The KISS web site overwhelms many visitors -- it is easy to get lost in it. If, however, you are primarily interested in the instructional material, exercises, and analysis keys, this section is for you. If you have not read about the KISS Difference, however, you may want to look at it first.

     There are two primary access points to the KISS site: the Printable KISS Grammar Books page, and the KISS On-Line Resources page.

     The new Printable Books page includes links to all the major instructional materials and most of the exercises. Some of the "books" are already available as MS Word documents that you can simply download and use. (If there is interest, we can also make pdf versions available.) There are basically four types of books that are being developed. 

1.) Introductory Materials The introductory books are extremely important. If you just want to "do grammar" without considering what you are doing or why, you are on the wrong web site. The introductory books explain how KISS differs from every other approach to teaching grammar, why it differs, and what that means to you and your students. Indeed, the only things that you really need to use the KISS Approach to teaching grammar are the introductory books and the "Instructional Booklets."

2.) Instructional Booklets These are the heart of KISS grammar. They define KISS terms and provide instructional materials that you can print and share with students. The instructional material often consists of a single page at a time which is designed to be printed as a transparent overhead. One of the best ways for students to learn is for the students to make their own versions of this instructional material, with their own art work and examples. The students don't need textbooks. The remaining two types of books are two different approaches to exercise materials and analysis keys. 
     Note that because of the options for exercise books, the primary instructional materials are not included in them. It simply did not make sense to repeat the same instructional material in several different books. (Most commercial textbooks do this, with slight differences from grade to grade, which makes them both expensive and confusing.) You should, for example, be able to easily correlate the KISS instructional material on prepositional phrases with prepositional phrase exercises in the exercise books.
     A disadvantage of the printable books is that they cannot effectively reproduce the hypertext links on the open web site. Most exercises have  "Analysis Keys" in which you will find explanations (sometimes more than one) for every word in the exercise. Hypertext links make this relatively easy to do. In many of the keys, for example, there are links to the explanation of "infinitives." If you know what infinitives are, and how they function, then you do not need the link. But if you don't, then obviously the link helps. And in some cases the links lead to short explanations of points of theory. On paper, of course, the links do not work. Thus, if you are primarily using the printable books, one of the first things you should probably do is to print and browse the introductory books and the books of instructional material for each KISS Level. 
     In creating the printable books, copying them from the web site into MS Word, I have left most of the links as links, even though they will not work. My objective here was to let people know that, on the web site, they are links. Note that on the "Printable Books" page, the "OL" column is a link to the location on the open web site of the material in the printable book. Thus, if you want to track down a link, you can.

3.) Author/Work/Theme Based Exercise Books When I first started using the KISS Approach, I simply took essays from my college composition sections into the grammar classroom. The first week, students started to learn to identify all the prepositional phrases in an essay (KISS Level One). Once most students could do that, we added subjects, finite verbs and complements (KISS Level Two). Then we added clauses (Level Three), and then verbals (Level Four) and then eight additional constructions (Level Five). Which texts we used for exercises really didn't matter. This is still probably the best and most enjoyable way to teach grammar. The primary KISS objective, after all, is to enable students to analyze and intelligently discuss the function of any word in any sentence. What better way of reaching that goal could there be than to use randomly selected texts for exercises? Given the current confusion in our educational system, I now realize that that will not work for many people. But what will work?
    When I first started creating exercises for this site, I used random short selections from various works. Many of these are still on the site, and more will be added. Members of the KISS List, however, convinced me that students benefit from exercises that focus on specific constructions. And how was I going to create such exercises? I don't believe in making up cookie-cutter sentences for exercises. That is what most of those ineffective grammar books do. 
     Instead, I started taking real texts and extracting sentences from them. The easiest way to do this is to start with an electronic copy of the text and a set of desired exercise categories -- simple prepositional phrases, simple subject/verb patterns, simple clauses, mixed clauses, etc. Then it is simply a matter of cutting and pasting sentences from the text into the categories. Depending on the size of the original text, I may end up with dozens of exercises based on it. (There are at least sixty on Ouida's A Dog of Flanders.) There are, however, many people who like this approach that is based on a specific text, and thus you will find the 126-page Ouida collection as a printable book on the "Printable Books" page. (And there is a second Ouida book in preparation for KISS Levels Four and Five.) There is currently also a 102-page "Fourth Grade Grammar Review" book based entirely on Thumbelina, and a 101-page eighth grade book on Sherwood Anderson's "The Egg." (Both, by the way, include the stories.) As I will note in a moment, these books have a major advantage that the newer basic books for each grade level do not have.

