grammar essentials geoff barton august 7, 2015

GRAMMAR ESSENTIALS

Geoff Barton

www.geoffbarton.co.uk

April 19, 2023

GRAMMARGRAMMAR ESSENTIALSESSENTIALS

1. Grammar essentials: What do you need to know about …

• Improving students’ writing?

• Improving their reading?

2. Some classroom ideas that work

CONTENT


What today is:

• Practical, not theoretical

• About grammar that makes an impact

• About good English teaching, not grammar for its own sake

• An approach, not knowledge


What today is not:

• A comprehensive grammar lesson

• A lecture

• About quacking the parts of speech

Language oddities


The Literacy Club

DOGS MUST BE CARRIED

ON THE ESCALATOR


Please don't smoke and live a

more healthy lifePSE

Poster


Sign at Suffolk

hospital:Criminals operate in this area


ICI FIBRES

Churchdown parish magazine:‘would the

congregation please note that the bowl at the back of the church labelled ‘for the sick” is for monetary donations

only’


TALKING POINT


1: So what grammar were you taught at your own school?

2: What grammar do you teach now, and how?


My approach …

1. ‘Grammar’ isn’t always a helpful term

2. Some bits of grammar are more important than others

3. Writing is where we’ll have most effect

4. Grammar knowledge is less important than grammar impact

5. Starters are great for grammar

6. Go for impact

Fiction:

• Sentence variety for effect: simple, compound, complex

• Multiple narration• Plot - dialogue - description• Location of the speech verb• Modification • Direct / indirect speech• Figurative language• Descriptive detail• Point of view

What are the essential bits of grammar needed by English teachers…?

Non-fiction:

• Connectives• Topic sentences• Headlines / subheadings / puns• Paragraph organisation - main

point … illustration … contrast• Cohesion (pronouns and

connectives)• Tense• Formality / impersonal tone• Layout features• Building an argument:

generalisation, supporting points, statistics, facts, quotation

LITERACY FOR LEARNING

GRAMMAR FOR WRITING

19 April 2023

GEOFF BARTON


TEACHING WRITING


You don’t teach writing merely through:

•Reading aloud

•Showing models

•Highlighting genre features

•Correcting first drafts

•Lots of bullet-points after the task

Explore conventions

Demonstrate

Share composition

Scaffold

Independent writing

Draw out key learning

DEPENDENCEDEPENDENCE

INDEPENDENCEINDEPENDENCE

TEACHING WRITING


Explore conventions

Demonstrate

Share composition

Scaffold it

Independence

Key learning

Including ‘bad’ modelsShow students the process of writingCorrect/change/improveMake it collaborative

Move from small to larger sections

TEACHING WRITING


Write the opening of a story about a major emergency.

‘Some people waste a lot of time and energy attempting difficult challenges, such as flying around the world in a hot-air balloon. Attempts like these are pointless, and benefit nobody.’ Write an article for your local newspaper arguing for or against this statement.

KS3 tests 2000

TEACHING WRITING

To be truth-full I am for the argument about wasting time and money trying to get around the world in a hot air balloon, when this time and money could be spent on working with medical difficulty or people who are homeless.

I feel it is very important to face challenges, as without challenges, the world would be a very dull place. I feel that the earlier challenges appear in a person’s life, the better, as there will undoubtedly be challenges in the workplace or in home life, and so I feel that the people who have faced challenges earlier in life get a head start over people who have not.

Level 4 Level 7

WRITING WITH POWERWRITING WITH POWER

An example

…

TEACHING WRITING


The Set-Up

BUILDING SUSPENSE

Write the opening of a mystery story. Set it at a funeral in a wintery churchyard.

√ √ √

TEACHING WRITING Using models

Before ….

It was a bitterly cold day. Everyone was in black. The cars were black too. There were people standing around in a group waiting for the coffin. Crows were flying in the sky. It was really eerie.

bad

TEACHING WRITING Using models

After ….

The undertaker's men were like crows, stiff and black, and the cars were black, lined up beside the path that led to the church; and we, we too were black, as we stood in our pathetic, awkward group waiting for them to lift out the coffin and shoulder it, and for the clergyman to arrange himself; and he was another black crow in his long cloak.

And then the real crows rose suddenly from the trees and from the fields, whirled up like scraps of blackened paper from a bonfire, and circled, caw-caw-ing above our heads.

Susan Hill

TEACHING WRITING

Mess around with:

• A fragmented narrative

• Point of view

• Tense

• Sentence types

• Plot - description - dialogue

• Speech verb

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

GRAMMAR FOR WRITING

• See things as a writer, not just a reader

• Explore texts actively - meddling, rewriting, editing

• Demonstrate the writing process yourself

• Relate everything to effect

• Talk about grammar where it helps, not as an end in itself

• Start with small units of writing … then build up

• Encourage experimentation, risk-taking, creativity

• Enjoy!

