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Building Grammar, Usage and Style into Writer's Workshop

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Building Grammar, Usage and Style into Writer's Workshop

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Conventions are not about 'fixing', but about creating!

The heart of good grammar teaching is loving students' error, loving their approximations.

Teaching intentionally -Goal is to teach principles rather than rules..
Grammar and mechanics are not rules to be mastered, but tools to serve the writer in creating text the reader will understand.

Grammar =
syntax - the flow of language
usage - how we use words in different situations
and rules - boundaries and patterns that govern language

Mechanics =
how we punctuate whatever we are trying to say in our writing. - punctuation, capitalisation, paragraphing, formatting

Conventions= what writers expect good writers to do.

In order to manipulate sentence parts, they have to understand what makes up a sentence.

=Notions of subject and verb
Understanding patterns of punctuations and the patterns of sentences.
Choose lessons that stretch students to their growing edge- based on what errors they are making / their needs.

We learn in a weblike fashion - looking for patterns / going down many paths.  Goal is to support writers in becoming their own critics-   kids who look to punctuation and grammar to make their message clear and interesting.

GRAMMAR AND MECHANICS THROUGH WRITER'S CRAFT
Using powerful literature and student writing to teach the rules of language.  = Linked to craft - Craft and mechanics merged = the focus on craft instead of correctness- ie having students crafting their own writing with correct mechanics and grammar without realising they are doing it.

Key questions - how is this grammar and mechanics issue also a craft issue, how can I use it to generate some authentic text? how can I quickly turn kids back to their writing so they can learn to become independent revisers, crafters and editors?

Students can only focus on a certain number of things at one time - goal is to make editing, correcting and revising activities 'as regular as breathing' = the more independent the writers will become.
Creating active problem solvers in this process = the more they will be able to decide what, in fact, they should do.

insert pg 11.
Students need models from literature and to use mechanics to create their own messages.

CONTEXT
= surrounding words that determine meaning
Any chunk of meaning is a context.

Looking at the context of a sentence = notice what effect the author's use of craft has on the reader, playing around with what-ifs, imitation, and permutation- these can be most effectively done with a sentence or two .

WORKSHOP-STYLE

Use a short mentor text

Teach one thing at a time and then apply it to daily writing - encourages students to keep inventing and generating text while cueing them into specific concepts and strategies.

Adding quick daily doses of grammar and mechanics experiences with short mentor texts and editing so students have ongoing experience exploring and understanding grammar and mechanics.

Provide rich experiences in the writers notebook to apply and play with mentor sentences as new concepts are introduced.

Giving students scaffolds in forms of examples and visual inserts for their writers notebooks to help them start and continue collecting, catergorising and imitating mentor texts.

Saturating walls with visuals that provide reinforcement of concepts introduced and used by writers.

Create a 'lets see what this does' attitude

A mentor text is any text that can teach a writer about any aspect of the writers craft- show not tell.

"sentence stalking"  and well-written student sentences, paragraphs and essays.
As quickly as possible send students off to create and create their own to match or imitate the mentor text examples with their own ideas.

Reading provocative, very short text brings about surprising, thought provoking student writing, especially when the readings are used to stimulate writing. Read aloud- esp if they are behind, from newspapers, novels, and poetry.

The importance of a print rich environment

insert pg 18

After sharing a short text, ask the question - "what sticks with you?"
- (what are effective writing techniques), processing what works in a piece - teaching students to pay attention, live consciously, to think, to analyse, to connect, to synthesise.

Typing out the text of a picture book -
as a class, look at individual sentences in even greater depth, using the text several times to look at several grammar and mechanics concepts in action and in context.
Once students know what the text means, then their minds are free to attend to other aspects of the text and discuss grammatical choices and their effects.

Zooming in at sentence level
Grammar focuses us in on the writers point and "zooms in on" all the details that help enhance the point. - Grammar has the power to make movies in the readers mind.

Zooming in to the sentence level helps novice writers understand the connections between mechanics, craft, style, and meaning.

ie adding concrete details to a sentence = looking at life more closely, using details to create pictures with grammatical patterns sharpens students' observation and thinking skills.

Daily Doses - "students need quick daily instruction and practice" - 5-10 minutes (no more) to look at mentor sentences.  Ongoing shared experience with playing with and understanding grammar and mechanics is crucial.
Eg, take a sentence from the book you are reading or will read.  Share it, ask "what do you notice", "what do you like about the sentence?"
"what happens if we take the comma out?"

Imitate the sentence.  (Opener, sentence. -Use a comma after a long introduction) -place good ones on a wall chart.

Sentence Patterns-
Interrupter pattern - The sentence shifts the adjectives after the noun causing them to be set off with commas.

Serial Pattern - the sentence describes actions that take place in a series .

Closer Pattern- the sentence starts with an independent clause, followed by descriptions that tell about that sentence.

One sentence at a time students can begin to sort out like sentence patterns, goal is to grow their ability to distinguish between the functions of sentence patterns so they can use them in their writing.

Cumulative sentence patterns
The information that follows the base sentence (independent clause) sharpens the focus of the sentence.  The extra information = subordinate constructions = string of modifiers = describers.

ie the parts we add to the base sentence are what we focus our lens on, what we choose to focus on from the wide angle shot of the base sentence.

Lens focusing is adding details, qualities or attributes, or comparisons to sharpen the image and deepen the reader's understanding of the base sentence.

Technical terms (for the teacher)
Cumulative Sentences
Independent clause + a number of subordinate constructions
Sentence + string of modifiers (describers)
Sentence + lens focusing - zooming in on a

detail

quality or attribute

comparison

insert pg 23

Students learn by example, not definition.

