Mechanics By: Brittany Werner “The image that comes to me is a toolbox: punctuation is nails, screws, nuts and bolts, the means by which you secure things in place, maintain the space (time) between them, put the rhythm into sentences so they become comprehensible. Punctuation as fastener.” - John Jerome

Think, Pair, Share Why doesn’t the traditional way of teaching grammar not work? (By traditional I mean using an entire class period to teach one grammar lesson using workbooks)

What I Came Up With… Students will be bored Students may forget the grammar rule if it is only discussed in one class period Grammar takes a lot of practice and repetition to master There is so much to cover that students may be overwhelmed if it is crammed into one short unit

So Many Terms!

What Can We Do? Base your teaching on the errors the students make Tackle one error a day Focus on one sentence instead of an entire text Teach one thing at a time and apply it to daily writing Do something with grammar everyday Make grammar fun and interesting. From Jeff Anderson’s, Mechanically Inclined

Punctuation Pick a song Play the song to show how confusing language can be without punctuation Hand out the lyrics to the song Can be the entire song or just a section Have the students punctuate it *this can also be done with a poem

Fresh Prince Theme Song Now this is the story all about how my life got flipped turned upside down and I’d like to take a minute just sit right there I’ll tell you how I became the prince of a town called Bel-Air In west Philadelphia born and raised on the playground where I spent most of my days chilling out maxing relaxing all cool and all shooting some b-ball outside of the school when a couple of guys they were up to no good started making trouble in my neighborhood I got in one little fight and my mom got scared and said you’re moving with your auntie and uncle in Bel-Air I whistled for a cab and when it came near the license plate said fresh and had dice in the mirror if anything I could say that this cab was rare but I though nah forget it yo homes to Bel-Air

Word Order Play this video to show how misplaced words make the language confusing Ask the students what they think is wrong and how the sentence should be said

Conferencing Point out a consistent error that a student makes Correct and explain the error Ask the student to go through the rest of his/her paper to fix the error

Passage Reading Pick a passage (or a sentence) from a book the class is reading Ask what they like about the sentence Ask why certain punctuation is used This will make them think about punctuation and focus on a small amount of text at a time

Common Errors Can you think of a short activity for any of these errors?