Teaching Middle School ELA
Welcome to the Teaching Middle School ELA podcast, where we are dedicated to helping English Language Arts teachers create dynamic and engaging lessons for their students, while also managing the day-to-day responsibilities that come with being a Middle School ELA teacher.
As educators ourselves, we understand the challenges of finding a work-life balance that allows us to pursue our passion for teaching while also enjoying our personal lives. That's why each Tuesday, hosts Caitlin Mitchell and Jessica Cannata share practical and innovative solutions for managing your workload and staying inspired in your teaching practice.
Whether you are looking for fresh ideas to inspire your students, strategies for improving your writing instruction, or tips for managing your time more effectively, this podcast is designed to provide you with the tools you need to thrive as a Middle School ELA teacher.
Join us each week for curriculum and lesson ideas, classroom stories, and interviews with fellow educators who are experts in the field. We believe that with the right support and resources, you can create a classroom environment that encourages students to become strong and passionate learners.
If you teach reading and writing to middle schoolers and want to stay up-to-date with the latest trends and best practices in ELA education, then this is the podcast for you! Tune in every week and let us help you make a difference in the lives of your students and in your own teaching career.
Teaching Middle School ELA
Episode 315: Ideas for Teaching Grammar in the Context of Reading
I’d love to hear from you! Send me a text!
Grammar lessons don’t have to be dull or disconnected from what students are reading! In this episode, we share three engaging strategies to teach grammar concepts through the sentences in your class's stories and books. You’ll hear all about using mentor sentences, setting up scavenger hunts for grammar elements, and exploring nonstandard dialects to enrich students’ understanding of language. With step-by-step ideas and examples, we'll make it easy to incorporate these strategies into any story or text.
Tune in for creative ways to bring grammar to life in your classroom!
Well, hey there, teachers, if you would love to learn some practical ways to teach grammar in the context of reading, then this episode is for you. Today, we are going to be showing you three strategies that make grammar come alive through the texts your students are already exploring, from mentor sentences to scavenger hunts and even diving into dialects. We're going to help guide students toward a deeper understanding of grammar concepts in a fun and engaging way. Come, listen and try these in your classroom for impactful and meaningful grammar lessons. Hi there ELA teachers, caitlin here, ceo and co-founder of EB Academics, I'm so excited you're choosing to tune into the Teaching Middle School ELA podcast.
Speaker 1:Our mission here is simple to help middle school ELA teachers take back their time outside of the classroom by providing them with engaging lessons, planning frameworks and genuine support so that they can become the best version of themselves both inside and outside of the classroom. And we do this every single day inside the EB Teachers ELA portal. This is a special place we've developed uniquely for ELA teachers to access every single day inside the ebTeachers ELA portal. This is a special place we've developed uniquely for ELA teachers to access every single piece of our engaging, fun and rigorous curriculum so that they have everything they need to batch plan their lessons using our ebTeacher digital planner that's built right into the app. Over the years, we've watched as thousands of teachers from around the world have found success in and out of the classroom after using EB academics programs, and we're determined to help thousands more. If you're interested in learning more, simply click the link in the podcast description and in the meantime, we look forward to serving you right here on the podcast every single week.
Speaker 2:Welcome back everyone to the Teaching Middle School ELA podcast. I'm here with Megan. We are super excited for today's episode. I also know you know it's that final stretch before winter vacation for so many teachers. So whether you are still teaching this week or, lucky you, you got out early already for break we're thinking of you, we hope it's a wonderful few days and we appreciate you joining us today, where we're talking about teaching grammar in context and this is actually a common concern for our teachers.
Speaker 2:They're always asking us about, like, what are the best practices for teaching grammar? And we have three pillars at EB. We believe in direct instruction, we believe in engaging games. We believe in engaging games, we believe in application to writing, but we also know that sometimes it pops up in our reading right and it's a wonderful teachable moment to pause for a minute and talk with our students about the grammar that they're experiencing in their texts. So today we're really sharing practical ideas for helping students explore and understand grammar concepts, their texts. So today we're really sharing practical ideas for helping students explore and understand grammar concepts using the stories that you're already reading in class.
