Target Grade Level: 3rd – 5th

Grammar Island, Grammar Town and Grammar Voyage by Michael Clay Thompson provide a comprehensible yet sophisticated introduction to grammar for the elementary grades. They ignore the low limits traditional at this level and include content often withheld until middle school or even high school.

Grammar Island introduces, in very simple fashion, the full four-level grammar of (1) parts of speech, (2) parts of sentences, (3) phrases, and (4) clauses. Each page focuses on a single concept, and the teaching approach is to read together with kids, talk about the concepts, ask questions, refer back, and respond to questions before venturing further.

Grammar Town builds on the foundation presented in Grammar Island and offers increasingly sophisticated concepts with the theme set in a townscape.

Grammar Voyage is designed to build on the foundations established in Grammar Island and Grammar Town, both in terms of the four-level analysis and visually. It reinforces the vocabulary of Caesar’s English II and the poetics of World of Poetry as well as the spirit and intellectual demands of Essay Voyage.

The teacher manual contains a great deal of material to discuss with the students on nearly every page: pre and post tests, activities for specific topics, the answers to the quizzes in the student book, and a CD including Michael Clay Thompson’s reading of the story that runs through the student book as well as additional tests for each of the four levels.

Many students who complete the Grammar Island series continue grammar instruction using MCT’s Magic Lens.

About the Author: Michael Clay Thompson received his bachelor’s degree from Washington and Lee University, studied for gifted education accreditation at Mars Hill College and obtained his MA from Western Carolina University. During his teaching career he taught in schools in Indiana, Tennessee, and North Carolina. He has served on the Board of Directors of the National Association for Gifted Children and as an online instructor in Language Arts for the Northwestern University Gifted Learning Links program. Michael Clay Thompson has written more than 70 books.