Kaye Price-HawkinsPriceless Literacy2401 S. Willis, Suite 108Abilene, TX 79605www.pricelessliteracy.homestead.comkayepricehawkins@aol.com

Going Green for Grammar

Member of the Texas

Professional Development Team

What is Grammar? Grammar Girl –

Mignon Fogarty Grammar is

“a set of rules for putting together a sentence.”

the rules to the game of writing.

Teaching Grammar in Context – Constance Weaver Grammar is:

Description of syntactic structure

Prescriptions for how to use structures and words

Rhetorically effective use of syntactic structures

Functional command of sentence structure that enables us to comprehend and produce language.

Writing moment

Write a composition explaining the function of grammar instruction in the 21st century classrooms.

How do we teach Grammar? Create opportunities

Anchor (Mentor) texts Workshop

Mini-lessons (see The Write Source for excellent material re: grammar instruction) Writing (Process) Conference (questions) Revision (various processes) Re-writing (multi-drafts)

RatiocinationJoyce Armstrong

Carroll’s concrete approach to

teaching grammar:

a color-coding technique that

focuses students on problematic

areas in their writing.

Code Clue Decode

Verb

ActivePassiveTensesSubject/verb agreementParticiplesDirect/indirect objectsFragmentsEtc.

Student Sample:Katie was just a girl who wanted to fit in

with everyone else. She wanted to be athletic, funny, pretty and popular with lots of friends. But she knew she could never become that type of girl. She was the type of girl who had the ratty red hair with freckles everywhere and glasses that hid her beautiful baby blue eyes. But on the inside was a pure and loving soul, but nobody knew that Katie. All they saw was Katie, the girl who everyone loved picking on just to make her feel worse about herself. Until one day, Katie finally had enough.

Rummaging and Recycling Approaches for Using Mentor Texts

Read once for pleasure Reread at least once for author’s craft (STAAR R&E) Reread with pencil or highlighter to mark the text

Build confidence in your readers/writers Imitation promotes practice and skill Achieve success at a higher level Comfortably move from mentor text structure to a more

sophisticated structure of their own Increase variety on student work

Begin with poetry and move to other text structures Choose structures for content area success

Examining a Mentor Text

Ralph Fletcher suggests a triangular schema to allow students to connect with the text or notice aspects of the texts in a democratic approach…

Subject or Theme

Tone or

Language

Craft Element

Structure

Word or Phrase

People usually focus on what they are ready to see. Use that as a building block of your teaching.

Poetry Excerpt: “Famous”

…The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds

watching him from the birdhouse.

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.

The idea you carry close to your bosomis famous to your bosom.

The boot is famous to the earth,more famous than the dress shoe,which is famous only to floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.

…

--Naomi Shihab Nye. WORDS UNDER THE WORDS. 1995. (p. 80).

Rummaging and Recycling, 2 Peer Models

Analyze writing from peers Easier to be objective Making suggestions for others prepares the students

for that same kind of analysis for their own writing

Personal Writing Spot various grammatical structures

If they can find it, they are half-way there! If they are using various structures in their writing,

affirm them and name the process. Identify usage (correct or not)

REDUCE If “wordiness" affects your writing

quality… Sentence-combine to tighten your

writing

Avoid repetition—unless it serves a purpose

The new STAAR composition is only 26 lines long. Give students the opportunity to write on a topic, count lines and tighten their writing to 26 or fewer lines.

Grammar Vision Image Grammar (Harry Noden)

Focusing on grammar’s power to make movies in our readers’ minds

Grammar: “a power derived from images”

Ideas

Brushstrokes = Artistic Sentences

Painting with Participles Absolutes Appositives Adjectives Shifted Out of Order Action Verbs

Passage (excerpt from HOLES)

Grammar Instruction Explore Images from Films of Best-

selling Novels: Show a 2 to 3 minute soundless movie clip

Ask students to write brushstroke phrases that describe the character’s actions or attitude during the second viewing and use those phrases to write a paragraph.