Speaker 3:For sure, and to clarify, we are not implying that grammar should only be taught in context. Direct instruction for grammar is very important, but research does show that direct instruction alone isn't going to cut it when it comes to students understanding, remembering and also applying what they've learned. Plus, it's just kind of dry, especially when it comes to grammar. So after you've reviewed specific concepts with students, they really need to see those concepts in their reading to really truly grasp them. So how can we do that, Jessica?
Speaker 2:Yes, we're going to actually share two ideas that can work with any story that you're reading with your students, and then one bonus idea for stories that include non-standard dialects. That one is really cool. So first we're going to talk about mentor sentences and, megan, I have to say I have this like love hate relationship with mentor sentences. It's definitely better now, but I used to hate them and I think that's an unpopular stance. Like there was a time in education, remember we were so trendy, they were everywhere, right, and I feel like I was working at a school when it was very trendy and my role at this time, in addition to being like a literacy coach, was I also supported one particular classroom during grammar instruction and that teacher only used mentor sentences and it was like, yes, if you're watching this, megan just made a face right, like it was painful because there was no direct instruction. So instead it was like we'd read a short story. We'd look at the mentor sentence. Students were blindly guessing what part of speech was every single word in the mentor sentence, and then they had to create their own sentence that made no sense using those same parts of speech. It was over my head half the time. There was no way third graders were getting this. I think I still have trauma from that For sure. Before we share our take on mentor sentences, I do want to point out that this activity is not meant to be done in isolation like that. So you might want to consider how you can do this in addition to your direct instruction, like Megan talked about earlier, and I think it's really important that, if you're going to use mentor sentences, you're using stories that the students have read in class so that they recognize them, and you can also use examples from other sources or even create your own. But I've seen the best results when students are already familiar with the text, because they're not trying to juggle comprehension of the text and then the grammar at the same time. It's like we want to give them that singular focus. So here's how this works Basically you're going to select a mentor sentence with a target grammar concept.
Speaker 2:So you're going to choose a sentence from a text that students are reading that demonstrate a specific concept, like parts of speech or compound sentences or prepositional phrases, like one concept, not all of them, and it should be a concept that your students are already familiar with or that you're about to teach them and you are going to provide some direct instruction with and that is key You've either already done the direct instruction or you are building it into this mini lesson while you're reading the text. And then you're going to analyze the grammar. So you'll read the sentence aloud and you'll ask students what do they notice about the grammar or the punctuation. So, for example, let's pretend you're reviewing parts of speech and you want to focus specifically on adjectives and how that can affect the tone of the sentence. So we've narrowed it down to just adjectives and their effect on tone.
Speaker 2:So I have the gift of the magi like on my mind because the curriculum team we've just been revamping our gift of the magi unit. So I've been reading that story like I'm in it with all the activities. So if you're an EB teacher, go check out that new, updated resource. But I'm gonna use a sentence from that story and it's also appropriate for this time of year when we're airing this episode. So this is a sentence for Della, if you guys are familiar with this story. So the sentence is she stood by the window and looked out dully at a gray cat walking a gray fence in a gray backyard.
Speaker 2:So, assuming your students are reading the Gift of the Magi. You'll display that particular sentence on the board and you're going to ask students what do they notice about the grammar? And if you hear crickets which you might you might need to guide them a little bit with some questions. So you might say all right, what are some words that stick out to you? Okay, what part of speech are those words? And it's just going to get the conversation going.
Speaker 2:Then you're going to discuss the purpose and the function of the sentence. So you want to guide students to consider why the author chose this structure. For instance, why might O Henry have repeated the adjective gray? And a fun way to think about the author's purpose is to work with the class to reword the sentence with the same ideas but a new structure. Now, if you tuned out for a second, I want you to come back because I don't want to like just skip over this. This is a simple idea and it's so good, all about author's purpose. So you and your students will rewrite the mentor sentence a different way, while maintaining the same message, and then you can talk with your students about why the author may have chosen the original sentence instead of the one you wrote together. So, for example, this sentence does not have the same punch as the original.
