Episode 398: Why Students Don't Apply Grammar in Their Writing — And How to Fix It Part 2

Today's episode is Part 2 of Episode 397.

Your students can label sentence types on a worksheet, crush the grammar game, and still hand in an essay packed with run-ons and fragments. That disconnect is not laziness. It is transfer, and it is one of the biggest pain points in middle school ELA. Today we talk about the moment teachers care about most: when grammar moves off the quiz and into real student writing.

We break down the third pillar of the EB Grammar Framework, application to writing, and why it has to come after direct instruction and engaging practice. You will hear exactly why “apply everything you have learned” overloads student brains during drafting, and how narrowing the target helps grammar stick during authentic writing tasks like literary analysis and argument essays.

Transcript

Grammar Series Setup And Goal

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Well, hello, teachers, and welcome to the Teaching Middle School ELA podcast. We are continuing our grammar discussion that we began on Tuesday of this week. If you have not listened to the last episode that aired, it was episode 397. We talked about the first two pillars of the EB Grammar Framework, which is direct instruction and engaging games. And if you have not listened to that one yet, go back and start there. And it sets everything up that we are going to be talking about today. And today is probably the part that you have been waiting for. And this is the part where grammar actually shows up in your students' writing, not just on a quiz, not just during the games, but in their actual essays, their actual sentences, their actual work as writers, which is the ultimate goal that we are looking for as middle school ELA teachers. So we are in part two of this grammar series and let's dive into today's episode. Hi there, ELA teachers. Caitlin here, CEO and co-founder of EB Academics. I'm so excited you're choosing to tune in to the Teaching Middle School ELA podcast. 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 piece of our engaging, fun, and rigorous curriculum so that they have everything they need to batch plan their lessons using our EB Teacher 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. So here's a scenario that I would like for you to think about. Your students just finished a solid week of grammar instruction on types of sentences. You did the direct instruction, you played the games, your students were engaged, they're getting it, their exit tickets look great. And then they sit down to write an essay. And it's like none of that ever happened. There are run-ons, there are fragments, it's the same mistakes you've been seeing all year. Does that sound familiar? I'm willing to bet that it is because that is the number one complaint we get about grammar from middle school English teachers. And why this happens is that learning a grammar rule in isolation, even with grade instruction, even with fun games, does not automatically just like transfer into writing. Those are two really kind of different cognitive tasks, right? Recognizing a comm splice in a practice activity is one thing, but catching your own comm splice in the middle of drafting a literary analysis essay is something else entirely. That is a totally different ball game. And so the bridge between those two things is intentional structured application. And that's exactly what the third pillar of our EB grammar framework is all about. And that is application to writing. So, what does that actually look like? What does it mean to apply grammar skills to writing in a way that works? And there are two things that I want you to hold on to here as we work through this. So, number one is that we want to focus on one skill at a time. This is probably the biggest mistake that I see when teachers try to connect grammar to writing. They want students to apply everything that they've learned all at once, right? Every common rule, every sentence type, every concept from the past several months. They want their students to have it nailed down in every single essay. And like I get that, but the goal is for students to use it all ultimately. However, the reality is that for most middle schoolers, that's simply too much. And when students are focused on finding evidence, building an argument, organizing their thoughts, right? That is such powerful thinking that we're asking them to do. That is a huge cognitive load. But then we're also asking them to monitor their use of compound complex sentences and their comma placement and their use of verbals and subject verb agreement, yada yada yada, right? Something is going to give. And quite frankly, it's usually the grammar. And it's not because they don't know it, it's simply that their brain just doesn't have the bandwidth to really do it all at once. So instead, what I want you to do, and what we teach our EB teachers to do, is to pick the skill that you most recently taught, the one that you did your most recent direct instruction on, the one that they played the games with, and you make that specific concept the focus for their next writing assignment. And it's just that one. Maybe two, right? If your students are ready and they're stronger writers. And that focused approach is actually what moves the needle for our students in applying these grammar concepts into their writing. And then number two that I want you to focus on is that you make the expectation visible for students. That means students need to know exactly what they're being held accountable for. And they need a tool that makes it really easy to self-check before they turn something in. And that's why in our EB program, we have what are called application to writing checklists. And honestly, it is one of my favorite tools in our entire EB grammar framework. And how it works so that you can make this yourself if you're not an EB teacher, but if you are, definitely