4.) Grade-level Basic Workbooks The members of the KISS List are right. Into the general confusion about teaching grammar, I have thrown out a mass of exercise material with no clear starting point and no clear plan of action. I have started, therefore, to develop sequential books for grades three though eleven. (They have yellow backgrounds on the "Printable Books" page.) These books are designed as basically two fifteen-week semesters with three exercises per week. It may be a year or two before all of these books are completed, but the Printable Books page includes links to those parts of the web site where each book is being developed. Thus, even before the printable versions are ready, you can use the on-line versions as a guide for teaching, including all the exercises that are currently in them. (Remember, however, that they are subject to change as they are developed.) In effect, you can fill in the empty spaces with materials from the On-Line Resources page. (See below.)
     My objective is to build these books primarily around short stories, poems, essays, editorials, and other short texts such that the students can read, discuss, and write about the texts in connection with doing the grammar exercises. That, however, is going to take some time. Initially, therefore, you will find many of those exercises on Anderson's "The Egg" in the eighth grade basic workbook. And Ouida will dominate the ninth and tenth grade books. Another fifty or so exercises based on Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall's Stories of Robin Hood Told to the Children are ready to be put in a separate book for fifth grade, and they, for the time being, dominate the fifth grade basic workbook. This is the fastest way in which I can create the materials for these books. It does have one additional advantage -- if you are working with eighth graders, you can print the basic lesson plan for the eight grade book and also download the book on Anderson's "The Egg." You won't have them all, but you will have many of the exercises for eighth grade in one document.
     The primary advantage of these linear basic workbooks is that they provide a relatively clear sequence of instruction that should help you introduce all the important grammatical concepts in a context, and at a pace,  that should be right for your students. But these books also have numerous disadvantages (which may explain why I have hesitated to develop them). The KISS objective is not to "do exercises"; it is to master the concepts such that one can analyze sentences and understand, among other things, why errors are errors and why some sentences are more effective than others. But how many exercises do students need to do before they can automatically recognize subjects and verbs? There are, for example, nine exercises on compound main clauses in the Ouida book. Some of them are easy; others are more complex. Most are simply identification exercises, but two involve rewriting main clauses as subordinate. Nine exercises are far too many for the basic ninth grade grammar book. At three exercises a week, that would be three weeks just on compound main clauses. (And students can start learning about compound main clauses in fourthgrade!)
     Students should work with at least a few compound main clauses every year, perhaps beginning as early as fourth grade. Different writers punctuate them differently. Some writers use compounded main clauses with no subordinate clauses; others embed three or more subordinate clauses into compounded main clauses. Still others like to put four or more main clauses together in one compounded sentence. But which exercises should I put in the ninth grade  workbook? And should Ouida even be in the ninth grade workbook? What happens if students in your school read her A Dog of Flanders in eighth grade?
     Similar questions surround most of the exercises. There are, for example, three exercises on the opening sentences of Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey on the KISS site --  an identification exercise, a sentence decombining exercise, and a punctuation exercise. Which one goes in the tenth (?) grade basic workbook? Your students may need more, or fewer, punctuation exercises than I will have included in that book. No one, I am certain, is going to be satisfied with any of these basic workbooks. Thus you will want to use the On-Line Resources page.

     I have frequently been asked, "Where should I begin? And what should I do?" The answers to those questions depend on the grade level of the students you are working with and on what your objectives are. They also depend on whether you are teaching in a classroom or at home. There are some decisions that you will need to make. (See below.) But before we get to them, there are some general comments that are relevant.
    Unlike most grammar textbooks, the KISS Approach entails mastery of grammatical concepts. Most grammar textbooks give a simplistic explanation of a grammatical concept, followed by two or three (if that many) simplistic exercises. Then the books move on to a different concept, completely ignoring what was  previously studied. A month later, the students do not remember any of it. Within the KISS Approach, you should basically give students the instructional materials for a specific KISS Level or concept and then have them analyze sentences until they have demonstrated the ability to identify those concepts in almost any text that they read or write. 
     Once the students have done so, you might want to maintain their skills by periodically analyzing sentences from their own writing, by having them do some exercises from book two (primarily on style and logic) and/or from book three (literature) from the different grade levels. Or you might want to advance to the next KISS Level. You can make these decisions as you go along, but it is very important that students do some sort of short KISS analytical exercise at least every other week of the school year. Otherwise, they will forget what they have learned. In addition, I strongly suggest that students be asked to analyze a paragraph or two of their own writing at least once every year. Such "self-analysis" not only shows students how to apply what they have been learning directly to their own writing, but it also can help students see how their writing style compares to that of their classmates.

