Gimme’ Grammar

Balanced Literacy Academy

Robyn Haug and Shawn Riley

What do you want your students to know?

Editing Skills Grammar Skills

How do you teach it?

Grammatical Concept

How I have taught it

Results

The Great Debate

Grammar Worksheets

Present skills in isolation

Makes kids believe grammar is only found in books of rules

Kids find them BORING!!!

Popular Daily Grammar Instruction

A teacher places an incorrect sentence on the board or on a worksheet…

the boy seed a dog rabbit bird?

DOL, Sitton Spelling, McDougal all use this approach at times

Next…

Students attack the sentence. They are well trained to know that any sentence put in front them must have mistakes!

Add a comma! Put a capital letter!

Find a spelling error!

No Need to Think! Just attack!

There’s Just One Problem…

How often do we see pieces of real writing with one sentence standing by itself?

How often do we see worksheets teaching kids about grammar with one sentence standing by itself?

Something doesn’t add up!

What’s the purpose of editing?

To make the writing easier for the reader to understand

To improve the overall quality of the writing

What is the best way to teach kids these skills?????

If you wanted to be great at basketball…

Would you watchA 4 year old playing

or

LeBron James in the

NBA?

If you wanted to be famous artist

would you studya first grade work of art?

or

Monet?

If you want to be a great writer

Would you studyIncorrect sentences

or

authentic wonderfully crafted sentences?

The girl was an expert at washing linens, chopping leeks, paring potatoes, and mopping floors.

From: Mirette on the High Wire by Emily Arnold McCully

the boy seed a dog rabbit bird?

All too often children

• Stare at incorrect sentences

• Work with unauthentic writing samples

• Play a guessing game with editing

• Think editing is just a checklist you mindlessly check off

How do authors improve their writing?

By READING Great Writing!!

How do students improve their writing?

By READING!!

Great Writing

The Solution?

Look at great sentences and discuss:

• Writing Craft

• Grammar

• Stylistic Choices

3 Simple Steps

Invite Students to

• Notice / Collect

• Imitate

• Celebrate

Invite Them to Notice

Start off with a great sentence and ask…

What do you notice that is correct about this sentence?

Let their responses guide your lesson. Go where they lead you. Try to hit at least one craft and

mechanics noticing. You don’t have to hit it all but you might need to nudge them at times!

A Great Sentence From a Great Writer

His room smelled of cooked grease, Lysol, and age.

-Maya Angelou

Questions to Probe Deeper

Craft:• What’s working with the

text?• What’s effective?• Where is the good

writing? Author’s Craft?• What else is the writer

doing?

Mechanics:• What’s the punctuation or

capitalization doing?• What effect does the

punctuation have on the reading aloud of this sentence?

• What changes happen if we remove it?

• What is the writer accomplishing with his/her choices?

Invite Them to Imitate

• Breakdown the sentence for its important features.

• Teacher should imitate the sentence making sure to note the breakdown of important features.

• Model to students how to insert own experiences into the sentence while still keeping the important features.

Here’s a Sample

Hector’s room smelled of Hot Cheetos, gym socks, and lies.

Mrs. Haug’s office smells of file folders, Starbuck’s Coffee, and ideas.

Have your students write one!

Imitate it outside the model!

As I wandered through the Hilton Hotels, I wondered how they could be so big, so colorful, and always seem to reek of wealth.

Still showing understanding of commas in a series, capital letters for a name brand, and an abstract thought adding depth to the writing.

Invite Them to Celebrate• Students share the imitations “Who has a

sentence they would like to share?”

• Have them put them into a class notebook, on transparencies, sentence strips, or notecards

• Discuss what worked well

• Students will do what is celebrated!

Well Written Sentences in What Kids are Reading Today

• “I was concentrating on piling the dishes into the bubbly water, and I’d forgotten that Jacob moved like a ghost these days.”– Stephanie Meyer, Eclipse

• Compound sentences (commas and conjunctions)• Similes

More Great Sentences…

• “That’s how things were out here in the wild, she was learning. Dangerous or beautiful. Or both.”– Scott Westerfeld, Uglies– Complete sentences, fragments– How fragments can be a stylistic choice in

fiction, poetry…

And More…

• “Little Echos aren’t designed to hold six, count them six, larger-than-average-sized children.

And their wings.

And a dog.”• James Patterson, Maximum Ride, School’s Out Forever• Adjectives• Contractions• Fragments• Comma rules

Invite them to Collect

• Allow students to find wonderfully crafted sentences from their own reading

• Cut transparencies into slips that students can write sentences onto

• Use these sentences in future lessons

Now You Collect!

Collect on a Grammar Hunt

• Find particular structures in authentic literature (for example, capital letters, prepositional phrases, certain punctuation)

• Have students record on post-its• Sort in groups• Discuss and analyze why particular grammatical

structures are used.