Speaker 2:She stood by the window and looked out dully at a cat walking a fence in the backyard and everything was gray. That word repetition of the original sentence right, that repeat of the word gray really adds to the monotonous tone that O Henry wanted in that sentence. So this opens up a great discussion with your students and then hopefully they can apply that when they go to do their own writing and finally you'll create a mimic sentence with the same structure. So you'll have students write their own sentences using the same grammatical structure but with different words and ideas. So if we use that same sentence "'She stood by the window and looked out dully "'at a gray cat walking a gray fence then you could model it for the students and you come up with something like he waited on the bench and looked thoughtfully at a brown bird sitting on a brown post over some brown dirt, and then you have students create their own and share those with the class.
Speaker 3:That's actually really fun and it almost has more of a game element to it than like a traditional way of approaching mentor sentences Totally and.
Speaker 2:I feel like it sets it up. So students want to share their sentences because you've been scaffolding it all along. You're not just like diving in, like this is the part of speech. Okay, now go make your own.
Speaker 3:Right, exactly, it's much more guided. Yeah, and so if students need some extra support, what would you recommend?
Speaker 2:Because this sounds like a little bit of a tall order for maybe some kids in class 100%, and that is what I saw when I was in the classroom, like it was just over those students' head and, granted, you know they were young, they were third graders, but the same can be applied for middle school.
Speaker 2:So I'd say that, first you wanna choose a really simple sentence to begin with, or, if you have a class with mixed readiness levels, you could ask students to only change one part of the sentence, like the part that you're targeting, and let them have the rest of the sentence, and that's totally fine. And then tell that students that for an extra challenge, they can rewrite the whole sentence if they want, because some students might be ready for that. And finally, it's really helpful to let students work in pairs for that extra support. It just takes off some of the pressure. They get to have a little bit more fun, they get to be a little more creative. So you might want to try that at first as well. And I think honestly these were all things that likely would have made my past experience with mentor sentences so much better and I might not have hated them so much.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I agree with that, Agree completely, okay. So this next one is also super fun. So at EB, of course, we love a good scavenger hunt, where students search through text for particular items. So in this case, they'll be hunting for grammar elements. This works great with a short story or a book that your students have recently read. So here's a step-by-step example to get you started.
Speaker 3:The first thing you're going to do is introduce the scavenger hunt and concepts. So begin by explaining the grammar concepts to be hunted in the text, such as identifying parts of speech, types of sentences, and these could include simple, compound, complex, compound complex, maybe participial phrases, and these are just a few examples of what you could focus on. There's a whole world of grammar out there. Next step would be to create a checklist or worksheet. So you're going to prepare a checklist or a worksheet listing the specific grammar elements students need to find. So examples here you could do nouns Maybe they're going to find three nouns that are important to the plot of the story.
Speaker 3:Maybe verbs Maybe they could locate two action verbs that show something a character does. You could have them find adjectives that maybe maybe they're finding two adjectives that help describe the setting, for instance, they could look for types of sentences. You could have them look for one example of each type of sentence, and I listed those earlier. You could also have them look for participial phrases. They could find one participial phrase that adds detail to a sentence, for instance, and this again. So on and so forth, with whatever concepts you'd like to use. You could use a tool, an AI tool, like ChatGPT, to also help you create some great prompts like these as well.
Speaker 3:The next thing you're going to do is just encourage collaboration. Really, have students work in pairs or groups to encourage the discussion about what they're finding in the text. If you'd like, you can even make it a competition so that the group that finds the most correct examples gets a small reward, like a sticker or whatever you have on hand. And then, finally, you're going to have your students share and discuss examples. So, at the very end of this activity, bring the whole class together to share what they found. Have them discuss each example that uses the grammar concept and how it adds meaning or an effect to the sentence or the text.