An Ideal KISS Sequence -- Beginning in Third Grade

     The five levels of the KISS sequence were originally developed for working with college students. Members of the KISS List, however, convinced me that, if you are working with third or fourth graders, you probably want to start with the basic sentence pattern. As they pointed out, third and fourth graders do not use a lot of prepositional phrases, and "adjectives" and "adverbs" do not make much sense to them unless they have an understanding of basic (very simple) sentence structure. 
     Remember, however, that these basic sentence patterns are the core of KISS Level Two, a level that can be spread across grades four, five, and six. There is no reason to rush. As it stands now, the KISS basic third grade workbook primarily devotes the first semester to basic sentence patterns and then shifts the focus to prepositional phrases. It makes more sense to have students continue to identify subjects, verbs, and complements as they identify prepositional phrases. Thus you may want to start with the basics of KISS Level Two. If students don't master it all, they will still have grades four, five and six to do so.
     My real worry, however, is that primary school students will master these concepts relatively quickly and then become bored. Think about it. Two or three five- to ten-minute exercises, every week, for thirty weeks. Adjectives, adverbs, subjects, verbs, complements, and prepositional phrases are not that difficult to master. The current problems in the teaching of grammar are not the result of grammar being difficult, but rather the result of the students never being taught to identify these basic concepts in the first place. Thus you may find that you want to make the grammar exercises subordinate to discussion of the works from which they are taken. Thus, for example, in reading and discussing William Wordsworth's "Written in March," you can put up the overhead, quickly analyze it, and note that in the first two stanzas the patterns are all S/V with no complement -- there is a lot of activity, but nothing is getting done. 
     Finally, you may want to have third graders add Direct Address, simple Interjections, and Nouns Used as Adverbs to their analytical toolbox. Students do not have to know these in order to move on to higher KISS Levels, so feel free to skip them. On the other hand, third graders use them frequently in their writing, so you may want to include them.
     Some teachers have reported being forced to teach  fourth graders to identify clauses. These teachers have been very frustrated. Unlike the textbooks, however, KISS defines clauses as S/V/C patterns. Fourth graders who can identify subjects, verbs and complements will therefore find clauses much easier to understand. In turn, an understanding of clauses will help students understand (and fix) errors such as comma-splices, run-ons, and fragments, but note that, within the "ideal" KISS curriculum, instruction in clauses is theoretically the focus of grades seven through nine. Obviously, the length and complexity of the clauses that students will be studying will differ at these grade levels, but should we expect fourth graders to master basic clause structures? (This is another of the questions for which I am looking for more feedback.)

Beginning in Middle or High School

     If you are beginning the KISS Approach with students in middle or high school, you will probably want to skip the simple sentences and start immediately with prepositional phrases. These students have usually had at least some instruction in grammar, and their writing is certainly much more sophisticated -- they use more prepositional phrases, and such phrases often confuse them as they look for subjects and verbs. It is therefore important to give these students at least some instruction in prepositional phrases before they begin to study subjects and verbs, and it is essential, in the KISS Approach, that they have the ability to identify almost every subject / verb pattern before they begin to study clauses. 
     The KISS Approach is cumulative -- new constructions are added to the analytical exercises, so those students who did not master prepositional phrases (or S/V/C patterns) will get constant review at higher KISS Levels. But if you move to higher levels before the majority of a class has mastered the lower levels, both you and your students will be frustrated. As noted above,  in the KISS ideal sequence, students have graders three, four, five, and six  to master prepositional phrases and basic S/V/C patterns. Thus they can also also study direct address, simple interjections, and nouns used as adverbs. But if you are starting with middle school students, you will probably find that any time devoted to these constructions, as simple as they may be, will confuse many students and make it more difficult to reach your primary objective.

