Compound Sentences, and Compounds in General

Yesterday was a "three-fer" which ended up covering three lessons. Today will be a two-fer: compounds, and conjunctions. A great habit to establish from the beginning of the year is having students circle (or somehow identify) the basic conjunctions and, or, or but. Students often have trouble with compounds (subject, predicate, object of the preposition, etc.) because they stop too soon with their answer. If they get in the habit of identifying and, or, and but, and know that it means more of the answer is to come, they will do better throughout the year. When it comes to compound sentences, especially if students are asked to identify whether or not a sentence is compound, I use this little trick: I have the students turn their pencil around, use the eraser to cover the conjunction, and then look on both the left and the right. If both sides can stand alone as sentences, the sentence is compound. If that is not the case, then there is probably a compound subject or predicate. Now, is it all that essential that a student know whether or not a sentence is compound? It isn't in that knowing that probably won't result in a mistake in usage, but it is a common grammar question, and as students get older, each year it is expected that their writing becomes more sophisticated and sentence variety is part of that. Additionally, as students begin to work with more elaborate sentence types, it helps if they can identify a compound. One lesson later on deals with compound-complex sentences, so it comes in handy then. Besides the basic coordinating conjunctions, there are also the correlative pairs. Again, students need to know these for their lessons, test questions, etc., especially since it seems the older they get the more test questions tend to be geared to academic terminology rather than simply identifying the answer. Off the subject a bit -- my five foundation skills came in very handy today as we launched into nouns. Nouns should be a review, but they're not. Two hints for students: remember that the articles a, an, and the indicate a noun is coming; and, knowing the five jobs of nouns and pronouns and at least mentally going through our "steps" greatly increased the number of correct answers I was hearing.

Let's go through a grammar book!

It's time for a change in approach. Yes, I have a very specific approach to grammar, and yes it works. However, some teachers don't have the luxury of teaching grammar in the order I believe is the most beneficial, and I would imagine there are many people who need help with a specific grammar question and not an entire approach. Before I start, I will say a few things. First, most aspects of grammar have a pattern as well as a trick for remembering how to achieve the correct answer, and I will do my best to offer both as much as possible. Secondly, the grammar book I have selected is a favorite, but shall remain nameless. I am only using it as a guide for the types of topics covered in most grammar books. Finally, I will discuss one lesson or topic a day. Lesson for today: Kinds of Sentences. It is not difficult to learn the four sentence types (declarative, interrogative, exclamatory, and imperative). Purpose and end punctuation help lead students to the correct answer. Sometimes students have trouble telling the difference between declarative and exclamatory for the simple reason that what the author is trying to use as something exciting and worthy of exclamation generally isn't all that exciting to young people, so I always tell them to pay attention to the intent. The most important aspect of the four sentence types is knowing about imperatives and their subject. Students must recognize an imperative and know that the subject is the implied or understood "you" which they must write in at the beginning of a sentence (in parentheses, I always tell them) or they won't have a subject. Knowing about imperative sentences is one of my foundation skills.

Patterns, tricks, precision, and the influence of testing

So often in my classroom I wish I had a little hand-held device to record my language arts tips because they come into my mind as a lesson progresses and I rarely have the opportunity to write them down. There are strong patterns in grammar; when one understands the pattern, finding the correct answer becomes much easier. Additionally, there is often a trick to help one remember what to do and how to approach grammar. The students who can continue to see the pattern and apply the trick will find classwork easier in the future. I also make a point about the precision of grammar. Just as math is precise, there is a process to follow, and only one correct answer, the same holds true for grammar. For some reason, students seem to think that grammar is negotiable. I tell them that a poem or piece of literature may be open to interpretation, but the structure of a sentence and grammatical correctness usually are not. I also address how the emphasis on standardized testing (at least in my region of the country) has made for what I view as some wrong thinking in regard to the amount of time spent on grammar. The "logic" seems to be that if there are not a lot of questions about grammar then very little teaching time should be spent on it. While it's true that older students may not frequently be asked questions in regard to a specific part of speech, they are tested extensively about correctness, but what many powers that be fail to realize is that a student will not be able to recognize correctness if he or she doesn't understand the grammatical foundation which leads to the answer. Grammar is essential. Not teaching it is counterproductive. The same applies to spelling. My goodness, I know of some school districts which don't teach spelling at all, and stop by middle school, because of the logic that few test questions trump the importance in a child's future. As painful as it is for some to admit, judgements are formed about an individual's level of education, intelligence, etc., if he or she speaks and/or writes poorly. I would like to encourage all language arts teachers to do their best to prepare our students for their futures. I know we experience various levels of control and limitations on what and how we teach, but I also acknowledge that every caring educator in our schools does his or her very best for students to the best of his or her ability. Whether you've started already, will tomorrow, or begin after the Labor Day holiday, I wish the very best of luck to my colleagues across this great nation as we embark on the 2012-2013 school year.