Middleschoolling's wordle

Top-Down Word Study - Grr

I’ve just spent a bit of time perusing a word study curriculum by Benchmark Education Company that our local school district is using. The basic content seems generally fine. 3rd grade is focused primarily on spelling patterns. 4th too, though it gets more into prefixes, suffixes, and homographs/phones. Then 5th grade really tackles learning suffixes, prefixes, and Greek and Latin roots. This content overlaps with materials I’ve been using with 3rd to 5th grade teachers, and also ties into the Common Core. But there is a fundamental problem that runs throughout this curriculum. It tells students what the morphemes are doing. Aside from providing belittling scripts for teachers to use, those scripts are completely top-down, not allowing students to discover the unconscious knowledge that they already have about words, and not allowing them to discover the patterns that emerge if they analyze a set of word data (say, if they are not native English speakers – they can still discover the patterns). For example, it says,

“Write the suffix –ion on the chalkboard. Explain to students that today they will be working with the suffix –ion. Say: This suffix appears in many words and refers to an “action or process” or “the result of an action or process.” Adding –ion to a base word usually changes it from a verb to a noun.”

Students are simply told what this suffix does, when they could discover that, as well as the fact that it attaches to verbs to make nouns. With the top-down model, such suffixes and their functions just become things to memorize. The discovery, the critical thinking is missing. But the sense of empowerment that comes when students understand that these grammatical distinctions are not handed down from on high but come from within cannot be underestimated. When we teach about language, guiding students to discover the spelling patterns, the parts of speech categories, the complex systematicity that they already make use of everyday in their language, the effects can be huge.

The good news is that we can accomplish the same goals that Benchmark aspires to (“Engaging students in word study gives them strategies for analyzing multisyllabic words and a deeper understanding of prefixes, suffixes, and root words. Explicit instruction in word-solving strategies helps students read and spell quickly and accurately. It also encourages comprehension”) without even spending much more time – and with big payoffs. I think a lot of teachers already encourage this kind of introspection from students without even thinking about it, but it’s just irritating that the curriculum materials themselves are so “teachy.”

Deidre's students sorting nouns: abstract and concrete

Variants of this noun morphology lesson are getting lots of action. As a follow up to this discussion of abstract and concrete nouns, Deidre's students explored this distinct in more depth. Here is an image of students sorting nouns into abstract and concrete.

And another, where they've made three categories, clearly abstract, clearly concrete, and not sure.

They then put them on the board. Where there was complete consensus, those words went in the "clearly" columns. (Some of these we would want to come back to and discuss some more - money, for example.)

From there, we turned to the noun suffixes discussed in this lesson and in its comments.

Dave Pippin's morphology whiteboard

This photo is a fine display of some morphological happenings from Dave's 7th grade class last spring.

The Do-Si-Do you can see there is mentioned in this lesson and came from John Horner's 7th graders at Whatcom Middle School.

Send more pictures!

Strand 1/Grammar – Lesson 11: Subject-Auxiliary Inversion and Fragments

Distinguishing subordinate clauses from independent clauses is an important aspect of learning not to write in fragments, since one of the most common types of stigmatized fragments in writing is a subordinate clause. Consider, for example, the following complex sentence.

The monkey can see that the banana is ripening.

This sentence contains two clauses: the independent clause and the subordinate clause, that the banana is ripe, contained within it. Apply SAI, and you get

Can the monkey __ see that the banana is ripening?

Employing SAI picks out the independent clause subject, the monkey. Even though the banana is also a subject (of the subordinate clause), SAI will not work with that subject since the banana is not the subject of the independent clause.

*The monkey can see that is the banana __ ripening?

SAI is, therefore, a useful test to determine whether a sentence has the subject that is required in most forms of writing. When SAI is attempted with a sentence without an independent clause subject, it's terrible.

Because he does not like it. → *Because does he not like it?

SAI fails here since because introduces a subordinate clause and there is no independent clause subject. Similarly for other kinds of fragments, SAI will not work since there is no subject.

At the skateboard store. → ??

There is no auxiliary verb and there is no way to turn this into a question.

Here’s a version of this on TeachLing. And a doc version of these last three clause posts is here.