Home-Schooling vs. the Classroom

     The preceding discussion may have already suggested that, compared to the home-school environment, classroom teachers are at a major disadvantage. Currently, no matter which grade we want to talk about, students enter the classroom with almost no ability to identify grammatical concepts. Thus, no matter which grade they are teaching, classroom teachers have to start at the beginning. As a result, in the middle and upper grades, the mission is, quite literally, impossible.
     One might think that it should not be that difficult to develop a coordinated curriculum -- across grade levels -- for teaching grammar, especially a grammar like KISS. Is it really that unreasonable to expect students entering fourth grade to be able to identify simple prepositional phrases and basic S/V/C patterns in what they write? Is it unreasonable to expect that sixth graders should be able to identify those constructions, not only in what they write, but also in what they read? Is it unreasonable to expect that eighth graders should be able to identify most clauses in what they read and write? Not only are those expectations not unreasonable, but they would also enable teachers in upper grades to build on what their students have already learned. Instruction would take much less time, be much less frustrating, and be far more fruitful.
     There are, however, many obstacles, both external and internal, to developing such coordinated curriculum plans. Externally, many of the obstacles are political. NCTE, for example, still has a resolution on its books against the teaching of grammar. NCTE is also generally opposed to any knowledge or skill-specific curriculum standards. Similarly, NCTE's Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar (ATEG) has shown little interest in discussing what grammar students should know, at which grade levels. This lack of leadership where one might expect to find it has left classroom teachers at a loss. Meanwhile, of course, the classroom teachers are under pressure to teach to the various states' "standards," but the writers of these standards have demonstrated an abysmal understanding of what grammar is, and much less of how to evaluate students' command of it.
     Although currently most members of the KISS list are home-schooling, there are some classroom teachers who are using elements of KISS in their teaching. And I have heard from some teachers who are attempting to develop more grade-coordinated curriculum plans within their schools or school systems. I'd be very interested in learning about more such efforts (and participating in them). Thus far, however, these efforts are too small and uncoordinated to help the majority of classroom teachers -- and the millions of students in their classrooms.
     Having spent almost a quarter of a century in attempting to persuade the educational community that grammar can be taught more effectively -- and more meaningfully, I've learned that it is largely a wasted effort. Most educators are not interested. Thus, to help those teachers who are, the best thing that we can probably do is to turn to the general public. Letters to the editor, short articles, perhaps a book. The questions are basic, and not even KISS-specific. Why, we might ask, are students not being taught to identify the subjects and verbs in their own writing? Year after year, students are being told that subjects must agree with their verbs in number, but what good is that instruction if students are not being taught to identify subjects and verbs in the first place? Why are students not being taught how to identify the clauses in their own writing? Parents, teachers, business executives complain that too many students can't write correct sentences. But the way to help these students is to help them understand how clauses work -- in their own writing. This is not that difficult to teach. It is not that difficult to learn. We simply are not even trying to teach it.
     My objective (our objective, I hope) is to get parents, politicians, business executives, and other people with power not only asking these same questions, but also demanding that these things be taught (and learned). When that happens, there will be much more coordination among grade levels in our schools. The result of that may not be massive adoption of the KISS curriculum design, but it will certainly result in better instruction than we currently have. You can, of course, help by writing letters or giving presentations. The only way to change the lack of grade-to-grade coordination in most public schools is to evoke outside pressure. 
     Meanwhile, I sincerely admire those classroom teachers who are struggling to do the impossible. Grades seven, eight, and nine should really focus on clauses. But the easiest way to understand clauses is, as already noted, to be able to identify subjects, finite verbs, and complements. And for middle school students, as also previously noted, the ability to identify subject and verbs depends on the ability to identify most prepositional phrases. Thus the seventh grade teacher who wants his or her students to study clauses has to first deal with the basics that, in an ideal KISS curriculum, students have had four years to master. 
     Note, however, that the situation is not entirely hopeless, especially if teachers can develop even a two-year sequence of instruction. In my fifteen-week Freshman composition course, my students get well into many of the implications (related to errors and style) of clauses. The problem is that only the better students really "get it." The weaker students don't believe that they can learn grammar, and they do not understand a program of instruction that builds on what they have learned previously. Thus they do not try, and it is ten weeks or so into the semester when they begin to realize that it is beginning to make sense. The trouble is that they have not really learned to identify prepositional phrases and/or S/V/C patterns, and thus they are lost in the discussions of clauses. 
     If my students entered the course with the ability to identify most prepositional phrases and S/V/C patterns, my (educated) guess is that most students would be able to develop an excellent command of clauses. Thus a two-year middle school sequence could be very fruitful. I seriously doubt that with three five- to ten-minute exercises a week, middle school students would have any serious problems mastering the basics of prepositional phrases and S/V/C patterns. They could even get into the basics of clauses. In the second year of the sequence, therefore, they would be where I wish my students were.

