Sandra Wilde's Funner Grammar

I saw something about this book when it came out in 2012, but I’ve just gotten my hands on it (my library didn’t have it, so it had to come from St. Martin’s University in Lacey, Washington), and I’ve now ordered my own copy because it’s so good. It’s called Funner Grammar: Fresh ways to teach usage, language, and writing conventions, grades 3-8, and it’s making me breathe a sigh of relief. Sandra Wilde has written many other good books and resources for teachers, including You Kan Red This! Spelling and punctuation for whole language classrooms, K-6 (1991), What’s a Schwa Sound Anyway? A holistic guide to phonetics, phonics, and spelling (1997), Miscue Analysis Made Easy: Building on Student Strengths (2000), Testing and Standards (2002), Spelling Strategies and Patterns (2007), but this one makes me so happy, and I want all the 3rd-8th grade teachers I know to give it a look.

How refreshing that she starts off with “Did you know that are about six thousand languages in the world?” and then goes on to talk about language change, grammar, and even the Common Core. For a resource book of this type, it does the best job I’ve seen of talking directly and convincingly about language privilege. “Language variation is a social justice issue just as much as racial identity is” (96).

But it also talks about what a lot of teachers are very interested in – mechanics and usage. Here are the chapter titles, after the introductory one.

2. Mechanics: Conventions Found Only in Written Language
3. Nitty-Gritty Grammar: Words, Tenses, Sentences, and Complexity
4. Usage
5. Language Diversity and Social Justice
6. Linguistics for Kids

And Wilde provides annotated lists of other resources, appendices of suggestions of what to do in each grade (3-8), commentary on the Common Core (saying straight up that to teach about the subjunctive, as indicated in this 8th grade standard is misguided. Yeah, I agree - it’s a bit crazy.), and a careful consideration and explanation of why each subject she addresses should be taught. And it’s a nice slim volume at that.

It's been great to be able to do some reading of some of the other resources out there, like this one, while on sabbatical, so I’ll soon be adding an updated list of resources to TeachLing, which has a list that Dave Pippin compiled a few years ago. But the list is lacking in resource books like Wilde’s, so I’ll add the few other suggestions I have. But in the meantime, get this book. And thank you, Sandra Wilde!