My last post was about how if we want grammar to stick, we need to do two things:
Teach it in the context of student writing
Approach it as a study of opportunities that enhance our writing, not errors we need to avoid
When it comes to doing this, I have found no tool more useful than the sentence. While on the surface the definition of a sentence is rather dull…
…in practice, sentences can be gorgeous laboratories of nearly infinite variety. They can be extended, cut down, puffed-up, moved around, mixed-and-matched, and generally treated like Playdough. And in the process one can teach nearly any grammatical rule and tool imaginable. Here are the top three ways that I use the humble sentence to help my students learn and learn to love grammar: