Transcript because - Amy Benjamin

Engaging Grammar: Practical Advice for Real Classrooms
Presented by Amy Benjamin
www.amybenjamin.com
Part Two:
Using manipulatives to teach sentence structure
(Reading Rods)
“ I’ve never known a person
who wasn’t interested in language.”
-Steven Pinker, The Language
Instinct
Reading Rods® Sentence-Construction Kit
Sentence-Construction Individual Student Kit
156 rods, Activity Flipbook, 36-page Instructional Guide.
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Item #
Description
Units
Price
INP60016
Reading Rods Sentence-Construction: Individual Kit
Each
$38.95
http://www.etacuisenaire.com/catalog/
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How you can use the Reading Rods to teach grammar:
1. Instruct students to build statements. (Note: Commands, questions, and
exclamations will not work as well for these lessons.) You can teach that
if a statement is a complete sentence, you can declare whether it is TRUE
or FALSE.
2. Have the students detach the subject (Who or what the sentence tells about
from the predicate (What about it?).
1. This teaches the two-part nature of a statement.
a. Have students exchange subjects with someone else. In doing so,
students will find that some of the subjects and verbs in the newly
created sentences do not match. This is how you can teach what
“subject-verb agreement” is and how it works.
b. Replace the entire subject with a pronoun. This is how you establish
what pronouns do (replace a noun AND its modifiers, not just the
noun, as is erroneously thought) and also what we mean by
a referent (that which the pronoun replaces). We can also teach
that a pronoun must match its referent in number, gender, and case.
3. Have students build phrases. A phrase may be defined as a “piece” of a
sentence. Unlike a statement that is a complete sentence, a phrase cannot
be said to be either TRUE or FALSE.
How you can use the Reading Rods to teach grammar:
3 (continued). The TRUE/FALSE test is a good way to establish the feel for
whether a group of words comprises a complete sentence.
Build on the phrases. Experiment with moving the phrases around. When you
move a noun phrase around in the sentence, and then replace it with a pronoun.
Students will begin to see the difference between the need for the subjective case
pronouns and the objective case pronouns.
4. See what happens with the conjunction and. Establish that when we use
and (or or) to join two elements within the subject or predicate, we do NOT need
a comma; when we use and (or or) to “marry” two whole sentences, then
we DO need a comma. (But, yes, we DO need a comma if we have a series
of more than two items joined by and.
5. Now add because. Establish that when you add because (or as, when, while,
unless, until), you “downgrade” a complete sentence into an incomplete sentence.
When a sentence begins with because (as, when, while, unless, until),
it must contain two parts. The second part of the sentence that begins with
because (as, when, while, unless, until) must deliver the information that tells
“Guess What!” When the sentence begins with because (as, when, while, etc.),
you DO need a comma between the two parts (clauses). But when because (as,
when, etc.) comes after the first clause in a complex sentence, then you do NOT
need a comma. At this point, you’re teaching how to create and punctuate
complex sentences.
How you can use the Reading Rods to teach grammar:
6. Also, you can use the Reading Rods to teach that a word, although it is
generally considered to be a particular part of speech, such as a noun or verb,
can easily do the work of another part of speech. This is called a “functional
shift.”
Ex: The word “read” is a verb, but you can easily use it as a noun,
as in, “That was a really great read.”
The word “bear” is a noun, but when you say “bear cubs,” you are
using “bear as an adjective.
The word “fast” is an adjective, but there is no adverbial form for it.
We easily say “She drives too fast.”
To illustrate this point, have students create a sentence using NO YELLOW
blocks. To do this, they must enlist another part of speech, probably a noun,
to go to work as a verb.
How you can use the Reading Rods to teach grammar:
7. The Reading Rods may also be used just to give the students the feel
of sentence components and natural divisions of meaning that exist within
the sentence.