Grammar & Punctuation Practice

Find the mistake. Fix it. And know when there is nothing to fix.

110 pages · 72 practice sets · 2,339 problems - every one with its answer in the full printed key, and the four Check Yourself pages worked through, rule by rule, at the back.

This book teaches grammar the way editors learn it: by proofreading. Most fix-it sentences carry exactly one planted error - a missing capital, a wrong end mark, a lost apostrophe, a comma that fell out of a date, a there/their/they're mix-up - and about one in eight is already right, so the child has to decide, not just hunt: fix it, or write correct. Around them, the rest of the grades 2-3 canon is asked the way the best classroom books ask it: which word is the noun, the verb, the adjective; one cat, two cats; today I run, yesterday I ran; the dogs run, the dog runs; she, him, themselves; bigger, biggest; don't and can't both ways; Maya's hat and the girls' hats; what kind of sentence; sentence, fragment or run-on; the comma in a date, a letter, a list; said with quotation marks; the short forms; and thirty pairs of sound-alikes.

The rule is on the page, and so is the skill. Every rung opens with its rule in one line, every page names the skill it practices in plain words beside the standards code, two Rules Cards hold every rule the book uses, and a page of editor's marks shows how to mark a mistake before fixing it.

Made for the grown-up too. Every stage opens with a page for the adult and the child together: the skills to color off as they are done, the words the stage uses in plain language, and how to help. Words to Know at the back explains every grammar term, with the page that practices it. The last page of every rule is a Quick Check, and on the review pages the answer key names the page each question comes from, so a wrong answer has somewhere to go.

Not the same page over and over. Twenty-one kinds of question, three Looking Back pages that mix the earlier stages, four Puzzle Breaks, two games - Roll and Mark with a die, Past Tense Bingo with a partner - and a Ready for Grade 4? page with one question of every kind.

An answer key you can trust, by construction. Every answer was generated together with its question and independently re-checked by a separate program before printing - the correction replayed into the sentence, the plural rebuilt from its rule, the already-right sentence checked against every rule it keeps. The key and the pages agree by construction, not by proofreading.

Inside:

• 72 practice sets and 2,339 problems across four stages: capitals and end marks; the words that change; apostrophes, commas and quotation marks; sound-alikes and the editor's desk
• Fix the sentence - or write correct when it is already right; name the kind of sentence; find the noun or verb; write the plural and the past tense; choose the verb, the pronoun, the joining word, the sound-alike
• The rule and the skill on every page, two Rules Cards, the Editor's Marks, and a page for the grown-up before every stage
• Three Looking Back pages, four Puzzle Breaks, two games, a Ready for Grade 4? page, and Words to Know at the back
• Full printed answer key, machine-checked at build time, with the rule behind every Check Yourself answer and the page to go back to
• Start Here placement check with a gallery of the question shapes, badge tracker, personal-best log and a certificate - copy-friendly for one family or one classroom