Dakota Writing Project

by Stacy Hawkins, Sioux Falls Roosevelt High School

When I first started teaching accelerated ninth grade English, the prospect of correcting advanced writing excited me. Sure enough, after I had assigned the first writing exercise of the year, my students impressed me with their creativity and style; strangely enough, something was missing. Even though the ideas were there, they were not expressed as concisely and eloquently as they could have been.

I determined that sentence structure needed to be a primary area of focus for student writing to improve. Since most students were accustomed to taking accelerated English courses, and accelerated English courses often emphasize literature instead of grammatical study, my students needed to start with some basic grammatical rules. After we laid the groundwork of independent and subordinate clauses, it was time to move on to the types of sentences: simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex.

Even though mastery of independent and subordinate clauses came easily, students were having considerable difficulty with combining the clauses and identifying sentence types. I didn’t understand why identifying the types of sentences was so difficult since they had no problems with correctly identifying clauses. Even though we were all frustrated, I was determined to stick with sentence structure until the students understood the concepts and their importance. The students knew that they would be tested on sentence structure periodically throughout the year. The semester test required that students be able to identify whether an example sentence was simple, compound, complex, or compound-complex. I required on my own quizzes that they be able to write and identify the sentence types in their own sentences. Because of the assessments and the desire to master challenging material, students wanted to understand the material and perform well on tests. Since the students were frustrated and continued making mistakes on practice sheets, I realized that I needed to change the way I taught sentence structure and find a method of teaching that clicked with them.

While I tried to figure out what was missing from my instruction, an idea finally hit me: Students needed to visualize the types of clauses in a sentence before they could define the sentence type. Considering our fast-paced world packed with pictures, human beings “are dominated by visual concepts and our perception of visual objects and images” (Ladevich 114). With this in mind, I started my instruction from the beginning; this time, however, I instructed students to underline independent clauses and put parentheses around subordinate clauses. Once students accomplished this task, rather than seeing a jumble of words, they were able to see for the first time the various parts that made up the sentence. For example, if students looked at a sentence with two underlined parts, now they could visualize two independent clauses to identify a compound sentence. I was awestruck that the simple tasks of underlining and using parentheses could make all the difference in changing a daunting task to a relatively easy one.

Now my students could identify simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex sentences. So what? Were my students going to need to know how to define a compound-complex sentence in their future careers? Perhaps, they might use that knowledge if they became English teachers, but would someone in another profession need to know this information? The answer is yes; however, I wanted my students to go beyond the technical information they needed to learn to answer questions on their district semester test. I wanted them to be able to apply their new knowledge and realize the purpose of learning sentence structure. In previous years, this was where I would stop. Once the students could identify the different types of sentences, they had mastered what they needed to know for their district semester test. Unfortunately, I was robbing my students of the knowledge of purpose. How did experimentation with structure affect the meaning of the writing? Up to this point, my students hadn’t contemplated that “with each choice of . . . clause structure and each decision on its placement, meaning changes” (Noden 98). My students needed to know how the way they structured their sentences affected the meaning. Additionally, many students write with a choppy style that could be significantly improved simply by teaching the use of sentence variety with the various sentence structures.

After all our necessary, yet long drill and practice, we needed a break with some creative fun that showed the students the purpose of learning sentence structure. As the students looked at the daily assignment on the board, they lit up seeing the word “activity” in place of “handout.” Once I had everyone’s attention, I instructed them to put their desks in a circle and then to take out a clean sheet of paper to write a short story, a task they continually begged to do. Once my suspicious students were assured this was going to be an in-class activity with no homework, they looked up at me expectantly. I instructed them to decide what their story was going to be about, then write one sentence at the top of their paper to begin the story. Once they all had all written a sentence, I told them to underline the independent clauses, put parentheses around the subordinate clauses, and label the sentence simple, compound, complex, or compound-complex. I saw blank expressions turn to worried expressions, and they looked to me for guidance. I let them know that this was the same thing they had been doing the past two weeks. The only difference was the author of the sentence. The students got to work, some with much more confidence than others. I walked around the room to answer questions and help students get started. While students were working, I put an example sentence of my own on the board and proceeded with the required steps for a visual reference. Once we were all finished, I told the students to pass their paper to the right. The next step was adding a second sentence to another person’s story; however, I added a twist: Students must stay true to the topic sentence on the new paper, and the second sentence should be a compound sentence. Students thought for a moment and then began to write a sentence using at least two independent clauses. We continued this process until the students began to feel more comfortable and write the specified sentences with ease.

Initially, many students used model sentences on the board as a guide, but as they gained confidence, few students looked up from their writing. When I finally instructed students to pass the papers back to the original author of the first sentence, I was met with groans and cries of “Can’t we write for a few more minutes?” I hated to stop the writing, but I wanted the students to read their stories aloud. The students anxiously volunteered to read their writing, and an amazing thing happened. These silly stories were the most well written fluent pieces I had heard from them all year. I asked the students to tell me what they noticed about the stories and discovered my quiet observation echoed by my students. They were amazed to have written such fluent, dynamic stories. Students who hardly ever wanted to share their writing were now clamoring to share because they could tell their writing had significantly improved.

I left my classroom that day with a feeling of accomplishment. Both my students and I grew as writers that day. Now I look at every concept I teach and wonder at its purpose. Why do my students need to know this? How can I help them realize this purpose? Many students do not see the purpose of sentence structure right away; I now know how vital it is for me to not only teach the concept, but also help students learn the motivations and purposes behind the concept.

Ladevich, Laurel. “ERIC/RCS Report: Visual Literacy.” The English Journal, 63 (1974) : 114-116. JSTOR. ID Weeks Lib., Vermillion, SD. 20 June 2006.

Noden, Harry R. Image Grammar: Using Grammatical Structures to Teach Writing. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1999.