Transcript BL Academy - Grammar

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 watch
A 4 year old playing
or
LeBron James in the NBA?
If you wanted to be famous artist
would you study
a first grade work of art?
or
Monet?
If you want to be a great writer
Would you study
Incorrect sentences
the boy seed a dog rabbit bird?
or
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
authentic wonderfully crafted sentences?
All too often children
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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.”
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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 breaks
Water quakes
Magma 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:
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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 Resources
10 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
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