The Capital Letters Hunt

• Look in the book you are currently reading

• Find and write on a post-it every word or phrase that is capitalized (except first word in a sentence)

• Have students work in groups to sort their post-its into the rules of capitalization

• Create chart as class with rules

• Add any that were not discovered

The students find the rules themselves in their real literacies!

They can be engaged in the learning and still have opportunities for drill and practice when they imitate!

It Works for Most Grammatical Concepts

• Think of a grammatical concept you need to teach

• List it with your group

• Discuss written resources you could use to teach that concept to your students (magazines, newspapers, their own writing, books or stories you are reading.)

Look Inside Your Notebook

• The writing notebooks you have started with students are one of the best places to focus grammar lessons.

• After they notice or collect something in a piece of literature, have them imitate it in pieces of their own writing.

• After teaching a grammar lesson, have students pull pieces of their writing for further practice, editing practice.

• Have students edit pieces of their notebook writing for particular skills you are working on and turn in to check for understanding.

Let’s Generate Some Writing!

• Try one of the notebook strategies we have worked with– Topic T-Chart (like / dislike, regret / proud of)– Write off a word– Special people, places, things

10 minutes for writing…

An Example of how to use the notebook:

Teaching Active Verbs• Show students a mentor text where active verbs are

used (Hoops, An Island Grows).• Notice what works about the text and sentences with

active verbs.• Make a class list of good verbs to use• Go back to the writer’s notebook and circle all is, are,

was, were, should, will, would, etc. words in a piece of their writing

• Replace those with active verbs and discuss how it improves the piece.

Stone breaksWater quakesMagma glows

Volcano blows Lola M. Schaefer, An Island Grows

Imitate With Active Verbs

A player passes.

Ball flies.

Girls holler.

Cameras click.

An agent approaches.

Teaching Other Parts of Speech

• What is the use of memorizing what a noun or verb is if they don’t know what to really do with them in their writing?

• Show a mentor text of effective adjective use, specific nouns, subject/verb agreement

• Discuss what works about the text (notice), invite them to imitate, and take it back into their own writing.

• You’ll never have to copy another worksheet again (well…)!

Teaching Punctuation

• Is it more important to know what declarative, imperative, interrogative, and exclamatory sentences are, or how to vary your sentence types in your writing?

• Can you teach the types of sentences and punctuation within the context of writer’s workshop, or does it have to be practiced on several sentences on a worksheet?

Frayer Model for Sentence Types

Declarative

**Use a .

Interrogative

**Use a ?

Exclamatory

**Use an !

Imperative

**Use a .

Frayer Model for Sentence Types

• Go over the sentence types on a Frayer Model with your class

• Remind students of the punctuation each one uses• Have students read over a piece of their writing and

mark the different sentence types in the correct box on the Frayer.

• Practice changing some of them to add variety and work on fluency

Genre Style Guides

• When you are teaching a particular genre to students, do you discuss the grammatical differences in that genre?

• How is a poem different from an essay?

• What does an expository piece have that a narrative doesn’t?

Genre Style Guides

• As you immerse your class in a genre study, a genre style guide is a perfect complement

• Have students compare and contrast two different genres for their stylistic characteristics!

• Have students look for the genre’s rules regarding:– Capitalization– Paragraph length– Organization of information– Writing of numbers– Sentence length– Sentence styles– Punctuation choices– Voice– Use of contractions or

abbreviations– Whether text is formal or

informal

Everyday Genres Can Teach Grammar, too!

• Imperatives in recipes and instruction manuals

– Rinse chicken; pat dry with paper towels. Twist wing tips under back.

• Parallelism in advertising– We’ve never had more. You’ll never pay less!

• Phrases, Questions, Exclamations in Advertisements– Do you Yahoo?– 50% off!– Like a Rock

“The lesson for teachers is that we should teach grammar from authentic texts as much as possible. You can use the literature the students are

reading, as well as newspapers and other texts, to demonstrate or teach

almost any grammar lesson.”

-Brock Haussaman

A Final Thought

As we teach our students the craft of writing, we tell them to show rather than tell.

I think when teaching editing well, we show rather than correct.

-Jeff Anderson

Resources

• Based off of Jeff Anderson’s

Everyday Editing: Inviting Students to Develop Skill and Craft in Writer’s Workshop

• As well as Brock Haussamen’s

Grammar Alive! A Guide for Teachers

Notebook Resources

• Notebook Know-How: Strategies for the Writer’s Notebook

• By Aimee Buckner

Additional Resources10 Lesson Sets in Jeff Anderson’s book on:

commas in a series, using colons, capitalization, possession vs. contraction, simple sentences,

verb choice, appositives, paragraphing, compound sentences, dialogue

–Jeff Anderson’s Website: www.writerguy.net

–Sentence Blog: http://www.greatsentences.blogspot.com/