Ask the students to read the novel version of the same scene they witnessed in the movie and read their own descriptions to look for similarities.

Grammar Instruction, 2 Tour a Writer’s Gallery (samples)

Enlarge and post writing samples (professional pieces—novels, newspapers, etc.) around the classroom.

Have groups visit the pieces and discuss the techniques they observed the authors using.

Ask them to list several of the phrases and words they noticed.

Have them write a descriptive paragraph to accompany a picture (magazine ads or others), including the brushstrokes they have learned.

Grammar Instruction, 3 Copyedit a Boring, Vanilla Paragraph

Revise a straightforward, plainly written piece of text, cutting unnecessary text and adding the images by using brushstrokes.

This moves the students from the recognition stage to the creative stage.

Have students take a beautifully written piece and devolve it into a boring vanilla paragraph. Then talk about what they cut or reworded and why.

Vanilla Paragraph (Use brushstrokes)

A man walked into the building. He looked around. The room was dark. It was hard to see. Another man came in. He walked to the window and looked out. His steps made a noise. The first man turned around. He thought someone else was in the room. He saw nothing. His heart beat fast.

Grammar Instruction, 4 Improve your Image

Ask students to enter their own writing and look for the same strategies/brushstrokes that they have practiced. If they don’t see any, they need to add some.

Ask volunteers to share with the class their “before” and “after” make-overs—Discuss: action or cosmetic?

Grammar Vision Mechanically Inclined

(Jeff Anderson) Grammar is a tool to help the reader

and writer “see.”

Ask your students: “What do you notice?” “What do you like about the sentence?” “What happens if we change…”

Sources for Mentor Texts Articles

“The Day the Earth Moved” March 28, 2011 TIME

Stories Nasreen’s Secret School

by Jeanette Winter

Novels Holes (excerpt)

by Louis Sachar

Multi-genre

Resources: Anderson, Jeff. 2007. Everyday Editing. Stenhouse. ---, 2005. Mechanically Inclined: Building Grammar, Usage, and Style into Writer's Workshop. Stenhouse. Burke, Jim. 2008. The English Teacher’s Companion. Heinemann. Campbell, Cathy. 2008. The Giggly Guide to Grammar. Discover Writing Press. Carroll, Joyce Armstrong and Edward Wilson. 2010. Brushing Up on Grammar. Libraries Unlimited. Carroll, Joyce Armstrong. 2011. Ratiocination. Absey & Co. Fogarty, Mignon. 2008. Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing. Holt Paperbacks. ---, 2011. Grammar Girl’s 101 Misused Words You’ll Never Confuse Again. St. Martin’s. Gallagher, Kelly. 2011. Write Like This. Stenhouse. Knapp, Peter and Megan Watkins. 2005. Genre, Text, Grammar. University of New South Wales Press Ltd. Noden, Harry. 2011. Image Grammar: Using Grammatical Structures to Teach, 2nd Ed.. Boynton/Cook, Pub. ---. 2011. Image Grammar: Second Edition: Teaching Grammar as Part of the Writing Process. Heinemann. Petersen, David. 2007. Reading English News on the Internet. Lulu.Com. (new edition: 2011). Sebranek, Patrick, Dave Kemper, Verne Meyer and Gretchen Bernabei. 2012. Texas Write

Source. Grades 2-12. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Tchudi, Susan and Stephen Tchudi. 1999. The English Language Arts Handbook. Boynton/Cook Publishers. Terban, Marvin. 1993. Checking Your Grammar. Scholastic Inc. Thurman, Susan. 2003. The Only Grammar Book You’ll Ever Need. Avon. MA: Adams Media. Weaver, Constance. 1996. Teaching Grammar in Context. Boynton/Cook Publishers, Inc. Windsor, Lucinda. 2000. Grammar in Story. (2 books). Absey & Co. Woods, Geraldine. 2010. English Grammar for Dummies. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Publishing, Inc.