Key points


GRAMMAR FOR READING

19 April 2023

GEOFF BARTON


Grammar for reading is …•About reading, not grammar•Based on a rich variety of texts•Rooted in reading for pleasure•Not about analysis•Always linked to writing

Why do students find it harder to understand non-fiction than fiction?


Fiction is more personal. Non-fiction has fewer agents:

•Holidays were taken at resorts

•During the 17th century roads became straighter


Children’s fiction tends to be chronological.

Fiction becomes easier to read; non-fiction

presents difficulties all the way through


Non-fiction texts rely on linguistic signposts - moreover, therefore, on the other hand. Children who are unfamiliar with these will not read with the same predictive power as they can with fiction


Non-fiction tends to have more interrupting constructions:

The agouti, a nervous 20-inch rodent from South America, can leap twenty feet from a sitting position

Asteroids are lumps of rock and metal whose paths round the sun lie mainly between Jupiter and Mars


Fiction uses more active verbs.

Non-fiction relies more on the copula (“Oxygen is a gas”) and use of the passive:

Some plastics are made by … rather than

We make plastics by …


Non-fiction texts have more complex noun phrases:

The remains and shapes of animals and plants are lost in the myriad caves of the region


So …

1.Make non-fiction conventions explicit .. actively

2.Get English teachers to use more non-fiction

3.Read non-fiction texts aloud

4.Teach students about interrupting and long subjects, connectives, agent-avoidance!

5.Replace comprehension with DARTS (“Glombots”)


So …

Oh yes … and enjoy!


Reading Fiction

BUILDING TENSION

Brian Moore, Cold Heaven

The wooden seats of the little pedal boat were angled so that

Marie looked up at the sky. There were no clouds. In the vastness above her a gull calligraphed its flight. Marie and Alex pedalled in

unison, the revolving paddles making a slapping sound against the waves as the pedal boat

treadmilled away from the beach, passing through ranks of bathers to move into the deeper, more solitary waters of the Baie des

Anges. Marie slackened her efforts but Alex continued determinedly, steering the pedalo straight out

into the Mediterranean.

1

‘Let’s not go too far,’ she said.‘I want to get away from the crowd. I’m going to swim.’

It was like him to have some plan of his own, to translate idleness into activity even in these few days of vacation. She now noted

his every fault. It was as though, having decided to leave him, she had withdrawn his credit. She

looked back at the sweep of hotels along the Promenade des Anglais. Today was the day she had hoped to

tell him. She had planned to announce it at breakfast and

leave, first for New York, then on to Los Angeles to join Daniel. But

at breakfast she lacked all courage. Now, with half the day gone, she decided to postpone it

until tomorrow.

2

Far out from shore, the paddles stopped. The pedalo rocked on its

twin pontoons as Alex eased himself up from his seat. He

handed her his sunglasses. ‘This should do,’ he said and, rocking the boat even more, dived into the ultramarine waters. She watched him surface. He called out: ‘Just follow along, okay?’ He was not a good swimmer, but thrashed about

in an energetic, erratic freestyle. Marie began to pedal again, her hand on the tiller, steering the little boat so that she followed close. Watching him, she knew he could not keep up this

pace for long. She saw his flailing arms and for a moment

thought of those arms hitting her. He had never hit her. He was not the sort of man who would hit you. He would be hurt, and cold, and possibly vindictive. But he was

not violent.

3

She heard a motorboat, the sound becoming louder. She looked

back but did not see a boat behind her. Then

she looked to the right where Alex was

swimming and saw a big boat with an outboard motor coming right at

them, coming very fast.

4

Of course they see us, she thought, alarmed, and then as

though she were watching a film, as though this were happening to someone else, she saw there was a man in the motorboat, a young man wearing a green shirt; he was not at the tiller, he was standing in the middle of the boat with his back to her and as she watched he bent down and picked up a child

who had fallen on the floorboards. ‘Hey?’ she called. ‘Hey?’ for he must turn around, the motorboat

was coming right at Alex, right at her. But the man in the boat did not hear. He carried the child across to the far side of the

boat; the boat was only yards away now.

5

‘Alex,’ she called. ‘Alex, look out.’ But Alex flailed on and then the prow of the motorboat, slicing up water like a knife, hit Alex with a sickening thump, went over him and smashed into the pontoons of the little pedal boat, upending it, and she found herself in the water, going under, coming up. She

looked and saw the motorboat churning off, the pedal boat hanging from its prow like a

tangle of branches. She heard the motorboat engine cut to silence, then start up again as the boat veered around in a semicircle and

came back to her. Alex?