      It would certainly be nice if there were an effective, one-size-fits-all, sequential grammar textbook. One could simply start on page one and follow it, page by page, exercise after exercise. Unfortunately, there is no such animal. And the fact that most current textbooks are designed as if there were (and as if they are) such books accounts for much of the failure in the teaching of grammar in our schools. Students learn differently. Some students can grasp prepositional phrases after two or three exercises; other students may need to do fifteen or twenty exercises before they get a firm grasp of the concept. In addition, there are major differences between home-schooling, where children in essence receive one-on-one instruction -- with the same teacher year after year, and the classroom situation in which a teacher faces a hundred or more new students each year. And these students have a wide range of previous experience, desire to learn, etc. No one book can meet the needs of these radically different situations, especially when it involves the teaching of grammar. Eventually, there may be KISS-based books targeted to specific situations, but for now you will need to make at least seven different types of decisions. These are not really difficult, but you need to be aware of them.

1.) Which constructions when?

     As noted above, the KISS Curriculum is designed such that mastery of some concepts is crucial for learning later concepts, but some concepts can be dealt with either early or very late. 

2.) Creating Your Own Directions for Exercises

     Because the KISS Approach is basically cumulative, and because you will be setting you own objectives,  you will have to determine your own set of "Directions" for the identification exercises. This is not difficult to do. The identification exercises on the web include a link to "Directions," a page that will help you create the directions for your students. Note that you should not have to give the students directions for every exercise. They should simply understand that, until you change or add something, they follow the set they have been given (placing parentheses around prepositional phrases, identifying, S/V/C patterns, etc.) 
     Near the top of the on-line analysis keys you will find a link to the "Code and Color Key." In addition to explaining the codes and colors used in the analysis keys, this key is also called "The KISS Grammar Toolbox." It presents, in very brief form, all the essential concepts that students will need to learn. 
     Because of their importance, the Guide for Creating Directions and the Code and Color Key are available in a separate Printable Book.

3.) Which Terms and/or Concepts?

     The essence of "KISS" is "keeping it simple." (For more on the name, click here.) The most important thing to keep simple is the terminology. The research that supposedly proves that teaching grammar is "harmful" actually proves that too much grammatical terminology is the culprit. (For more on this, click here.) As a result, almost everything that students do not need in order to analyze and discuss sentence structure has been stripped from the KISS core. You may, however, want to put a few terms that KISS eliminates back into your own instruction. The most significant of these are expletives, and objective complements. These are often referred to, within the Analysis Keys, as optional explanations. Remember that the ultimate question is not Which explanation is right? the question is Which makes more sense to you and your students?
    Because it focuses on the analysis of real, and ultimately extremely complicated sentences, KISS treats some clauses differently than traditional grammar textbooks do. (Click here if you want to know about it now.)  You will find more detailed explanations of all of these concepts and terms in the "KISS Differences" section of the instructional material for each KISS level. I might note, by the way, that the current confusion in the teaching of grammar makes it highly unlikely that your students might miss a question on some standardized test because of these differences. Currently, for example, very few English teachers can identify objective and subjective complements.

