Teaching Grammar: What Really Works (2010)

Part II. Embedding Grammar in Writing Instruction

Chapter 10. Writing with Adjective Clauses That Enrich Detail: A Seven-Day Lesson Series Embedded in the Writing Process

In this chapter you will learn how to teach students to write adjective clauses that weave details into sentences. You already use all kinds of adjective clauses naturally—as do your students. Here are some sentences that include adjective clauses, which we’ve italicized.

1.Goldilocks saw a house that looked interesting in the woods.

2.Three bears, who happened to be out gathering berries at the time, lived in this house.

3. Goldilocks sat down in the first chair, which was too big for her.

4. The little bear, whose chair looked just right, had left his porridge half-eaten.

The writer of these sentences has elaborated by adding words—they happen to form clauses (subject + predicate)—that answer adjectival questions: which one? what kind? In other words, the adjectival clauses do the same jobs as adjectives: They provide more information about the nouns to which they refer.

We want student writers to use adjectival clauses since they place important details in strategic locations. They allow students to tighten up prose. The grammatical tool used to create an adjective clause, as you can see in the sentences above, is the relative pronoun. Some common relative pronouns are who, whom, whose, which, and that.

Teaching Procedures

Anna teaches 10th grade in an urban high school. Anna knows that adjective clauses will improve students’ sentences by increasing detail. She wants to broaden the writing lesson across the curriculum by showing her students that English skills—like the use of adjective clauses—will improve the writing they do in other subjects, such as their science reports and social studies papers.

She hopes to avoid that glazed-over, faraway look that the word grammar elicits. Who wouldn’t? So she has a trick up her sleeve. She’ll surprise her class with a game that builds on their intuitive knowledge of adjective clauses.

Day One: Introducing Adjective Clauses

As soon as her students are seated, Anna begins: “Can we play a game today?” Just the word “game” opens eyes! “I have a card here for everyone—a card with a picture on it. Our game is called ‘This is the house that Jack built.’ When it’s your turn, you add on to my story using the picture on your card.”

She points at a house sketched on the blackboard and begins: “I’ll start with my picture: ‘This is a rat that lived in the house that Jack built.’ Who can go next?”

Latisha holds up her card and offers: “This is a cat that ate the rat that lived in the house that Jack built.” Now the excitement starts as everyone wants to add clauses and tries to repeat the story’s refrain:

“This is a dog that chased the cat that ate the rat who lives in the house that Jack built.”

“This is a door that closed on the dog that chased the cat that ate the rat who lives in the house that Jack built.”

Meanwhile, Anna quickly writes each addition on a transparency, recording the clauses for later.

When her last student finishes, energy fills her room, and she tells her students: “I love your story. And guess what! I discovered that you all know how to use adjective clauses. Your story is filled with them. Just look at how you added details with adjective clauses!” When she turns on the overhead projector, the screen shows a long list of adjective clauses:

This is the house that Jack built.

The rat who lives in the house...

The cat that ate the rat . . .

The dog that chased the cat . . .

The door which closed on the dog . . .

The butler who opened the door . . .

Anna’s students write authentic adjective clauses without any worksheets or definitions! Imagine that! At this point, she’s ready to work in some terminology: “Now, can anyone tell me some things those underlined clauses have in common?”

The students reread for a minute before Jorge suggests, “I think—I mean it looks like—they all tell more stuff about the word in the picture. You know what I mean?”

“Absolutely right, Jorge! Do you all see that every clause I underlined gives us more information about the noun in front of it? You knew exactly how to add details about the noun in your sentences. We have a name for words that add information about a noun. Can you remember that name?” She gives them some time to answer and then responds: “Yes, it’s an adjective. So we can use that same word here and call your new information an ‘adjective clause’ because it does the work of an adjective.”

Here’s where Anna starts getting her students to use writers’ terminology: “Now read me the adjective clause you added and tell me the word you used to start your clause—you can call those words ‘relative pronouns.’“ Anna writes adjective clause and relative pronoun on the transparency and models an answer: “I would say that my adjective clause is that Jack built because that clause does what an adjective does—it describes the house. My relative pronoun is the word that, which starts my adjective clause.”

