Each summer we press pause for a few weeks to tackle new writing projects and plan for the upcoming school year. And we reflect on where we’ve been by sharing with you the most-popular posts of the past school year. We will share these with you over the next five weeks, beginning with today’s post — one Allison wrote in the winter as she tried to figure out a better way to attack the teaching of grammar!
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My whole teaching life I have been in search of a way to teach grammar that is meaningful, effective, and enduring.
I have tried bits and pieces of other people’s curricula for years––Kelly Gallagher’s Sentence of the Week, Nancie Atwell’s editing sheets and proofreading lists––but I’ve never been able to find my groove with these systems. And when I pore over student writing portfolios in June, I can see that my students have grown tremendously, but a lot of the writing is still grammar-rough (I’m using this term loosely––by grammar, I’m referring to all things grammar, mechanics, and usage). Not quite publishable. Still a few too many comma issues. Run-away sentences. And if I see one more misuse of the word their…
I know it could be better. Their writing. My instruction.
But how? I’ve tried almost everything!
For years I took Kelly Gallagher’s advice and highlighted three erroneous sentences in every students’ final draft. But this takes forever. And it sometimes takes my attention away from the writing itself––from the ideas and the structure and the heart of the message. I want to be able to glance quickly at the grammar, see the critical errors, and have a quick and painless way of moving forward to help that student.
I’ve tried Sentence of the Week models, and while weekly sentences can expose students to all kinds of syntax and sentence possibilities, it often feels random and disconnected from student writing. Sentence study is better framed as enrichment––as an “I want to try this in my writing” kind of lesson that students can get excited about.
Whole-class grammar lessons are only useful for a handful of students. This year, I am teaching a deleveled workshop, so my students’ grammar skills truly run the gamut. If I teach a lesson on comma splices, I run the risk of losing half the class.
I wanted so badly to make Nancie Atwell’s editing checksheets work for me. Her system was made in the true spirit of workshop––lessons drawn from patterns of error in student work, instruction delivered in conferences. But I struggle to give extemporaneous, bite-sized, simple explanations of grammar in 1:1 conferences. Students never take notes because they’re trying to listen to me, and I’m talking quickly so I can get to the next student… And when they lose their editing checksheets, we have no record of what they have learned and what they should be working on.
So lately, instead of getting down about my past grammar failures, I’ve been playing with ideas for a new system altogether, a system that has these characteristics:
moving writers 