4.) Managing the "Confusion Factor"

     As I have frequently noted, most textbooks give students weak and simplistic instructional material plus very simple, "cookie-cutter" sentences as exercises. Most students do not need to think in order to do these exercises, and thus they do not learn much. This is reflected in the fact that many teachers complain that the students can do the exercises in the grammar textbooks, but that little, if anything,  transfers to their writing. Students should almost always need to think about what they are doing in the exercises. In other words, there should always be some element of confusion that requires thought. But if the amount of confusion is too great, students will simply become frustrated. The art of teaching grammar is the ability to regulate this confusion factor. It is the most important thing that teachers do.
     A good example of this is the problem of verbals, especially verbals that function as adjectives and adverbs. These verbals can really confuse students who are trying to learn how to identify S/V/C patterns. Primary and middle school students, for example, use very few gerundives, so one way to avoid the extra confusion is to use for exercises sentences that do not contain such verbals (or at least sentences that use very few of them). Such exercises, for example, might be used with third and fourth graders, and then, in fifth grade, students could be introduced to sentences that do include verbals. KISS includes specific instructional material for distinguishing finite verbs from verbals, but even here a choice (and a caution) needs to be made.
     Some teachers attempt to teach verbals (gerunds, gerundives, and infinitives) to primary school children. You can, of course, choose to do that, but I would caution against it. For primary school students to identify finite verbs in stories, poems, and anything else they may read or write, it is very important that they be able to distinguish finite verbs from verbals. But they do not need to be able to identify the types of verbals. For understanding sentence structure, clauses are much more important than are verbals. Time spent on learning to identify the types of verbals could be much better spent on learning to identify clauses.
     The KISS sequence of instruction also means that students should be expected to make some specific mistakes. For example, they will not be able to identify clauses that function as direct objects until they get to clauses in KISS Level Three. This does not, however, mean that teachers should never explain to students constructions that the students are not expected to learn. For example, when students who are working at KISS Level Two run across a subordinate clause that functions as a direct object, teachers might well tell the students that 1 ) they were expected to miss that, 2) it is a clause that functions as a direct object, and 3) they will study clauses in KISS Level Three. Similarly, with verbals, teachers can expect students to learn that, in a particular sentence, a word is a verbal and not a finite verb. The teacher might then tell the students that this particular word is a gerund, gerundive, or infinitive, but also tell them that they are not expected to remember that until they get to KISS Level Four.
     The key here, of course, is in keeping a clear distinction (both for the students and by the teacher) between those constructions that the students are expected to master and those that are simply being explained as supplemental, anticipatory information. Note that this approach is significantly different from what is currently usually done -- students  are "taught" and expected to remember all kinds of grammatical concepts. And most students remember none of it.

5.) Grammar Beyond KISS?

     Because it is almost pure muscle for analyzing and discussing sentence structure (syntax), there are some other grammatical concepts that you may want to add to KISS. For example, KISS pays scant attention to the tenses of verbs. The current suggestion is to introduce students to them in fourth or fifth grade so that the students will recognize "will have been," etc. as part of a finite verb phrase. For discussing sentence structure, there is no need to have students remember the names of the various tenses. To most grammarians, this is a ghastly omission, but most grammarians are concerned with what they teach and not with what students learn. Since most grammar textbooks do not teach students how to identify verbs in the first place, the only thing that most students remember about tense is that it makes them nervous. Within the KISS framework, tense may make much more sense to students, and in the future more work with tenses may be added to these workbooks. Meanwhile, you can find more information about verb tenses in any traditional grammar textbook. (Just be sure that you pick one that does not deny the existence of "future tense." Yes, there are such books.)
     KISS also pays little attention to "transitive," "intransitive," and "linking" verbs. Several grammar teachers have objected to this, but the only way in which to determine if a verb in a specific sentence is transitive, intransitive, or linking is to examine its complement. Transitive verbs have indirect and direct objects; intransitive verbs have no complement; and linking verbs have either predicate adjectives or predicate nouns. Since the sentence pattern is what is important, and since recognition of the sentence pattern determines the type of the verb, the definitions of the three types of verbs may be more than useless. It is almost like going from New York to San Diego to get to Milwaukee. I would note, however, that "transitive" and "intransitive" are important vocabulary terms. There is, for example, a famous philosopher/literary critic who discusses "write" as a "transitive" verb. 
     Finally, I have seen some descriptions and discussions of KISS that claimed that KISS does not teach punctuation. Since then, the basic rules of punctuation have been added. But most of the problems that students have with punctuation involve the punctuation of clauses. KISS has always included exercises about this, but KISS also enables students to identify clauses. Thus these exercises are primarily in the middle and high school texts. The best exercises on punctuation, by the way, are published texts from which the punctuation and capitalization have been stripped. The students are then asked to add the punctuation and capitalization. Then they can discuss how -- and why -- their versions differ from the original writer's. There are a number of such exercises on the KISS site, but you can easily make additional ones if your students need them.