Anna asks some volunteers to read their adjective clauses and relative pronouns. She first calls on Latisha, who loves to be heard, and Latisha begins, “Well, my adjective clause is that ate the rat and my relative pronoun is—well, my relative pronoun is that. Right?”

When several students have followed Latisha, Anna compliments her class: “Well, I’m impressed! You guys knew how to create adjective clauses before I even taught you!”

The art of the teaching:

1.Anna uses a simple game to make grammar fun.

2.She connects the grammar lesson to her students’ intuitive knowledge of language.

3.She introduces writers’ grammatical terms and writes them for the students.

4.She encourages students to use the grammatical terminology themselves.

Day Two: Writing with Adjective Clauses

Anna wants her students to see adjective clauses fitting into their own lives. In her second lesson, she models the use of adjective clauses and gives students opportunities to write their own adjective clauses in an interactive, nonthreatening activity. Later, students will progress to the next stage—independently writing descriptive sentences using adjective clauses in the homework assignment. What she’s doing is scaffolding the learning—starting with her model sentences, then moving to guided practice, and only later asking for independent writing.

“I have a pile of drawing paper here,” she tells the students when they come in. “Each piece has a word on it—either who, which, or that. I’m giving each of you a piece, and everyone is going to sketch a picture of someone or something that has meaning in your life. Then you’ll add a sentence to explain the drawing.

“On my page I have the word which, so I’m drawing my briefcase and writing, This is my briefcase, which I use to carry home my papers. Here’s another one: a paper that says who, so I’ll draw a picture of my daughter and write, This is my four-year-old daughter, who loves her bedtime stories. I’m going to tape my pages to the board so you can see my models. We’ll include all your pages in a class collection.”

“Miss Brown,” Raymond asks, “can we draw stuff we have at home?”

Nodding, Anna clarifies: “You are going to use the word on your paper in a sentence describing a person or thing you want to remember. You can pick from your clothes, your games, your furniture, or people you know. Use one of the sentence models in the front of the room, sketch your picture, and write a sentence beneath it that uses your word—who, which, or that. I’ll walk around and give you help if you need it.”

After ten minutes, the students are anxious to share their drawings—some serious and others funny. They’ve underlined the entire adjective clause just like Anna did in her examples. Each person stands, reads a sentence, and repeats the adjective clause and relative pronoun, always using the writer’s terminology: “My adjective clause is . . .” and “The relative pronoun is . . .”

Afterward, Anna binds the stack together and adds a cover with a class photo, proudly hanging it on the bulletin board: The Fourth-Period Memory Book.

Her homework sheet for this lesson asks students to write a paragraph about some things or people in their lives, using the adjective clause signal words who, which, and that to add detail to the paragraph. Anna provides a sample of her own paragraph as a model. Her assignment follows in Figure 10.1.

The art of the teaching:

1.Anna teaches grammar with an art project, a visual.

2.She provides a visual model for students to follow.

3.She shifts the responsibility of writing with an adjective clause to the students.

4.She increases the students’ social engagement with student demonstrations in the front of the room.

Figure 10.1 Adjective Clause Homework Paragraph

In the paragraph below, I used the adjective clause signal words who, which, and that to add details to a description of the things I find in my purse when I clean it out. Notice that I underlined all the adjective clauses.

In my purse I found some crumpled receipts from last year, which I do not need any more. Also, I found a grocery list for a meal that I cooked four weeks ago. In addition, I found a thank-you note to Lydia, who is my best friend from college.

Please write a paragraph of your own. You can create any location for your discoveries or use one of the following: under my bed, in our refrigerator, in my top drawer, in the back of my closet. Begin your adjective clauses with a relative pronoun like who, which, or that and have fun with this paragraph!

Day Three: Deconstructing Adjective-Clause Sentences

Today Anna has student writing available to use as teaching material since her students are bringing their adjective-clause homework paragraphs.

