Schoolhouse Rock owns the bragging rights to being the hippest musical vehicle to elementary education. Grammar Rock is a particularly compelling volume, bringing jazz vocal legend Bob Dorough to the lyrical table, untangling the secrets of the English language in a way that’s both entertaining and instructive. The music is never less than humorously beguiling, comfortable in its simplicity and yet unafraid to dance outside the lines. Yes, the music sounds a tad manufactured, bu [Read More...]
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When it comes to the rules of grammar I know the difference between an independent and a dependent clause and that is about it. If you want to talk about the building blocks of sentences I really do not even know the basics (you only had to go up and diagram sentences on the board if you were not putting them together directly and I was reading books all the time and sort of picked up correct sentence structure by osmosis, so I know how to fix sentences even if I am totally incapable of explaining the rules). Anyhow, the point of this meandering down memory lane is simply to state the obvious: Here are the basics. Learn that “A Noun is a Person, Place, or Thing,” “Unpack Your Adjectives,” and take a ride down to “Conjunction Junction.” Also included are “Verb: That’s What’s Happening,” “Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, Adverbs Here,” “Interjections,” and the immortal “Rufus Xavier Sarsaparilla” (no excuses if you do not know that last one is about pronouns).
“Schoolhouse Rock” was created in the 1970s, when an advertising executive noticed his son was having trouble memorizing his multiplication tables but knew all the words to rock songs on the radio. The marriage of pop music with information spawned a series of three-minute cartoons on government, history, grammar, science, and math that aired on ABC television from 1973 to 1985. This CD presents all of the “Grammar Rock” lessons, which are still pretty good even without the cartoons (but having the video of the cartoons is better). As long as the rules of grammar do not change (and they look like they are pretty much engraved in, uh, rock) then these ten mini-lessons are going to be useful to teachers and students alike.
I am a teacher in Scotland and I remembered Grammar Rock from when I grew up in California. So naturally, when I had to teach grammar to the kids in my class, I turned to Grammar Rock. These songs are absolutely brilliant for helping kids with grammar because each song gives good examples of a part of speech. Not only is it educational, there is nothing cuter than a group of little Scottish kids grooving to “Conjuction Junction”, with their own Scot-ified lyrics. Grammar Rock has truly gone global!