6.) Range of Objectives

     Another question that teachers must decide for themselves is the range of their objectives. KISS is based on the premise that before students can understand questions related to errors, style in writing, and logic, they must be able to identify the constructions in a sentence. Students cannot master that analytical ability in one year, and thus some analytical exercises must be taught every year. These analytical exercises will not require much time -- either for homework or in class. Some teachers, particularly those who feel uncomfortable with their own analytical ability, may want to limit instruction to these analytical exercises. They can do so by simply using the printable workbook for their grade level. 
     Some parents and teachers, however, may want to go beyond this minimum and have students apply what they are learning to their own writing by using recipe rosters (Write a sentence with a compound verb.), by using sentence-combining exercises, and/or by having the students analyze their own writing, even statistically. At some point, of course, all students should go beyond the analytical exercises, but they need not do so every year. The teaching of grammar is an art, and teachers must make some artistic decisions.

7.) The Pace of Instruction

      Although from what I understand, the British suffer from it too, I call it the "American fallacy" everything has to be done ASAP. In the teaching of grammar, this means that everything has to be taught as soon as possible. As a result, primary school children often have everything dumped on them. Their ships sink, and they have no interest in grammar ever after. Indeed, they fear it. The KISS instructional material enables students to explain how every word in every English sentence connects to a main subject/verb pattern. It enables students to explore questions of errors, style, and logic. (KISS explanations do not satisfy linguists, but linguists would not accept an explanation of baseball unless it included a detailed account of the physics of a ball in flight.)
     In an ideal curriculum, KISS instructional materials end in eleventh grade because there is nothing left that students really need to know. Indeed, if your students start in third grade, you will find that you have decided to cover much of that material (interjections, nouns used as adverbs, direct address) well before the students get to eleventh grade. You will also find that the instructional materials for KISS Levels Three and Four (clauses and verbals) are relatively very easy for students who have mastered KISS Levels One and Two. Similarly, mastery of verbals (KISS Level Four) is relatively easy for students who can identify finite verbs. Verbals are simply those verbs in a sentence that the students have learned not to underline twice. Indeed, the instructional material for KISS Level Four is much shorter and simpler than that for KISS Levels One or Two. (Check it out.)  There is no need to rush. Slow and steady wins the race.

     The short answer to this question is that students should do two, probably no more than three, short exercises every week. In most cases, these exercises should take them no more than fifteen minutes to complete. Many will take them much less time. This estimate is entirely realistic because unlike every other approach to teaching grammar, KISS focuses on teaching students to master one construction before adding another, and it builds on what students have previously learned. 
     There are, of course, a few assignments that should take students longer than fifteen minutes. Most of these assignments involve analyzing (in some cases, statistically) a 200- 250-word selection of their own or someone else's writing. Teachers who are worried about spending too much time on grammar should note, however, that these are not just "grammar" exercises -- they are exercises that primarily focus on differences in writing styles.
      Teachers should find the KISS Approach easy to use and not at all demanding on their time. As far as grading is concerned, the only things that teachers need to grade are four or five short assessment quizzes a year. Most of the other assignments should be reviewed (in most cases, briefly discussed) in class, or students can check each others' papers in small groups. In reviewing identification exercises in class, teachers may want to use an overhead and mark the answers on it with a washable ink pen as the students provide them, perhaps using the KISS Grammar Game, which my students seem to love. I am well aware of teachers' problems in getting and preparing instructional material -- that is why this site has not only instructional material, but also far more exercises (and their analysis keys) than anyone will ever want or need.

     Assessment quizzes are essential in guiding classroom instruction. The basic workbooks include a few "Assessment Quizzes," but any short exercise can be used as one. Make them short. A student who can correctly identify the clauses in three sentences can almost certainly identify them in ten. Making them longer only makes more work for teachers. Once students start doing well on these assessments, you can change the nature of your instruction. You can, for example, give and review only one assignment in each of the following weeks. Or you can choose some other assignment, perhaps focussing on writing or stylistic assignments. 
     An interesting way to use assessment quizzes is to give automatic A's on the next three or four assignments to students who earn an A on an assessment quiz. Thus the students who need the work will have to do it; those who do not will not, and, if you do grade homework, you will justifiably have less to grade. Then too, if the students know that this is your policy, they will have an additional incentive.