Strand 1/Grammar – Lesson 10: Clauses (Subject-Auxiliary Inversion)

Another cool way to identify subjects is to use Subject-Auxiliary Inversion, which we already saw in Lesson 8. There, we saw that one way to turn a statement into a question is to move the auxiliary verb to precede the subject. Not only does this allow us to “discover” the auxiliary verb, but it will also “reveal” the subject. Remember, of course, that we make use of subjects all of the time in our speech, and have no problem doing so. But if we want a trick to consciously find the subject, simply make a question:

The chicken will eat the corn. → Will the chicken __eat the corn?

The portion of the sentence that the auxiliary verb inverts with or moves around will always be the subject, no matter how long or how short it is.

Mo is eating carrots. → Is Mo __ eating carrots?

The kid with a gigantic hat can’t see his friend.

→ Can the kid with the gigantic hat __ see his friend?

You can have students turn some sentences like these into questions by using SAI.

The kids should take their lunches on the fieldtrip.
The teacher visiting from Chicago will be our substitute next week.
The test on factors could be next week.
The man who talked with us on the bus about safety could also visit the classrooms.

Subject Auxiliary Inversion (SAI), like Tag Questions, will always pick out the subject of an independent clause, not a subordinate clause, so it will distinguish these from each other. Being able to easily pick out the subjects of our sentences will help ensure
• that each sentence has a subject, a required element of most academic writing
• that the subject “agrees with” the verb, if that’s something that you’re concerned about in your students’ writing
• that each independent clause has only one main subject, if you’re seeing comma splices/run-ons in students’ writing

I want to emphasize, though, that there are good reasons to talk about subjects other than simply dealing with issues in writing. That will come along for free, but it’s important to draw students’ attention to these phenomena. At the risk of repeating myself, subjects, like so many other features of language, are an aspect of the language that speakers already know about, that we have unconscious knowledge of. Figuring out the evidence for that is a useful exercise in scientific inquiry, and allowing students to “discover” the subjects that emerge beautifully when they make tag questions and perform SAI, reveals this knowledge.

A related lesson, which includes both Tag Questions and SAI, is here.

Strand 1/Grammar – Lesson 9: Clauses (Tag Questions)

There have been a couple of requests to get to clauses, so let’s do it. There’s more to say, of course, about verbs, but it makes more sense to come back to them in the context of clauses. Once you’ve got nouns and verbs, clauses are the obvious next step – they’re all you need to make a clause. So, here’s a definition: A clause contains a subject, which is a noun phrase, and a predicate, which is a verb phrase.

And here is NOT a (good) definition: a clause (or a sentence – I’ll come back this distinction below) is a complete thought. The “complete thought” quip is an old standby, but, I would argue, a useless one. I’ll have a separate post about this and its connection to sentence fragments.

So clauses can have noun phrase subjects and verb phrase predicates that can be short:

She likes eggplant.

Or long:

The girl with the striped pants who I met yesterday adores eggplant fresh from the garden.

Each of these clauses is made up of a subject (NP) and a predicate (VP), but in the second example, each phrase is simply longer.

A clause is distinct from a sentence since a single sentence can contain multiple clauses.

I like eggs. (one clause, one sentence)
I like eggs, but I don’t like bacon. (two independent clauses, one sentence)
I like eggs that are cooked well. (two clauses (one is a relative clause), one sentence)

For the most part, identifying subjects is easy. We all make use of them all the time in our speech and writing, and we all have subconscious knowledge that a subject is a necessary element in a clause. But sometimes we may want to double check for a subject, and a really useful test to help identify a subject is through the use of a tag question. We discussed tag questions in Lesson 8 in the context of auxiliary verbs, but here we focus on the pronouns that occur in the tag questions. You will discover that the pronoun that attaches to the end of a sentence refers back to the subject of the independent clause. (In writing, we set off the tag question with a comma.)

The student could write more quickly, couldn’t she?

The pronoun she refers back to the subject, the student. So, tag questions are useful little questions; they not only turn statements into questions, but they also pick out the subject of the sentence. No matter how long or how short the subject is, the pronoun will refer back to the whole segment:

The student with the really heavy backpack who usually takes the bus should be here soon.

→ The student with the really heavy backpack who usually takes the bus should be here soon, shouldn’t he?

And when there is a subordinate clause (which I’ll discuss in separate post, but here’s a link to a TeachLing lesson fragments, Figuring Out Fragments), the pronoun in the tag question cannot refer back to that subject, only to the subject of the independent clause – so this is a great way to address writing sentence fragments:

Sue thinks Bob will eat shrimp, doesn’t she?
not
*Sue thinks that Bob will eat shrimp, doesn’t he?

