Teaching Grammar: What Really Works (2010)

Part II. Embedding Grammar in Writing Instruction

Part Two takes you into six real-time classrooms where teachers weave grammar into the writing process. Chapter 6 shows a sample grammar calendar, which establishes a schedule for teaching sentence variations, one at a time, in order to improve student writing. In Chapter 7, students use compound sentences to show relationships between ideas. Grammar instruction thus immediately affects students’ writing.

In Chapters 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12, teachers help students elaborate and add detail through appositives, adverb and adjective clauses, and participial and absolute phrases. Teachers use charades, mystery games, and other activities that get students out of their seats, experimenting with sentence variation and then using it in their writing. The single shift from worksheets to authentic student writing makes a big, measurable difference.

You’ll see students acquiring a metalanguage they use to discuss their sentences without being afraid of terminology. They make connections between their sentences and the ones they discover in literature. Their editing skills sharpen. You’ll see the monthly journey teachers take to integrate grammar directly into the writing process.

Teachers need more than theory, more than explanations. We know that you want meaningful activities that will take you from theory and explanations right into your classroom. You want to know “what it looks like.” We give you lots of “Teaching Procedures” involving some kind of visual, manipulative, game, wordplay, or social interaction that will get your students excited about learning grammar.

Chapter 6. Your Guidebook for Embedding Grammar in Writing Instruction

Once you admit that worksheets fail to improve student writing, where can you turn? We suggest that you abandon those worksheets and instead depend on the students’ writing itself—but that you take a novel approach that will improve that writing.

In each of the following chapters, you’ll meet teachers who embed grammar in their writing instruction, using six principles that you’ll hear as refrains in upcoming chapters:

1.Scope and sequence: These teachers create a grammar calendar for the school year. This establishes, for each sentence variation, a beginning date and a mastery date—by which time students should have incorporated that sentence variation into their writing. By keeping the focus on a single sentence variation for a month, teachers build student comfort with each variation.

2.Recursive learning: Once students have completed a unit, they continue to apply that unit’s principles during the next months, rather than moving on and leaving the first idea behind. If they begin compound sentences in September, their teachers ask them to use compound sentences in October while they begin learning to write adverbial clauses. Recursive learning employs subtle repetition, a brain-friendly approach for comprehensive learning. From numerous classroom experiences, we’ve seen that recursive learning boosts success rates for both writers and test-takers.

3.Scaffolding: The teachers we’ll study move from teacher-led examples to small-group activities and, finally, to independent writing. This gradual release of responsibility to student writers—which we call “scaffolding”—spares students from being overwhelmed by rules or terminology.

4.Visuals and manipulatives: These teachers engage students’ eyes, ears, and voices by including visuals and manipulatives, playing active games, and providing social opportunities in the classroom.

5.Application within the writing process: The teachers you’ll meet in our chapters infuse all writing assignments with grammar elements. They ask students to use sentence variations as soon as they learn them. With teacher guidance, students edit their own sentences, discovering how grammar empowers them as writers.

6.Authentic literature: These teachers incorporate literature into the study of grammar, having students search for examples of specific sentence variations by published authors. In this way, students see professional writers as mentors whose stylistic choices they share.

The teachers you’ll meet aren’t unusual—they love the idea of writing about literature and its impact on our lives. In the past, they did what they had learned in seminars: They had their students write, write, and write more. They all relied on that approach—until they admitted that their students’ impassioned writing often lacked organization, adequate elaboration, cohesion, and punctuation. These teachers found it difficult to target specific issues of writing in minilessons when twenty-five students worked on different genres at the same time. That’s when they discovered how a permanent grammar strand, focusing on sentence variation, could fill voids in student elaboration, cohesion, and punctuation.

Whatever approach you use to teach writing, your students will benefit from a defined grammar strand. The grammar strand need not divert much class time from other useful lessons because it meshes with your students’ other writing projects.

What’s the Role of the Grammar Calendar?

Sometimes a concerned teacher approaches us in April and tells her story: “I’ve meant to get to grammar all year, so after Spring Break I’m going to tackle the clauses and phrases. Do I have time to cover it all?”

Her heart is in the right place, but her clock needs resetting. The rush to “cover it all” is just that—a cover, not a foundation. She’ll rush through several variations, give some tests, look for results in student writing, and wonder why her efforts are in vain. She succumbs to the Time Villain, who steals weeks and months from her because she has put literature discussions, film viewing, newspaper projects, and any number of group activities ahead of the foundation of language—rather than incorporating the foundation of language into those other, worthy projects.

The best advice for those of us in this situation is to design a grammar calendar, where the study of language begins in the first month and gradually builds student knowledge and skill month by month. The grammar calendar should designate a month for each sentence variation: simple sentence, compound sentence, adverb clause, appositive, adjective clause, participial and absolute phrases. If you don’t use a grammar calendar, the Time Villain wins (see Figure 6.1 on page 88).

Each month you introduce a new variation with signal words that students can memorize, such as “if” and “when” for adverbial clauses and “who” and “which” for adjective clauses. When your students start writing their stories, homework assignments, and vocabulary sentences, you give them credit for using whatever variation you’ve taught.

What’s the result? Students soon apply grammar lessons to their own writing. They see how to use various sentence structures. And you don’t have to bore them with worksheets and practice exercises!

We’ve seen hundreds of students successfully employ adverb clauses and punctuate them correctly simply because their teachers used this approach: teaching certain signal words (subordinate conjunctions), showing students a punctuation rule, and assigning them the task of telling a story that includes these words in their writing. Magic? Not really.