“Today,” she explains, “I’m giving you time to work in pairs and listen to the paragraphs you wrote using adjective clauses. Before you start, I want you to hear again my story from yesterday. Just for fun, I’m going to read it to you two times: First you’ll hear it with its adjective clauses; then you’ll hear it broken up into simple sentences. I want you to tell me which version you prefer.”

First, she reads the paragraph with its adjective clauses:

In my purse I found some crumpled receipts from last year, which I do not need any more. Also, I found a grocery list for a meal that I cooked four weeks ago. In addition, I found a thank-you note to Lydia, who is my best friend from college.

Then Anna deconstructs her paragraph:

In my purse I found some crumpled, old receipts from last year. I do not need them any more. Also, I found a grocery list for a meal. I cooked that meal four weeks ago. In addition, I found a thank-you note to Lydia.
She is my best friend from college.

Anna asks: “What’s your opinion of those paragraphs?”

“Man, the second one sounds bad!”

“That doesn’t sound like a teacher wrote it!”

“I don’t know why, but I don’t like the second one very much!”

Anna’s students intuitively know that the version without adjective clauses is too choppy to be considered good writing. (You may want to show your paragraph on an overhead while you read it to give your students visual as well as auditory reinforcement.)

Next, Anna has the students read their own paragraphs to each other. First, she asks them to read the sentences with the adjective clauses, just as they see them on the paper. Then she has them remove the adjective clauses and read their ideas as a series of simple sentences, as she has done. They will be their own teachers in this exercise, and they will be convinced that adjective clauses help the rhythm of their own sentences.

The art of the teaching:

1.Anna relies on students’ intuitive knowledge of language to recognize the quality added by the adjective clauses.

2.She uses the contrasting sound of smooth versus choppy sentences to emphasize the value of adjective clauses.

3.She capitalizes on the social aspect of sharing in small groups.

Day Four: Using Adjective Clauses in a Detective Report

Anna wants to tackle the punctuation of adjective clauses now that her students are using them in sentences. She devises a project that requires small groups of students to work together to create a paragraph about a mystery crime and the evidence in the police report. She will review what students have learned about adjective clauses, but she’ll do it without a bit of “drill and kill”!

Each group of four receives a bag filled with assorted common objects related to an unsolved mystery: some paper clips, scissors, a small ball of twine, a pen, a scarf, a stick-on tattoo, a bead bracelet, etc. Each bag also contains pictures of the characters involved in the mystery, cut from a magazine and attached to index cards.

Her students are to huddle around their objects, think of a crime committed by one of the characters, and write a police report mentioning any three of the items. In each sentence of their report, they are to use one of the relative pronouns: who, whose, which, or that. Their time limit is fifteen minutes, and a prize awaits the winners.

It is here that Anna turns the creative responsibility over to her students, who work together to write their story. They can refer to model sentences and paragraphs on display in their classroom as they craft adjective clauses. Anna will use their writing samples for a later lesson on punctuation of essential and nonessential clauses.

Figure 10.2 shows a sample Crime Report that Anna displays in the classroom if she feels her students need a model.

By the time the students have shared their stories, they feel familiar with adjective clauses, and their reports will provide many examples for a discussion of punctuation the next day or before this class period ends.

The art of the teaching:

1. Anna uses a game to encourage use of adjective clauses.

2. She turns more of the responsibility for writing adjective clauses over to the student writers.

3. She adds an enjoyable social and creative element to the grammar lesson.

Figure 10.2 Crime Report

Submitted by the following detectives (students):

Names of suspects interviewed:

Clues used by detectives:

Details of the crime:
(Underline at least three adjective clauses)

Christopher Randall, who worked at the delicatessen on Elm and Sheridan, called the police to say that a robber had come in and demanded all the money from the cash register. The robber bumped into Sarah Jones, who was in the doorway, on his way out. The robber dropped a scarf, which was covering his nose, when he made his way out. Christopher Randall saw a tattoo that said “Love” on the robber’s wrist. He remembered that the robber had on a green sweatshirt.

