I'm feeling the need to spend a lot of time with the concept of teaching grammar in my classroom. I've been researching ideas on the NCTE website along with my book, Engaging Grammar. There's just so much to know.
Today, I read an article that recommended a piece of writing ("A Modest Proposal" Swift) to help guide students' thinking about the role of semicolons. Of course, this article is not the cream of the crop, but it illustrates the point of helping students to look for certain grammatical aspects in play in a piece of text they are reading. They then can model that.
So far, I found some helpful resources in addition to my book:
Activities for Teaching Grammar--I especially like the idea of verb/ adverb charades for the middle school level.
Grammar Ideas
An important thing I've found in my main text, Engaging Grammar, is the difference between Form Classes and Structure Classes.
Form classes (nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs) can handle taking affixes and new members. These can be shaped into other forms.
Structure classes (determiners, auxiliaries, qualifiers, prepositions, particles, conjunctions, pronouns) are incapable of taking new members and often provide the rhythm of a sentence. They are generally unstressed.
I never thought of grouping the parts of speech into different categories, but it helps in clarifying the rules of the parts of speech within a sentence and piece of writing. They help us see patterns. Grammar as a whole is about patterns. There are rules and exceptions, of course, but it is useful to be constantly looking for patterns to mimic and use.
Patterns! Yes! I wish someone has presented the notion of grammar to me in this way. I like the idea of categorizing things so that students can see how different grammatical elements connect and relate to one another. Using actual writing and not terrible workbook pages with isolated sentences and poorly written, disengaging paragraphs is sooooo important!
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