Johanna,
    First of all, I want to thank you for the way in which you reacted to my criticism. Second, I would note that I have the same criticism (sterile, useless, even harmful) about ALL the published grammar textbooks, including all of those written by members of this list. I have yet to see a grammar textbook that even tries to end by having students analyze their own writing. Thus, they are all sterile. Third, no, you are not dense, the KISS site has been difficult to navigate. In part that is because it addresses so many aspects of the problem * the historical, the theoretical, and the political as well as the practical. 

    You asked how the various lessons correlate to particular grades. The best page from which to see this is relatively new, and it is the page to which I have recently referred the members of this list:

http://home.pct.edu/~evavra/kiss/wb/LPlans/Guide_Book1.htm

There you will find the five KISS levels laid out. In the gold box directly under each level, there are four links, one of which leads to the links to the  instructional material for that level. I'm still not happy with much of the instructional material. In part that is because the material needs to be used differently by a primary school teacher as opposed to a middle school teacher who is attempting to begin the KISS Approach in seventh or eighth grade. 
     Beneath the four links, there is a list of the constructions to be added at that level. Each of these has links to the "workbooks" for a specific grade level. Large areas of these books are still empty, simply because I have had to do almost all the work myself. (I have had some help from members of the KISS list.) In these workbooks, there are "left" and "right" arrows for each construction, and these arrows will take people from one grade level to another. Thus, if "Noun clauses" in seventh grade are now empty, you can click on the right arrow and you will find an exercise that focuses on noun clauses. Thus, the whole approach, and all the exercises are laid out.

     I might note here that in a sense, I am now engaged in what I criticized you for doing * I am creating more simple exercises based on simple, or simplified, sentences, all focusing on the same construction. Originally, KISS exercises were based on randomly selected passages. For a good example, see the exercises based on E. B. White's The Trumpet of the Swan at:

http://home.pct.edu/~evavra/kiss/wb/G04/Apr/D04/Notes.htm

My own students, and members of the KISS list, convinced me that at least some students would do better if they first saw exercises that focus on specific constructions. That led to exercises such as those on "Thumbelina" at:

http://home.pct.edu/~evavra/kiss/wb/G04/Apr/D26/Notes.htm

If the KISS Approach is started in primary school, there is plenty of time for such exercises, or even more specific exercises such as those that are based on sentences, rather than passages. See, for example, the exercises on complements at the top of the first book for grade four:

http://home.pct.edu/~evavra/kiss/wb/LPlans/G04_BWB1.htm

The KISS site, by the way, already has more exercises (with analysis keys) than anyone will need, but different teachers may prefer to use different texts. Ultimately, at each KISS Level, the objective is to have the students analyze and discuss their own writing (and passages of their own choosing). 

   You asked for a link to the first lesson on prepositional phrases. Rather than that, I'm sending the link to the Level One instructional material. The basic lesson on prepositional phrases is there, but you will also find material on "to" as a preposition (or not), etc. There is a glossary on the site, but it does not always link to the instructional material. Thus the Guide page (above) is the better route.

   You asked what I think about the "tips" you offered. Personally, I don't see them as helpful, primarily because either they do not always work, or they require conscious command of grammatical terminology (tense, for example) that most students don't yet have. You can, of course, argue that, and ultimately I would say that if it works, then use it. But consider the sentence tag. It sounds great if one already knows grammar, but it doesn't work for long, compound/complex sentences. And it does not work for many students. The student who writes "Because I said so." will not realize that it is a fragment simply by changing it to "Because I said so, didn't I?" I still believe in Wittgenstein's "ostensive" definition * a definition by pointing and thus by examples. The NCTE "linguistic" reviewer of the KISS manuscript made fun of this, but then that reviewer, as I have pointed out before, isn't very bright * or educated. (It's the same person who said that noun absolutes can only function as sentence modifiers.)

   Wittgenstein's argument simply makes sense. We learn the meanings of most of the words that we know, not by studying definitions, but rather by hearing and then using them in contexts. You have, I believe, said that students already have a good command of the language. Unconsciously, they know what finite verbs are. I don't have problems in giving the students the "tips," but I would suggest that remembering these "tips," some of which don't always work, is a lot more boring, and less helpful than reviewing a simple set of sentences in class by using the KISS Grammar game. My college students love to play that game, and I'm sure that younger students will as well. And in the process, they review the homework and see more examples of, for example, finite verbs. For me, it is a question of which approach is more effective, and which is more fun.

    If I remember correctly, you asked what "KISS" means and I did not answer. It stands for "Keep It Simple, Stupid." The name was a major target of most of the reviewers of the NCTE KISS manuscript, many of whom were more interested in political correctness than they were in effective instruction. For more on the name, see:

http://home.pct.edu/~evavra/ED498/Essay018_KISS.htm

That page suggests alternatives for that last "S," but personally I would suggest that any teacher who wants to ban the word "Stupid" is stupid. Banning the word does not make what it represents disappear, and stupidity is simply a matter of choice. Note, in addition, that KISS does not ever imply that any specific student is stupid. The implication is that stupidity results from making things more complicated than they need to be. 

    I would like to comment on the suggestions about collecting various state's assessment guidelines. While I have no problem with those who want to do so, I would suggest that they also collect * and make available *  the various sets of writing samples that sometimes accompany these guidelines. The Pennsylvania set, that I recently referred to is one example. Arizona has also given me permission to use theirs. See, for example, 

http://home.pct.edu/~evavra/kiss/wb/G03/Dec/D02/Notes.htm

We should also push for more such collections of students' writing, indeed entire individual classes, being made available on the web for use in teaching and instruction. I have, for example, recently received permission to use the North Carolina samples, but I immediately noted that their fourth grade samples differ significantly from the samples I found for Tennessee (which has not answered my request to use theirs). The Tennessee samples that I have (which have since been replaced) are fascinating in that there were more of them, and they reflected more of the "lower" end of the scale * in other words, they included more examples from those students who really need our help. Put differently, they included more examples of the problems that fourth grade teachers actually face. 
      Ideally, we should be able to explore and discuss samples such as these, to see what students at various grade levels are actually doing, before we make recommendations about standards. Among other things, members of ATEG who do not feel competent to argue the grammar could have a very important role to play here. Collecting these samples, and transcribing them, is an arduous task in itself. But these samples are very important, and it really is important that they be transcribed by people who are not doing the actual research. (I have tried to sidestep this on the KISS site by making scans of the original writing available, but that takes still more time.) Making such collections available on the ATEG website would be a superb, extremely beneficial  project.

     Finally, I apologize if my posts sound "preachy." You noted that you haven't really tried to analyze the writing of students. I've been doing so, and studying the related problems, for more than two decades. In between classes and meetings, I've tried to share some of the perspectives that I've noted.
Thanks,
Ed

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