A child's brain needs repetition - constant cycling through all the mechanical issues intentionally and explicitly several times for students to recognise the patterns.

Until then, students will have a hard time intentionally crafting their prose.  If they do know know a particular structure or that they have options, some may not ever go into the realm of complex sentences or other effective devices to create effective writing.

Routines create safe structures - something for students to count on.

Anderson believes students should write every day and have a writer's secret everyday - share in some well-written snippets of effective text.

Writers secrets can be shared by-
Lift a sentence from literature and let students explain what is good about it, generalise some principles, and apply them to their writing
Lift a sentence from literature and leave out one piece of the punctuation that has been taught or make a usage error and have students correct it.
Lift a sentence from student writing and imitate its mistake, whether it's a frequently seen error or a point I need to make
Ask students to imitate a construction and talk about its uses
Ask students to copy down an example of a rule from a mentor text, then discuss it.

5 minutes - quick warm ups to recycle or introduce information that students need to know.  The writing secret needs to be applied in writing that day,  pointed to again during writers workshop, then processed again at the end, and returned to if not clear.

This is only a small part of teaching students about the uses of mechanics - it supplements and recycles deep instruction that is steeped in literature and application in student writing.

WEAVING GRAMMAR AND MECHANICS INTO WRITER'S WORKSHOP

Prewriting / drafting / revising / editing / publishing  = these are processes require daily action of moving in and out of all the phases in true recursive fashion.

Advice to student's - you don't have to write about big things, write about what's under your nose- the places and spaces you spend your time, that's where you know the details.  Thats how you can take the readers anywhere, make them see and feel.

The cat leaped up, purring already. I didn't want her sitting on my hands as I tried to type these words, so I straightened up the blanket at my side and squished her gently in the gap. Thankfully her paws started their cuddly blanket love, she is happy with her allotted place.

To help students see the connections between craft, revision, and mechanics, I start by nudging students to try new techniques, to reread writing, to hear and see beautiful and effective writing.

Moving students towards correctness.

WRITERS NOTEBOOK
A safe space for writers to spill themselves on to the page. - a place which wont be marked, except by anyone but themselves.  The canvas to experiment and create on, the place to be wrong and wrong boldly.

Everything in the notebook is a process - a place to return - to refine, reread and rewrite.

The challenge is to systematise what you teach when it grammar and mechanics

Writers Notebook needs set up well- Anderson holds them as an essential tool to help students become sentence stalkers.

Teacher expectations- that the students care about their notebooks.

SECTIONS-
First section- writing. Dated, one word title - connecting to the text that follows.

Focused freewriting- a jumping off point.   ie a word, or a group of words (bullying), words that hold a theme, a feeling, a memory, an opinion.  - connected to the text read as a stimulus.

"just write, go where ever the writing takes you"

Read a mentor text ie Bedhead, - writers notebook- 'Hair'.
students start with the idea, then write the whole time.

After 7 minutes or so, say " you have one minute to come to a stopping place".  Share

Teacher point out something specific - modelling pointing out something specific they did in their writing.  - a clear image image, dialogue, humor, sentence fluency.

"what sticks with you?"

"What do you like about what _____ did?"

Repeated reading of short, engaging texts goes a long way in teaching kids about what makes good writing.

Repeating revisiting, viewing all the different layers in the text, deepens student understanding of how to read like writers.

ie the second reading of Bedhead, teacher demonstrates how punctuation drives the text.

Write up a few pages, share - discuss what the punctuation is doing in these passages:

Ellipses build tension

Short sentences and fragments fly off the tongue.

Long sentences roll around giving us a feel for the action

Dialogue is between quotation marks, telling me when  a person is speaking

Italics tells me to emphasize a word

Return to free-writes and have students imitate any of the mentor authors punctuation or conventions.

"play around with punctuation in new ways" - "ask yourself what effect does it have?  Go to it and we'll share in a minute"

"take risks, be bold, we can always play with it more"
Share (look at paper while student shares- look for teaching points, write them on the board)

ie, (introductory phrase comma - question- "do you agree where he put the comma?)

Students can go back and add to their freewrites as many times as it's effective.

WRITER'S EYE
Section of the writers notebook-
The students write about what they have observed with their own eyes.

Students start a collection of the people, places, games, hobbies, interests they know well
- their noticing abilities as well as their personal experiences.

When I was little , (Jamie Lee Curtis)

"Did everone remember to use commas, use a full stop? check and fix? One minute , go"

Comma= pause.  Several words that signal you use a comma to separate the introductory phrase from the rest of sentence = comma causers.

AAWWUBBIS
(As, Although, After, While, When, Unless, Because, Before, If, Since)

(A-WOOH-BIS)- = almost guaranteed there will be a comma in the sentence.  Not immediately following the AAAWWIBBIS, but they will feel/hear the pause when they read the sentence.

Write them all up, practice orally, students make up a sentence beginning with a AAAWWIBBIS and say where they would put the comma.

Follow up with them including at least one AAAWWIBBIS sentence in a longer piece they are working on.  The AAAWWIBBIS part of the sentence is dependent of the second part.

Writers Palette
Active verbs / Cool words/ Phrases or combinations that work/ contrasts /comparisons : similes, metaphors, sensory images, etc.

Gems: sentences and paragraphs that work - focus on appreciation of the art.

Inserts to stick in - sentence patterns- such as participles, prepositions and absolutes

Editors Checklist - Writers Secrets
Making our writing more 'adult' by using punctuation correctly for example.  Why do we have rules?  Writers wanted to be understood.
convention = agreement.

Following the conventions of mechanics and grammar makes our writing easier to understand

'Punctuation Takes a Vacation'  Robin Pulver (2003)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If0snsPlkDU

Capitalisation Rules