Speaker 2:I love this because it's basically like doing a worksheet, but you're making it fun, right, and all you're doing is adding that element of competition and letting them work in teams. They're still doing like the standards aligned lesson, so it's not too much work on your part, but like students are way more engaged. So I love it, and I'm sure you could adjust it to make it like easier if you needed to. You could ask students to find fewer items if they're younger, maybe, or they just need more support, or you can make it more challenging, even for students. So there's so many ways to differentiate there. You do it for a whole chapter, do it for a whole book, whatever, okay.
Speaker 2:So the last idea we're going to share today is for stories or books that use non-standard dialect. So for this one, we're going to use the example of thank you ma'am, because that's another one that our curriculum team has really been working on recently. So if you're an EB teacher, go check out that resource in the portal. It got a whole upgrade. It's so, so good. So before you begin discussing the dialect in the story, it's really important to think about the language that you're going to use. For example, the dialect in Thank you, ma'am, is not incorrect or bad English. It's just a dialect that's a little different from what students learn to use in school, and it can be really helpful to choose a term for standard English, like school English, so students can use that to differentiate between the language they read in the story and some of the more prescriptive grammar rules they've used in school. So then what you do is you can take a few examples from the story and compare the story's language to school language and you talk about why the language of the story is a more effective choice for the author to make.
Speaker 2:So check out this sentence. This comes straight from Thank you, ma'am, I would not take you nowhere. What you can do as you're reading that story is you pull that sentence out, you write it on the board for students A quote from Mrs Jones in the story and you ask students to translate that to school English and they'll probably tell you I would not take you anywhere. So you can explain to students that the original sentence uses what's called a double negative and, even though it's common in other languages and in non-standard English dialects, it's something we really avoid in school language. So next you want to talk with students about why Langston Hughes would choose I would not take you nowhere instead of I would not take you anywhere.
Speaker 2:What does the first sentence do that the second one does not? And as you discuss, you could talk about how double negatives really can add emphasis to writing. And in this case the original line gives the character's voice a really powerful, genuine quality that shows her frustration. It also reflects a natural way of speaking in the character's dialect, so students might consider how rewriting it in school language could lose some of that power, that personality and authenticity that Langston Hughes intended in the story. So I mean what a rich discussion you could be having with your students about grammar in context. I think that's so cool.
Speaker 3:It is very cool and what I really love about that method is that it lets students kind of explore different dialects without judgment about it being right or wrong. Right, they're using what they've learned about grammar when they translate the lines, but they don't talk about the translations. As you know, corrections when done really carefully and sensitively, conversations like these could really help students kind of, you know, open up their mind, think about their views on language and how we use it and how it affects you. Know a story and the characters within a story too.
Speaker 2:Absolutely and can be done in you know, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth grade, whatever grade you're teaching, I think it can be really powerful and it's really validating for students who speak in dialects that don't always mirror grammar as we teach it in school. So I think that is a good spot to end, Megan, and let us know if you end up picking one of these three methods to try out in your classes to really help bring grammar alive in the text your students are reading. We love hearing your feedback. In fact, so many EB teachers lately have been talking about a game we shared on the podcast, like last year I think, boom Snatch, and it's so much fun to like see their pictures in the classroom or hear how their students are doing with it. So we love when you guys share with us how these are going in the classroom. So we appreciate you listening. We hope you have a wonderful rest of your week, megan. Do you have vacation plans for the holidays?
Speaker 3:So I'll probably be a little bit of everywhere. Our Christmas program at school cause I'm teaching music part-time is December 19th, so it's a big, big week day, and then after that we've got rest. So I'll I'll be. I'll be a little bit of everywhere, but mainly relaxing.
Speaker 2:I hope you do that Well nice. Enjoy your vacation, megan, and everyone. Enjoy yours as well, and we will see you next time on the teaching middle school ELA podcast. Bye everyone, bye everybody.