Teachers can design grammar calendars tailored for their grade levels. In later chapters, you’ll read our suggestions for how teachers at various levels—from sixth grade through high school—can design grammar calendars that fit their students’ needs. Not only will these teachers help their students to write better, but they’ll prepare students for standardized tests without spending months of class time on test-specific lessons.

Figure 6.1 Sample Two-Year Grammar Calendar

Which Techniques Support the Grammar Calendar?

Setting up a grammar calendar is one thing. Making it work requires reinforcement. We’ve seen successful teachers integrate grammar requirements into all writing. Here’s what they do:

♦Embed: Ask students to include a specific number of sentence variations (such as two or three compound sentences) in every writing project—compositions, paragraphs, and literature responses. Also, after you introduce a sentence variation, have students write vocabulary sentences, using the grammar variation with correct punctuation. Teachers report that using compound and complex sentences with vocabulary actually increases comprehension of the new vocabulary word.

♦Identify: Require students to identify the punctuation and signal words by underlining, circling, or highlighting them. You will save time when students draw attention to sentence variations for you, and they become mindful of their sentence construction.

♦Allot time: Devote a few minutes during class for students to proofread these sentences before submitting them. When you encourage them to concentrate, your students—even absent- minded ones—may review the punctuation rules, find errors, and make corrections independently.

♦Reward: Give students a few extra points for the effort of writing and identifying sentence variations in their assignments. (Even two extra credit points can produce a smile.)

♦Connect with other classes: In some schools, faculty members across the curriculum join English teachers each month in asking students to use a specific sentence variation in reports or short answers. Departments hang signs in all classrooms, reminding students of signal words (such as the coordinate and subordinate conjunctions), along with model sentences that show correct punctuation. Non-English teachers send students a strong message when they ask for sentence variation.

Not only do successful teachers ask students to incorporate sentence variation into their own writing, they have students connect it to the literature they read through several methods:

♦Find: Ask students to find a compound sentence in their current literature selection and copy it into their notebooks.This page can be called “My Gem Sentences” because it holds admirable sentences from every month of grammar instruction.

♦Share: Once students have found their sentences, have them share those sentences in small groups, selecting one of the sentences they’ve discussed to share with the whole class.

♦Write: Have each group write their selected sentence on an overhead transparency, so you can discuss gem sentences from the entire class. When students come up to read their sentences, they love the attention they receive!

♦Affirm: Students tell us they feel just like professional authors when they make the connection between their own efforts and the compound sentences, adverb clauses, or participial phrases of recognized writers.

What Visuals and Manipulatives Make a Difference?

Teachers mentioned in the following chapters have a few tricks up their sleeves when it comes to presenting sentence variations and punctuation. Here are three effective ideas they employ repeatedly to help students visualize, use, and punctuate new sentence variations:

♦Hang posters on walls: On large poster board, write out the “signal words” students need to connect their compound sentences, adverb clauses, or adjective clauses—words such as and, when, and which. Beneath these words, add sample sentences the students can use as reference points while they work.

♦Make human sentences: When introducing any sentence variation, such as the compound sentence, distribute sentences on strips of construction paper, along with several conjunctions and a comma. Each group of students assembles a compound sentence in front of the class, holding up the sentence strips, conjunction, and comma to notice the right and wrong placement of the comma and conjunction.

This activity has substantial impact on adults, as well as students, because its visual nature ends confusion about the punctuation of dependent and independent clauses. Participants enjoy seeing friends shift the sentence parts and punctuation marks. Here are some suggestions for groups studying compound sentences:

Group 1: I missed the bus. I was late for school. And. So.

Comma (“,”)

Group 2: Sam fell on the sidewalk. He didn’t go to the nurse.

But. So. Comma.

Group 3: Maria had to baby-sit. She also had to do homework. Yet. So. Comma.

Group 4: Tomas went home after school. Had a Coke™ and some pizza. And. So. Comma. (This one does not actually use the comma because it does not have two complete ideas.)

♦Use the Picture Game: Students work together, writing a story about a picture.

1.Paste pictures from a magazine on construction paper.

2.Distribute each mounted picture to groups of two or three students.

3.Have one student in each group write a sentence below the picture to begin a story, using the grammar variation you are teaching.

4.Have the next group member write a second sentence—again using the new sentence variation—adding to the first person’s story.

5.When the group members have written sentences using the conjunctions, relative pronouns, or signal words associated with the new sentence variation, they can read their stories aloud and hang them up for display.

6.Students like assisting one another, being silly with their stories, and reading stories aloud to classmates. The audible repetition of the new variation helps everyone grow familiar with it.

7.The teacher can circulate, helping groups and checking punctuation.

Embedding grammar in the writing process embraces all the principles, techniques, and supporting methods we’ve just described. Teachers who use these practices see results in improved student writing and punctuation.

They defy the stereotypical image of grammar teachers who, like Sisyphus in the classroom, push the boulder of grammar worksheets up a steep mountain of student disinterest, hoping to succeed by the time they reach the top. But success eludes their students, whose writing remains mired in simple sentences, lacking variation and cohesion because there is little transfer from worksheet grammar to student writing. The heavy boulder inevitably rolls downhill while students move on to the next English teacher without making significant writing gains.

We’ve seen that things can be different. Sisyphus finally can reach the top and enjoy the view! In our next chapters we share methods for organizing, presenting, and integrating grammar lessons grounded in student writing. The result is writers who compose and revise sentences that have cohesion, rhythm, elaboration, and effective punctuation.