Even though Bob is a subject, it’s not the subject of the main/independent clause, so the pronoun in the tag question cannot refer back to it, only to Sue. You don’t need to get into this yet; however, if you do the activity suggested below, students will surely find subordinate clauses. You might want to use some controlled sentences first if you aren’t prepared to deal with all sorts of complex clauses.

Activity: Have students find (from a list of sentences you’ve created, from their own writing, from books) the subject of each sentence by using tag questions. Make sure they identify the whole noun phrase subject, not just the noun.

When students understand the difference between independent and dependent (or subordinate) clauses, there are lots of applications: learning how to punctuate, how to not write in fragments or run-ons, how to make sure the verb agrees with the subject. And other, broader, but even more important, reasons that I'll discuss in the next post.

Here’s a TeachLing series of lessons, Learning about Verbs, Identifying Subjects, Identifying Clauses, that has several tag-question documents to use in class: and another, Subjects: Finding Them Is Easy.

The next post will be about Subject-Auxiliary Inversion as a test for subjects. You may want to take a look at it before doing this one to see if you want to use the two tests together.

Strand 1/Grammar – Lesson 8: Main verbs and auxiliary verbs

As we move into the syntax of verb phrases, it’s important to discover some of the differences between verbs and auxiliary verbs. There are very few auxiliary (or helping) verbs, so it’s fairly straightforward to label them, but it’s instructive to really understand some of the ways in which the two categories differ. Then one can much more easily see how auxiliary verbs and non-auxiliary verbs behave in different ways in passive constructions, in progressive and perfect aspect, in representing the future tense, and so on.

Three of the ways in which auxiliary verbs differ from “main” verbs.
1) They occur before not and can contract with it.
Lulu has not eaten lunch yet.
Lulu hasn’t eaten lunch yet.
Compare to a sentence without an auxiliary – they’re terrible (as indicated by the *)!
*Lulu eats not lunch till noon.
*Lulu eatsn’t lunch.

2) Auxiliary verbs occur in tag questions.
Bobo is running the race, isn’t he?
Bobo hasn’t finished the race yet, has he?
Try to form a tag question on a sentence without an auxiliary – yuck.
*Bobo runs the race, runsn’t he?
*Bob finished the race in second place, finishedn’t he?

3) Auxiliary verbs move to the front of the sentence in a yes/no-question. We call this Subject-Auxiliary Inversion (SAI).
Are you guys singing at the concert? (You guys are singing at the concert.)
Have you been to New York? (You have been to New York.)
Main verbs can’t do that:
*Sing you at the concert?
*Like you New York?

Another difference between main verbs and auxiliary verbs is that auxiliary verbs are a closed class: new members are never added, while we add new verbs all the time.

But it’s a better idea to let the students discover these differences for themselves. They could discover that auxiliary verb have and main verb have have different patterns (and meanings). Since have can be both an auxiliary and a main verb, they can compare sentences such as the following to see how tag questions and SAI behave differently in the two sets.

She hasn’t been feeling very well.
The penguins have already been fed, haven’t they?
Have your friends left for the party?

I have four dollars left.
She has an injured elbow.
We have lots of energy.

They should also come up with all of the forms of be. Everyone knows these, of course, and uses them appropriately all the time, but students sometimes don’t realize that am, is, are, was, were, being, been are all forms of be. There’s a lesson on TeachLing on this.

The auxiliary verbs are have and be.
The "dummy" auxiliary verb is do. (See more on this below.)
And the modal auxiliaries are may, might, can, could, shall, should, will, would, must). These are different from these auxiliaries since they do not express tense or change their forms depending on the subject. They do, however, do all of the things in (1)-(3) above. We’ll return to a discussion of them.

There are related lessons on auxiliary verbs here and on auxiliary verbs and subjects here.

Dummy Do
When there is no auxiliary and the language needs one, a form of do is stuck in. Have them figure that out.

She likes eggs. - Make it negative. What happens?
She likes eggs. - Make it a question (both by SAI and a tag). What happens?

Be: Main Verb and Auxiliary Verb
Be is the only verb that has features of both auxiliary verbs and main verbs. It can be the only verb in a sentence (so act like a main verb), but also it does all of the things that auxiliary verbs do: precedes and contracts with not, moves to the front in questions, appears at the end in tag questions. It’s the last verb that can do all this, which other verbs could do in older forms of English. (“Think you a little din can daunt mine ears?” Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew; “Get thee to a nunnery.” Shakespeare, Hamlet)

Here's a version of this lesson as a doc.