6

She looked: saw his body near her just under the water. She swam toward him,

breastroke, it was all she knew. He was floating face down, spread-eagle. She

caught hold of his wrist and pulled him towards her. The motorboat came

alongside, the man in the green shirt reaching down for her, but, ‘No, no,’

she called and tried to push Alex toward him. The man caught Alex by the hair of his head and pulled him up, she pushing, Alex falling back twice into the water, before the man, with a great effort,

lifted him like a sack across the side of the boat, tugging and heaving until Alex disappeared into the boat. The man

shouted, ‘Un instant, madame, un instant’ and reappeared, putting a

little steel ladder over the side. She climbed up onto the motorboat as the man went out onto the prow to disentangle

the wreckage of the pedalo.

7

A small child was sitting at the back of the boat, staring at

Alex’s body, which lay face-down on the floorboards. She went to

Alex and saw blood from a wound, a gash in the side of his head, blood matting his hair. He was breathing but unconscious. She

lifted him and cradled him in her arms, his blood trickling onto her breasts. She saw the boat owner’s bare legs go past her as he went to the rear of the boat to restart the engine. The child began to bawl but the man leaned over, silenced it with an angry slap, the man turned to her, his face sick with fear. ‘Nous y serons dans un instant,’ he shouted, opening the motor to full

throttle. She hugged Alex to her, a rivulet of blood dripping off her forearm onto the floorboards as the boat raced to the beach.

8

BUILDING TENSION

Brian Moore, Cold Heaven

SIMPLEGRAMMARSTARTERS


(inc prep for KS3 tests)


7 principles

Kick-start learning

Don’t aim for false links with main lesson content

Do aim for coherence across starters

Are great for grammar

Emphasise collaboration & problem-solving

Avoid the temptation to extend the activity

No Blue Peter badges


Mr B’s New Year Spelling Frolics

-our words -re endings -able / -ibleendings

-ous endings Single/doubleconsonants

colourhumourrumourarmourf lavour

humorous

centimetrecentretheatre

Availablelikeablesociableconsiderablelaughablesensibleincredibleterriblepossibleresponsible

t rem end ous

enor mouspoisonous

myst eri ous

cont inuousprec ious

f ero cious

del icious

ca ut ious

ambit ious

beginning

ups e t t ing

f org ot t en

commit t eepermittedoccurred

visit ed

reg r e t f ul

developing


-ible -able


Homophones

Sound of Music Kylie Beethoven

their therethey’re

too two to

pray prey


Homophones

Freeze Stand

advice advise

practice practise

effect affect

It’s its

Hard


Activity

I’ll say some sentences containing homophones. You tell me whether it’s list A or list B.

Make up sentences – eg “The pilot of the aircraft was really rather plain”)

A – stand up B – under tableplain Planeweak Weeksteal Steelmain Manerows Rowsfare Fairbreak Brakesew Sodue Jewwhether whether


Mnemonics

Necessary

Separate

Disappearance

Fulfil

Never eat chips - eat sausage sandwiches and raspberry yoghurt


Call My Bluff

OXYMORON

LITOTES

WORD CLASSES BY COLOUR

ADVERBNOUN

ADJECTIVE

VERB

The cat slept heavily on the old carpet

PREPOSITION


Connectives

The house was looking dark ….

(walk in … lights not working … hear a sound upstairs … go to explore … hear a window smash ...)

And

But

Or


Word patterns

Auto -

Gh -

Who can think of most words starting with these letter patterns …?


Synonyms:

Who can think of most words meaning scary, big, small, nice


Semantic continuum:

•Think of synonyms for house / toilet / friend•Place them in order of formal to informal

Starter 3: Autobiography

OpenerPaper 1 = non-fictionExpect autobiography, letter, or diaryLook at this opening from an autobiography.

ActivityOHTWhat can you tell about:WriterWhere the text is setWhat might happen next

Closing sequenceDiscuss student responses

It was on a bright day of midwinter, in New York. The little girl who eventually became me, but as yet was neither me nor anybody else in particular, but merely a soft anonymous morsel of humanity – this little girl, who bore my name, was going for a walk with her father. The episode is literally the first thing I can remember about her, and therefore I date the birth of her humanity from that day.


It was really cold. The weather was awful. I was walking along the edge of the cliff and I was really scared.


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• Read the book:

Grammar Survival: A Teacher’s Toolkit

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And thanks for listening!

grammar essentials geoff barton august 7, 2015

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