproducible story and its corrected counterpart focus on common errors (incorrect use of quotation marks, end marks, capitalization, apostrophes, semicolons, run on sentences, homophones, verb usage, etc.). An appendix offers answer explanations, rules to be learned and taught, and more. Grades 3-8.
