Commas in the Chaos

Subject verb agreement seems simple until students keep missing it. In this episode, we’re looking underneath the agreement rule to figure out what may actually be causing the struggle.

I’ll walk you through the foundational skills students need before they can successfully make subjects and verbs agree, including identifying subjects and verbs, connecting the correct subject to its verb, and avoiding the trap of choosing a verb based on the closest noun.

We’ll also talk about why “what sounds right” isn’t enough and how one simple question, “How do you know?” can give you valuable insight into how your students are thinking.

If you’re tired of reteaching subject-verb agreement without seeing it stick, this episode will help you pinpoint the breakdown, so you know what to teach next.

Click the form here!

• Instagram: @uniquelyupper
• Show Notes: www.uniquelyupper.com
• TpT Store: Uniquely Upper on TpT
• Email: [email protected]
• The Grammar Collective

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Your students can answer your questions, follow your prompts, and get the right answer during a grammar lesson then struggle the second they have to do it on their own.

That doesn’t always mean they need the skill retaught.

In this episode, we’re looking at the difference between knowing a grammar skill and being able to use that knowledge independently. We’ll talk about why whole-group success can be misleading, how teacher prompts can quietly carry more of the thinking than we realize, and what it means to intentionally hand that thinking over to students.

You’ll walk away with one important question to ask when students seem successful with you but struggle without you:

Who was doing the thinking?

Because real independence isn’t about giving less help. It’s about students owning more of the decision-making.

Read more about the membership and what it includes. Click here to learn more.

• Instagram: @uniquelyupper
• Show Notes: www.uniquelyupper.com
• TpT Store: Uniquely Upper on TpT
• Email: [email protected]
• The Grammar Collective

👉 Don’t forget to subscribe to Commas in the Chaos wherever you listen to podcasts so you never miss an episode!

Students can circle the right answer and still not understand why it's right. That gap is what grammar discussion closes.

In this episode, I walk through how I would lead grammar discussions in my classroom, starting with the layers students move through: identify the skill, explain how they know, prove it with evidence, compare choices, and apply it in a new way. I share a sample sentence and the exact questions I ask, from sentence type and structure all the way down to classifying a single noun.

I also get into what to do when a student gives the wrong answer. The mistake isn't the problem; it's the information, and I explain how to find the thinking behind it without putting anyone on the spot.

Then I break down the three-part move I come back to again and again: ask, listen, investigate. Plus a small set of go-to questions that work with any sentence, so you're not hunting for a new list every week.

This doesn't require restructuring your block. It takes five to ten minutes a day, a couple of days a week.

Read more about the membership and what it includes. Click here to learn more.

• Instagram: @uniquelyupper
• Show Notes: www.uniquelyupper.com
• TpT Store: Uniquely Upper on TpT
• Email: [email protected]
• The Grammar Collective

👉 Don’t forget to subscribe to Commas in the Chaos wherever you listen to podcasts so you never miss an episode!

Students can circle the right answer and still not understand why it's right. That gap is what grammar discussion closes.

In this episode, I walk through how I would lead grammar discussions in my classroom, starting with the layers students move through: identify the skill, explain how they know, prove it with evidence, compare choices, and apply it in a new way. I share a sample sentence and the exact questions I ask, from sentence type and structure all the way down to classifying a single noun.

I also get into what to do when a student gives the wrong answer. The mistake isn't the problem; it's the information, and I explain how to find the thinking behind it without putting anyone on the spot.

Then I break down the three-part move I come back to again and again: ask, listen, investigate. Plus a small set of go-to questions that work with any sentence, so you're not hunting for a new list every week.

This doesn't require restructuring your block. It takes five to ten minutes a day, a couple of days a week.

The BUILD Framework Grammar Course

• Instagram: @uniquelyupper
• Show Notes: www.uniquelyupper.com
• TpT Store: Uniquely Upper on TpT
• Email: [email protected]
• The Grammar Collective

👉 Don’t forget to subscribe to Commas in the Chaos wherever you listen to podcasts so you never miss an episode!

Ever had a student point to a word, ask what part of speech it is, and realize the honest answer is "well, it depends"? That same word can be a noun in one sentence, a verb in the next, and an adjective in the one after that. It is one of the trickiest parts of teaching grammar. Most of us learned parts of speech as a list to memorize, not as jobs that words actually do.

In this episode, I share a simple shift that makes those slippery words so much easier to talk through with your students. Instead of asking "what part of speech is this word," we ask one better question: "What is this word doing in the sentence?" We walk through real examples together, like light as a noun, a verb, and an adjective, and past as both a preposition and a noun, and I show you how this small change helps students reason through any word in any sentence instead of trying to remember which category it usually belongs to.

You will also hear how this connects back to the bigger idea of foundation before context, plus two easy things you can try when a confusing word comes up in your classroom.

If you have not listened to The Great Grammar Debate yet, start there first. It lays out the argument underneath this whole conversation: why students need explicit grammar instruction before we can expect them to apply it in their own writing.

Episode 19: The Great Grammar Debate

• Instagram: @uniquelyupper
• Show Notes: www.uniquelyupper.com
• TpT Store: Uniquely Upper on TpT
• Email: [email protected]
• The Grammar Collective

👉 Don’t forget to subscribe to Commas in the Chaos wherever you listen to podcasts so you never miss an episode!