The police spotted a man who was running down Sheridan and asked him to stop. He wore a jacket that was green and had a tattoo that said “Love.” When they searched him, he had a pocket full of money. “You’re under arrest!” they said.

Day Five: Punctuating Adjective Clauses

We know it’s difficult for students to distinguish essential from nonessential clauses and phrases. That’s why we give them the guiding question: Are the words adding extra information or are they essential for understanding the writer’s intent? Anna plans to use two types of visuals to help students distinguish between essential and nonessential clauses: sentences written on the board and “human sentences.” With the help of these visuals, Anna’s students will be able to see the difference between these two versions of this sentence:

The kid who grabbed my homework was wearing a green sweatshirt.

Michael, who grabbed my homework, was wearing a green sweatshirt.

She gives three volunteers pieces of the second sentence so one holds the subject, one the adjective clause, and another the predicate of the sentence. “If we remove the adjective clause who grabbed my homework from the first sentence,” she asks, “will the meaning of the sentence be clear?”

When Ronnie, who is holding the adjective clause, steps back out of the sentence, students see that M ichael was wearing a green sweatshirt makes sense and communicates the writer’s idea. “OK, then,” Anna questions, “is the adjective clause that Ronnie is holding essential to the idea or is it extra information—that is, nonessential?” She writes these two expressions—essential and nonessential—on the board.

“Well, it’s got to be extra since we can take it away and still understand the idea,” Vincent says.

“Yes, and writers want to use punctuation to signal that those words are extra—nonessential. We add commas before and after those words to indicate to the reader that they are separate from the main idea in that sentence. I need two more volunteers to come up and be our commas!”

You can imagine the powerful visual impact of seeing classmates in the front of the class, holding up commas to separate the nonessential adjective clause from the independent clause. Anna compares the commas to the handles on a basket that lift the nonessential clause out of the independent clause. She sees heads nodding in agreement.

Next, she substitutes a different noun phrase in the subject slot: The kid who grabbed my homework was wearing a green sweatshirt. “When I change the subject of our sentence, is the adjective clause who grabbed my homeworkadding anything essential to the idea that the writer is expressing? Let’s have Victor step out of the line with his adjective clause this time.”

Silence. Then a tentative voice suggests, “I think that the who grabbed my homework is more important this time. It kind of tells me which kid they are talking about: the one who ran away with the homework. This time I don’t know his name, so I need to know what he was doing.” Bingo! Our kids don’t disappoint us when we give them the visual cues they need for comprehension. Anna asks Miguel to repeat his observation so everyone hears him again.

His explanation allows Anna to formulate a punctuation rule: “OK, if the words seem essential for the reader, we need to signal their importance by leaving them as part of the sentence and not separating them with commas. Comma People, we don’t need you in this sentence. Sit down.” She writes the punctuation rule on the board: Do not add commas to separate adjective clauses that are essential to the main idea of a sentence.

Next, Anna revisits some sentences she found in the students’ Crime Reports project. “I want you to work with a partner and decide whether the adjective clause I underlined in each of these sentences is essential to the sentence or is nonessential. If it’s nonessential, it will need commas around it. And by the way, clauses that begin with that will not need commas: don’t use commas to separate that clauses.”

After a few minutes, Anna lets the students take over. Esther and Roberto talk about the first example. “We think that the adjective clause is nonessential in this sentence:

*Ron Campbell who is the manager of the printing company called to report a crime.

We can understand that he called up to make a report without knowing that this guy Ron Campbell is the manager. That stuff is extra information.”

“So how do you send a signal to the reader that it’s a nonessential clause?” Sarah asks Esther.

“We’re putting commas around it—before who and after company.”

Anna then asks other pairs of students to discuss each of the sentences they’ve examined.

The art of the teaching:

1.Anna uses authentic student writing for her grammar lesson rather than uninteresting workbook sentences.

2.She employs the “human sentences” as strong visuals for teaching punctuation, with students holding up parts of sentences to determine whether they are essential or nonessential adjective clauses.