          In conclusion, please remember: 

Our educational system has done a terrible job of teaching grammar. Most teachers, if they have been taught it at all, have been taught very poorly. There is no reason, therefore,  for you to feel embarrassed about asking even the simplest questions.

There are many, and fundamentally different, grammars of English. These grammars use different, and sometimes conflicting terms to describe grammatical constructions. Although some of these sources can be helpful, most of my students have learned that searching through other grammar books (and web sites) simply adds to their confusion. It is much more effective to ask a question. (Once you do have a good grasp of KISS grammatical concepts, however, you are more than welcome to compare them to what you will find in other textbooks.)

Children teach themselves (subconsciously) dozens of times more about grammar before they are five than they will ever learn, or need to learn, in school. They do so inductively. No one gives them the "rules." Similarly, in learning a "conscious," analytical system for describing the grammar of sentences, one should do so inductively, with plenty of practice. As one student told me at the end of the semester, "At first those definitions and concepts looked impossible to learn. But I worked my way through the exercises, and then I found myself analyzing some of the sentences in other things I was reading." (And this was in a composition course in which about six class periods were devoted to grammar.)

In the KISS Approach, you will usually be working with real, randomly selected texts, not with the sanitized, simplistic sentences that are usually found in most textbook exercises. You are going to hit complications. You are going to make mistakes. Relax, have fun, and don't worry about making mistakes or even about giving poor or incorrect answers to your students. Most prepositional phrases, most S/V/C patterns, and most clauses are very simple. There is no way in which you can mess them up. An occasional error on your or the student's part is no different than the child's "He cutted the paper." Once you and your students get a good conscious mastery of the basic constructions, the comparatively rare problem areas will become more and more clear.

     I am assuming that parents who are schooling their children at home are simply printing the texts, the exercises and the relevant analysis keys and showing them to their children. The classroom situation, obviously, is different. But it is also different in that classroom teachers cover the same material, year after year. Paper is expensive, and ink cartridges are more so. But there are some things that you can do to save money and time.
      It is probably a good idea to give students copies of the identification exercises that they can write on. Many students will find copying such texts to be boring busywork. But you will probably find that you will need fewer of these than you may initially think. Most of these exercises are short enough to fit on a single piece of paper. 
     You may find it worthwhile to print overhead transparencies of some exercises and answer keys. When I begin work with students, I use overheads of the exercises and mark them with a washable ink pen as the students give me the answers in class. I then wipe them off with a damp paper towel. (Putting them in a suitable sheet protector and doing the marking on the protector will make the transparency last longer.) Once the students have done a few exercises, you may just want to show them the analysis key and discuss it. 
     To save paper and ink, you may want to have students do the stylistic exercises on separate paper, even if my directions suggest that students write on the exercise sheet.. That way you can print enough for your largest class (plus a few spares), give them to the students in class, tell them not to write on them, and collect them after the class is done. By doing this, I have been able to use the same sheets of paper for several years.
     As for having the students read the literature, some of the texts are very short, and you may find it best to make transparencies of these so that your students can read and discuss them in class. When printed, some of the longer poems and stories take up three or more sheets of paper, but here again you can make one set, hand them out at the beginning of class, and tell the students not to write on them. If, as I assume you will, you use these texts as literature, and not just as grammar exercises, making such sets should be worth the time and expense.
     You are welcome to print (and adapt) as many copies of the exercises and instructional  materials as you wish for you and your students, and once you find a set of materials that you like, you can print them as booklets -- and get rid of those expensive and confusing "language arts" books. (See: "Save Money! Burn the Grammar Textbooks!") Obviously, you do not have permission to sell anything that includes KISS materials without permission.

     These are very important for understanding basic concepts behind KISS Grammar.

Teaching Grammar with the KISS Approach: "I Don't Know"

The Smartest People Ask the 'Stupid' Questions

The KISS Approach to Grammatical Errors

The KISS Approach to Teaching Punctuation

The KISS Approach to Teaching Sentence Style

The KISS Differences: A Comparison with Traditional Concepts and Instruction

What's New in the Workbooks?
Using KISS Grammar Exercises and Instructional Materials
Join the KISS List.
The KISS Workbooks Anthology
Writing Samples from State Standards
Glossary / Index of Grammatical Terms