For more information, Adrienne can be contacted at: adrienne.warren@wasatch.edu
Much of her presentation was based on ideas from Mechanically Inclined-Building Grammar, Usage, and Style into Writer's Workshop by Jeff Anderson.
First we did a little writing. Adrienne read to us the children's book, When I was Little by Jamie Lee Curtis.
The writing prompt was: When I was little...
Here's my writing:
When I was little, life was grand. Swing sets were space ships. The haystack was Mt. Everest. Flowers and weeds could be mushed together with mud to create a witch's brew. Cats were spys. Dogs were aliens. I was bursting at the seams of my imagination, going through dreams as quickly as I was clothes. I wanted to be everything. A doctor, a meteorologist, an astronaut, a rock star, a cartoon...it didn't matter what, I could be anything! Now, I'm mostly still the same, I just don't say it aloud as much.
Then Adrienne talked about how we can enhance grammar instruction in the classroom by helping students to become sentence stalkers (or sentence detectives). We need to encourage students to search for well-written sentences in their reading and in their own writing. One idea was to have a sentence of the day/week posted in the classroom. As teachers, we need to also constantly expose students to good writing, especially from their own writing. Sometimes we show students lots of bad examples but neglect to point out the really good ones! However, Adrienne mentioned that we need to also show them bad examples here and there and work with them to correct the mistakes (in my mind this does NOT mean correcting grammar mistakes each day as a class starter; it is so much more and so much better than that!). One idea is to have students look for grammar mistakes in the world around them (unfortunately, grammar mistakes are all around us). Teach them to be grammar police!
A resource for this could be The Great Typo Hunt: Two Friends Changing the World, One Correction at a Time by Jeff Deck and Benjamin D. Herson. I'm excited to check out this book. I had never heard of it until this workshop. Apparently, these two guys travel around the U.S. and fix grammar and typo mistakes.
Here are a couple examples from the book:
We also need to teach students an understanding of basic grammar rules. They don't need to know the fancy terminology necessarily, just how to use grammar to improve their writing.
Some more great resources for this are:
Eats, Shoots & Leaves-Why Commas Really Do Make a Difference!
The Girl's like Spaghetti
Twenty-Odd Ducks-Why, Every Punctuation Mark Counts!
All books are by Lynne Truss, another grammar guru.
Then Adrienne talked about how we can enhance grammar instruction in the classroom by helping students to become sentence stalkers (or sentence detectives). We need to encourage students to search for well-written sentences in their reading and in their own writing. One idea was to have a sentence of the day/week posted in the classroom. As teachers, we need to also constantly expose students to good writing, especially from their own writing. Sometimes we show students lots of bad examples but neglect to point out the really good ones! However, Adrienne mentioned that we need to also show them bad examples here and there and work with them to correct the mistakes (in my mind this does NOT mean correcting grammar mistakes each day as a class starter; it is so much more and so much better than that!). One idea is to have students look for grammar mistakes in the world around them (unfortunately, grammar mistakes are all around us). Teach them to be grammar police!
Here are a couple examples from the book:
We also need to teach students an understanding of basic grammar rules. They don't need to know the fancy terminology necessarily, just how to use grammar to improve their writing.
Some more great resources for this are:
Eats, Shoots & Leaves-Why Commas Really Do Make a Difference!
The Girl's like Spaghetti
First, students need to understand the basic sentence structure by identifying the basic component of every sentence: the subject and the verb. Who or what is doing something: subject. What is being done is the verb.
We did an activity called Sentence Smack Down to practice this. Students get in groups and in the groups, each student shares one sentence. The group then writes down the subject and verb of the sentence on two sticky notes. On the wall, hang up a poster with a T-chart with the labels 'subject' and 'verb'. The group then comes up, reads the sentence, smacks down the subject and verb, and reads the sentence again.
I think I would make this a little more competitive to make it more interesting for my middle school students. I would break the class into two groups and have two students from each group come up and be ready with a pencil and a sticky note. I would then read the sentence and the first group to write down the subject and verb and get both smacked down onto the paper would get points.
We then looked at sentence stalking and the four basic comma patterns.
Show the students the patterns and have them look in their reading and in their writing for these patterns.
Pattern #1 Opener, sentence (I would just call it Opener):
If nagging were an Olympic sport, my Aunt Buhlah would have a gold medal. (My Big Fat Greek Wedding).
Pattern #2 Sent, interrupter, ence (I would call it Interrupter):
Then there's Johanna Mason, the only living female victor from 7, who won a few years back by pretending she was a weakling. (Catching Fire, Suzanne Collins).
Pattern #3 Sent, e, n, c, e (I would call it Lister):
I wanted to be everything-a doctor, a meteorologist, an astronaut, a rock star, a cartoon...it didn't matter what. (My sentence from my earlier writing).
Pattern #4 Sentence, closer (I would call it Closer):
The boy watched the stone, counting the skips. (Walk Two Moons, Sharon Creech).
You could possibly do grammar scavenger hunts, assigning students to search for specific grammar patterns. "Today in your reading I want you to look for Listers..."
Great ideas! Thanks, Adrienne!
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