make sure that you use these application to writing checklists that you have in your portal. But how it works is I want you to imagine just a simple checklist that has all of your grade level grammar skills listed down the left side of the checklist. Then there's a middle column, and then there's a quick writing check. And the writing check is like a simple instruction for what students should look for in their own writing. And in the right column, there's a challenge for students who are ready to go deeper in their writing. So three columns. The first column on the left side has a grade level grammar skill listed. The middle column is the writing check itself, which is the instructions for what students need to look for in their writing. And then the right column is a challenge for students who are ready to go deeper. So before any writing assignment, you simply check off the skill or the skills that you want each student to focus on, and then you hand them their checklist. That's it. That is the whole system. But the impact is huge because now students aren't guessing what you want, right? They have a clear, concrete target of exactly what your expectation is. And you've really built a self-editing step that actually means something to your students. It's connected to what they just learned and practiced. So what I love the most about this approach is that it makes differentiation genuinely simple. So let's just say you finished a unit on conjunctions and you've got three students. Let's call them student A, student B, and student C. Student A is still building their understanding, right? They grasp the basics during direct instruction, but they're really not fully there yet. Right. From them, you check the writing column, the middle one, right? For them, you just check that their job is to look through their essay and find at least one conjunction they used correctly. Like literally, you hand them the checklist and you check off that box that that's what you want them to do. That's it. Just find it, just notice it. That is a win for where that student is right now. Well, student B, on the other hand, may have demonstrated solid understanding, right? They did a great job during the games, their exit ticket looked good. And for them, you're gonna put a check mark in a more challenging column for them. And their job might not just be to find one conjunction. Their job is going to be to highlight every conjunction, but they're gonna highlight coordinating conjunctions. They're gonna highlight subordinating conjunctions, right? Every type of conjunction that you learned about, they're gonna highlight them and they're gonna make sure that each one is punctuated correctly. Okay. Student C is ready for more, and you're gonna check the column that is the most challenging. And for this one, they might also be looking for prepositions because that was last month's focus. And you want to see if they can hold on to two skills at once, right? So you have three students, three different checklists off of the same checklist, and they're all working on grammar in the context of their actual writing, all being held accountable at the level that's right for them. So that's differentiation that doesn't require you to like build three separate lessons. You're literally just checking different boxes based on the student's ability level. And so I want to come back to something for a second because I think this is the piece that ties the entire framework together. The order that we're doing this matters. Direct instruction first, it's just like math. Games for reinforcement second. That's just like manipulatives in math. And then application to writing is third. It has to go in that order. Because if you skip the direct instruction and you go straight to a game, students are obviously playing without understanding. The game is fun, but their learning is shallow because they just don't get it. And if you skip the games and you go straight to application, you are asking students to transfer a skill that they've only heard explained once through notes. And that's not really fair to them, right? And that's why so many teachers feel like grammar instruction just doesn't work because typically we teach it once, we test them on it, and then we expect them to know it. That's just not happening, right? But when you go in order, when students have a clear understanding of the rule, and then they've practiced it repeatedly in those engaging games, then you ask them to find it in their own writing. And that is when it clicks. Because at that point, right, it's not new, it's familiar. They've seen it, they've practiced it, and now they're just doing it in a new place, which is in their own writing. And that is the shift. So, what I want you to walk away with today is that getting students to apply grammar in their writing is not about assigning more grammar worksheets. It's not about correcting every single error and every single essay. It is about building the skill deliberately through direct instruction, engaging practice, and then focused, structured application to real writing. One skill at a time, clear checklist in their hands, and that framework makes the whole thing feel so much more manageable for you. And quite frankly, it's meaningful for them. So I hope that you enjoyed this episode. If you did, make sure that you share it with a friend who is also a middle school ELA teacher struggling to teach grammar. And if you want to be a part of our EB Teachers ELA portal that has our entire EB grammar framework already built inside of it for you for all of the grammar concepts for middle school, make sure that you add your name to the priority list for the EB Teachers ELA portal at ebteacher.com forward slash portal. All right, you guys, I hope that these two episodes were helpful. And let me know over on Instagram if they were at EB Academics. Thanks so much for being here this week, and I will see you guys next week on the podcast. Bye, everyone.