Most teachers start the year with subjects and predicates. It feels logical. But year after year, students struggle, and the reason almost always traces back to the same missing piece: parts of speech.

In this episode, I share the light bulb moment that changed how I start every school year and walk through exactly why parts of speech have to come before everything else in your grammar sequence. I also break it down by grade level so you know what to prioritize, whether you teach third, fourth, or fifth grade.

If you are heading into a new school year and wondering where to start, this one is for you.

Want to see what the first 18 weeks of grammar instruction look like, built out for your grade level? Check out the BUILD Framework at https://www.thegrammarcollective.com/build-framework

• Instagram: @uniquelyupper
• Show Notes: www.uniquelyupper.com
• TpT Store: Uniquely Upper on TpT
• Email: [email protected]
• The Grammar Collective

👉 Don’t forget to subscribe to Commas in the Chaos wherever you listen to podcasts so you never miss an episode!

There is a debate happening in grammar instruction, and most teachers are caught right in the middle of it. On one side, explicit instruction. On the other hand, grammar in context. Both sides have research. Both sides have teachers who swear by them. And neither side is actually wrong.

In this episode, I walk through why both camps are pointing to something true, what gets assumed when we swing toward context-based approaches, and why the gap between knowing a grammar skill and using it in writing is not a failure. It is a pathway problem. Most importantly, we discuss the missing piece that neither side has addressed.

If today's episode got you thinking about what a complete grammar system looks like, check out the BUILD Framework at https://www.thegrammarcollective.com/build-framework

• Instagram: @uniquelyupper
• Show Notes: www.uniquelyupper.com
• TpT Store: Uniquely Upper on TpT
• Email: [email protected]

👉 Don’t forget to subscribe to Commas in the Chaos wherever you listen to podcasts so you never miss an episode!

Grammar skills disappear from student writing all the time. It is frustrating and fixable. In this episode, I break down the three most common reasons it happens in upper elementary classrooms: missing foundational skills, teaching a skill once and moving on, and students learning the rule without understanding why it matters. Each one comes with a practical fix you can use right away.

If today's episode got you thinking about how you sequence grammar instruction, get on the waitlist for the BUILD Framework at thegrammarcollective.com/build-framework.

• Join the Waitlist: https://www.thegrammarcollective.com/build-framework
• Read the full show notes: https://uniquelyupper.com/3-reasons-grammar-skills-disappear/

• Instagram: @uniquelyupper
• Show Notes: www.uniquelyupper.com
• TpT Store: Uniquely Upper on TpT
• Email: [email protected]

👉 Don’t forget to subscribe to Commas in the Chaos wherever you listen to podcasts so you never miss an episode!

Grammar planning for upper elementary teachers is one of the hardest things to do without a curriculum, a sequence, or a real system to work from.

In this relaunch episode, I'm sharing what I've been building behind the scenes: the BUILD Framework, a 7-module system that takes the guesswork out of grammar instruction. I'll walk you through what's inside each module, why I built it, and what's coming for the podcast this season.

In this episode:

• Why does grammar planning feel so hard
• What the BUILD Framework is and what each module covers
• What's coming on Commas in the Chaos this season

• Join The BUILD Framework: https://www.thegrammarcollective.com/build-framework
• Read the full show notes: https://uniquelyupper.com/grammar-planning-for-upper-elementary/

• Instagram: @uniquelyupper
• Show Notes: www.uniquelyupper.com
• TpT Store: Uniquely Upper on TpT
• Email: [email protected]

👉 Don’t forget to subscribe to Commas in the Chaos wherever you listen to podcasts so you never miss an episode!

Let’s talk about the CUPS Strategy for Student Editing — and no, not the kind that holds your coffee. CUPS stands for Capitalization, Usage, Punctuation, and Spelling, and it is one of those classroom tools that most know about but rarely feel confident teaching.

When I first started teaching, I would hand my students a CUPS checklist, tell them to edit, and then cross my fingers. I pretended that they knew what to do. Spoiler alert: they didn’t.

In all transparency, I didn’t really know how to teach CUPS. I knew what each letter stood for, but not how to model it, break it down, or help students understand what “check for usage” even meant. So instead of our writing/editing block being productive, we ended up wasting time circling random words and missing real errors.

Over the years, I taught myself and my students a simple way to teach the CUPS Strategy for Editing that made sense for my brain and theirs.

I created this method because I wanted my students to stop guessing and start understanding. I was tired of editing, feeling like a scavenger hunt, and seeing testing scores that reflected it. I wanted it to feel structured, clear, and more meaningful.

The routine I’m sharing in this episode is built around a simple pattern: Fix. Explain. Imitate.

When students fix a mistake, explain the rule, and imitate it in their own writing, they move beyond surface-level editing. They start noticing patterns and applying them in new contexts. It’s short, it’s structured, and it actually works.

The best part? It takes less than ten minutes a day.

• https://uniquelyupper.com/cups-strategy-for-student-editing/

• Instagram: @uniquelyupper
• Show Notes: www.uniquelyupper.com
• TpT Store: Uniquely Upper on TpT
• Email: [email protected]

👉 Don’t forget to subscribe to Commas in the Chaos wherever you listen to podcasts so you never miss an episode!