What to do when your child’s writing doesn’t follow linear time conventions.

If you’ve been itching to get your kid to finally (yes, a split infinitive) tighten up the mechanics of their writing—no more misplaced commas and complicated subjunctive clauses, etc.—this is the summer to realize your goal.

In Practice 4.4.1, we ask kids to notice that specific words may carry just as much emotion as an exclamation mark. Kids who have completed Levels 2 and 3 will already be familiar with pathos, one of the core rhetorical tools popularized by Aristotle back in Ancient Greece.

In Practice 4.3.4, we ask your kids to edit the Declaration of Independence, first to add appropriate commas and then to ruin it with fuzzy writing.

In Practices 4.2.3 and 4.2.5, we ask your child to misuse commas in ways that impact the meaning of the text—first at the sentence and then at the paragraph level. And then, of course, fix and explain the mistakes.

In Practice 4.1.3, we ask your child to connect their understanding of the concept of word and phrase classes with the way that words and phrases relate to each other in sentences.

We’ve been hard at work producing Level 4: Grammar & Punctuation for Life, which teaches kids all about grammar and advanced punctuation. Check out our recent blog post about why and how we teach grammar here. If you’ve been itching to get your kid to finally (yes, a split infinitive) tighten up the mechanics of their writing—no more misplaced commas and complicated subjunctive clauses, etc.—this is the summer to realize your goal.

We’ve begun production of Level 4: Grammar & Punctuation for Life, which teaches kids how to understand and use grammatical concepts and advanced punctuation. Levels one through three also cover foundational grammatical and punctuation concepts and skills, and we give mechanical feedback to kids on most practices. So, Level 4: Grammar & Punctuation for Life is not an island of mechanical learning in our program, but Level 4 will be where we help kids wrap their heads around what grammar means in the context of the rest of their life, why it’s useful to know, and how to use it with ease.

How does June Writers teach spelling? See an example practice from Level 4.

Practice 4.2.3: Fixing Run-On Sentences builds on what your child has already learned about commas to help them notice and fix common run-on sentence configurations.

Take a deep breath because you’re about to walk into sacred kid territory: emotional formatting. As you no doubt know, most kids love emojis, wild colors, varied fonts, bolded words, etc., and they’re not willing to give up these simple joys without a fight.