Teaching Grammar Through Writing: Activities to Develop Writer's Craft in ALL Students in Grades 4-12, 2nd edition

·         Stresses the 16 elements of written language–seven parts of speech, six phrases, and three clauses–and shows teachers how to teach students to identify and use these elements effectively in their writing.

·         Focuses on one grammatical element at a time to help teachers build on students’ prior knowledge.

·         Progresses from words to phrases to clauses, then to editing and process writing.

·         Presents definitions and examples of each grammatical element and follows those with exercises and activities for student use.

·         Addresses such topics as sentence building, combining, imitation, writer’s voice, word play, poetry, editing, and guided or process writing.

·         Enables students to develop the skills necessary to write effectively by teaching grammar within the context of writing.

·         Reviews the benefits of teaching grammar through writing: to meet national standards; to provide student writers with useful tools; to enable students to develop a sense of voice; to show students that the use of grammar is part of a process, not an end in itself; to help students become critical thinkers; to enable students to develop confidence as writers; and to help English language learners develop a working knowledge of the conventions of English.

·         Introduces the ideas that promote grammatical awareness: read aloud, mini-lessons, Writer’s notebook, scaffolding, and conferencing.

·         Uses a flexible approach that lets teachers use the material as it is arranged, or as the teacher specifically needs to use it. The activities are easily tailored to meet students’ needs.

·         Provides ideas for writing in the content areas and how to write in response to a prompt.

·         Includes reproducible masters.

·         NEW! This streamlined edition is even more accessible than the first through the author’s careful deletion of certain information and his addition of information that strengthens each chapter.

·         New writing activities using the following have been added: nouns, verbs, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, gerunds, participial phrases, appositive phrases, adjective clauses, adverb clauses, how to begin sentences, a cause and effect poem, and a new sentence combining activity using absolute phrases.

·         Additional information is included on: absolute phrases, gerund phrases, infinitive phrases, participial phrases.

·         The overall structure of the previous edition remains unchanged, presenting a very useable scope and sequence from words to phrases to clauses, and then to editing and process writing. Each chapter also retains its original structure; the chapters that focus on words, phrases, and clauses each begin the same way: with groups of grammatical elements that invite students to identify them, and, based on their observations, then define them.  Definitions and examples of each grammatical element are then presented, and following those are exercises and activities for student usage.