Caught'Ya !: Grammar With a Giggle

This is the only how-to teacher book that I've read cover to cover in the last 10 years. I love Hairy. I ordered Giggles in the Middle: Caught'ya! Grammar with a Giggle for Middle School and also read it cover to cover.

In a desolate, lifeless, serious world of standards that my colleagues bemoan and administrators preach, these books are small green seedlings of hope.

Caught'yas has great ideas to engage all students in correcting writing errors. I really liked that it is personalized for every class and stresses that it should be fun.

I bought the book at Christmas break and my 4th graders look forward to it every morning when they come in the door. Brilliant!

Although the concept is a good one, I swept this book under rug. As an English teacher, I am always willing to find fun activities to peak my student's learning, but I refuse to use stories that sound disrespectful toward teachers and students. My job is to teach respect for peers and to build character while teaching the beauty of Engish, but this book offers neither.

I was excited about using the book, so when I received it I became a little discouraged because some of the vocabulary was over my child's head. However, I was able to adjust it to her level. This book is geared toward a teacher with many students, so if you're homeschooling, you'll just have to overlook that part. Most of the book is explaining what Caught'Ya! is, how it works and samples. She gives very detailed steps for using the sentences with lots of ideas included. She has broken down the sentences into vocabulary, spelling, diagramming sentences, writing assignments, showing writing and tests. She has also included as examples copies of her students' work and how she graded it.
As I write each sentence on the blackboard we use at home, I have changed some of the sentences and vocabulary words as I said. Since we've been using this daily for about three or four weeks now, I decided before I wrote this review to ask my child how she likes using this program. Her response was, "I love it. It's lots of fun." I can also tell you she has progressed a great deal since we started. I haven't even really begun to explain commas to her, yet she was asking me should she put one in a sentence she was working on. I've been pretty impressed with her progress, especially since she's ADHD. It's been tough for her to grasp this part of learning, so finding something that works is quite an achievement.
The most important part of all of this is the hype as Ms. Kiester says in her book and as I say each day to my child as we start a sentence, "Do I get to Catch Ya! today?" She responds with a defiant look and a slightly mischievious twinkle in her eye, "I don't think so!"