Day Six: Practicing Multiple Sentence Variations

Now that the class has had several days’ practice with adjective clauses, Anna moves on Day Six to the recursive part of the unit. Today students will write, using adjective clauses plus two sentence variations they studied earlier: compound sentences and adverb clauses. Each student gets an instruction sheet (Figure 10-3) that reviews the signal words the class learned for each of these sentence variations and gives a sample sentence for each variation.

You can see how this assignment avoids the pitfalls of separating each sentence variation into a discrete unit or chapter. Anna’s students employ the three sentence variations they’ve learned. Manipulating clauses becomes more automatic for them. They’ve learned all three variations through activities that relied on intuitive knowledge of language, scaffolded instruction, and authentic writing opportunities. No worksheets!

The art of the teaching:

1.Anna recognizes the need for recursive teaching, so she asks students to bring together all the sentence strategies they have learned.

2.She includes review materials, including lists of conjunctions and relative pronouns, on the assignment sheet so her students have models from which to work.

Day Seven: Using Sentence Variation in the Editing Process

Students will use the adjective clauses and other sentence variations they’ve learned in English class as they edit their writing assignments on famous scientists for their science course. In this way, they will recognize the relationship between skills learned in English and writing done for other classes.

Anna provides quiet time for proofreading and editing. She models good practices, starting with directions: “Today I’d like you to reread your report very slowly, like you are a stranger reading it for the very first time. Slow your inner voice down to a modest pace, like this”—she reads a passage slowly. “Watch for places where you can combine ideas using adjective clauses. In my paper I did some editing. My original sentences read like this:

Albert Einstein left high school early. He had failed several courses. He later graduated from the Polytechnic. This was an institute in Zurich, Switzerland. He searched unsuccessfully to find a teaching job. He finally took a job in a patent office in Berne. In those years he wrote his theory of the equivalence of mass and energy. This was the famous scientific breakthrough of e = mc².

Figure 10.3 A Plot Summary Filled with Sentence Variation

Your job today is to write a clear plot summary of “The Necklace” by Guy de Maupassant, the story we’ve just finished reading. In several paragraphs introduce the main characters, the problems, and the outcome.

In your summary, try to use these variations:

Your plot summary should therefore contain at least nine sentences, but you can include more sentences. Identify your sentence variations by underlining compound sentences, putting a wavy line under the adjective clauses, and circling the adverb clauses.

Here’s a review of the signal words for each sentence variation:

Compound sentences: and, but, or, yet, so, for

Adverb clauses: when, if, as, unless, although, since, while, after, because, before

Adjective clauses: who, whom, whose, which, that

Here are examples of each variation:

Compound sentence: You can start this story in school, and you can finish it at home.

Adverb clause 1: When you are finished, I want to read your story.

Adverb clause 2: We will share them with the class if we have time.

Adjective clause: The finished story, which will have a lot of sentence variation, will be displayed in our classroom this week.

These plot summaries will provide writing samples for the rest of the week.

“When I reread my sentences, they seemed choppy, and I knew I could combine sentences to get a better flow of ideas. Do you see places where I could use adjective clauses or appositives or any of the techniques we’ve studied?”

After some heated debate, Anna’s class approves the following paragraph:

Albert Einstein left high school early after he had failed several courses.

He later graduated from the Polytechnic, which is an institute in Zurich, Switzerland. He searched unsuccessfully to find a teaching job but finally took a job in a patent office in Berne. In those years he wrote his theory of the equivalence of mass and energy, the famous scientific breakthrough of e = mc².

The class uses an adverb clause, an adjective clause, and an appositive. As their repertoire of sentence variation grows, they’ll use participial phrases for additional cohesion and flow, but for the time being, their revision shows the effect of current grammar study.

After this exercise, the students revise their own drafts, motivated by the thought If I can help the teacher revise, I can revise the sentences in my paper, too!

The art of the teaching:

1.Anna models her own editing methods aloud.

2.She contrasts average writing with better writing, allowing students to observe differences.

3.She involves students in sample editing before giving them independence.

Figure 10.4 Chapter 10 Overview Chart