Spelling and Grammar Analysis

Some students appear careless in their writing and spelling, using random capitalizations, omitting punctuation, and spelling words as if they are just throwing the letters at the paper in any order.  I've seen this even in high school students.  My suspicion is that they are reading and writing (and thinking) so fast that they don't see the details.  And since writing instruction these days rarely gives children a solid foundation in "conventions" (another post, some day), students may not think these things are not important.

But of course they are.

When students analyze the spelling and grammar of selected passages, it helps them slow down long enough to notice the details.  You start by giving the students a short passage of good writing (a paragraph is fine), appropriate to their reading level.  Here's how it works:

1. For spelling analysis:  Have them choose 5-15 specific words from the passage: animal words, nouns, verbs, words with four or more letters, or two or more syllables-- whatever fits the passage and their ability.  As they list the words on a separate sheet of paper, have them divide the words into syllables.  Finally, have them underline each sound in the word with an alternating color.

Example:    e x      a m      p le               sh ee t

2. For grammar analysis, choose a specific skill/rule the student needs to work on and have the student analyze the passage for the use of that rule. For example, to practice capitalization, the student can divide a blank sheet of paper in two columns, labeling one "First Word in Sentence," and the other, "Proper Nouns and Titles."  Then he just finds every capitalized word in the passage and writes it in the appropriate column.  Note: when a proper noun begins the sentence, it goes in both columns.

Example:  My brother Rob is older than I am.  Rob lives near Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Any other grammar issue can be analyzed in this way.  If the student needs to work on subject verb agreement, have her find the subject and verb of each sentence and list them in the columns.  If she needs to work on punctuation, give her a list of punctuation rules that are followed in the passage and have her label each one.

Here's an example with the rule list and the labeled passage:

The main point of this analysis method is to have students pay attention to the mechanics of good writing.  The more they notice, the more they will process, and it will begin to show up in their own writing.

Whole Brain Writing

I love the Whole Brain Teaching philosophy.  It uses physical movement, oral repetition and response, and visual images to teach.  It is high energy, fun, and highly effective.  I used WBT's Superspeed Math drills and a few other techniques the year before I quit teaching.

Whole Brain Writing is a free download at Chris Biffle's  Whole Brain Teaching website.  To get it, create an account on the website (free!) and download the material from the "Goodies" menu.  It is presented as a slideshow, but is very easy to follow.  In fact, you could easily use the slideshow as the basis for your own classroom (or your own child's) writing curriculum.

The program starts out giving definitions and accompanying hand gestures to teach parts of speech. There are also hand gestures to teach sentence rules (capitalization and end punctuation), topic sentence, paragraph, and essay.  Students practice 'oral writing" with these gestures-- answering questions in complete, capitalized and punctuated sentences-- and are challenged to support their answers with gesture-emphasized "because" statements.  The function of the gestures is not unlike Signed English-- which is a bridge between ASL, with its unique vocabulary, grammar and syntax,  and the English that deaf students learn to read.  WBT's "oral writing" is a similar bridge between students' spoken language and the written conventions.

The program then provides several activities with graphic organizers for expanding students' thinking and writing from brainstorm charts to complete essays.  These include WBT Brainstorming, the Genius Ladder, and Triple Golders.

WBT Brainstorming takes students through creating "who, what, when, where, why, how" questions about their topic and then answering them in a way that can create complete, organized essays.

The Genius Ladder is presented as a game that helps students develop a simple sentence into a more complex, descriptive one, adding details and "extenders," and organize the sentences into paragraphs.  It reminds me of the step-by-step approach of Andrew Pudewa's Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW), and I suspect it would work for the same type of student.  Pudewa starts his students out writing "key word outline" notes from published material, and they end up writing detailed original sentences with specific "dress-ups" in organized paragraphs and essays.  In WBT's Genius Ladder, students move from the "blah sentence" to the "genius paragraph."

With Triple Golders, students begin with simple, scaffolded sentence frames and learn to create detailed sentences that they can expand into tightly organized paragraphs and essays.

And about that grammar... Superspeed Writing is an activity that helps students practice constructing sentences using various parts of speech, beginning with "I see a (noun)," and ultimately completing "Article adjective noun, appositive, verb adverb prepositional phrase conjunction rest of sentence."

As if that wasn't enough, Biffle provides a fun, low-stress method for getting students to notice their own errors and not meltdown when their errors are pointed out to them.  For red-green proofreading, students mark each other's papers, once with a red marker to identify an error ("less perfect skill"), and once with a green marker ("more perfect skill.")

And as with all WBT programs, it is the individual student's progress that is celebrated, not just the top banana.  So everybody stays motivated.

Here's another activity, called SuperSpeed Reading, that is a fun way to drill sight words in a large classroom.  It is similar to WBT's Superspeed Math, which I have used with success to drill math facts.

If you are at all interested in adding these hands-on, whole brain activities to your writing classroom, check out the Whole Brain Teaching website!