S8 E8 Syntax and Grammar
In this episode of The Reading Teacher’s Lounge, hosts Mary and Shannon sit down with literacy expert Sara Lee to explore effective grammar and syntax instruction that supports both reading comprehension and student writing. The conversation focuses on how sentence structure, grammatical functions, and modifiers shape meaning, and why grammar should be taught as an integral part of literacy rather than in isolation.
Sara shares practical, classroom-ready strategies for embedding grammar instruction into reading and writing routines, with an emphasis on sentence-level work, sentence nuclei, and the intentional use of descriptive modifiers. The discussion also highlights the importance of responsive grammar instruction that honors students’ language acquisition backgrounds and provides meaningful, authentic practice opportunities.
This episode offers research-aligned insights and actionable strategies for educators seeking to strengthen students’ language comprehension, writing development, and overall understanding of how English works.
Episode 8.8 Grammar and Syntax
00:00 Welcome to the Reading Teacher Lounge
00:40 Shannon's Green Chef Experience
01:38 Introducing Our Special Guest: Sara Lee
02:31 Diving into Grammar and Syntax
05:33 Understanding Grammatical Functions
07:55 Challenges and Resources for Teaching Grammar
10:04 Practical Applications and Student Engagement
12:41 The Importance of Sentence Structure
25:05 Using AI to Enhance Grammar Lessons
32:23 Supporting Multi-Language Learners
35:22 Challenges in Teaching Writing
36:38 Tips for Enhancing Writing Skills
39:34 Using Sentence Nucleus for Creativity
41:28 Grammar in Reading and Writing Instruction
44:30 Engaging Students in Grammar
48:41 Resources for Teaching Grammar
01:02:02 Making Grammar Fun and Approachable
01:03:18 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
Transcript:
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8.8 Grammar and Syntax w.Sara Lee -
Shannon Betts: [00:00:00] Hey Mary, another episode of the Reading Teacher Lounge is here.
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Hello listeners. It's Shannon here. I wanna take a quick moment to share why I started using Green Chef again. My. Children are super picky eaters, and for a long time I found myself cooking plain, bland food just to keep them happy. But that meant I wasn't getting the kind of flavorful, nutritious meals that I needed to keep up with.
My busy teacher life, green [00:01:00] Chef has been the perfect solution for our family. The meals are quick and easy to make, but they're also full of spices, sauces, and fresh ingredients that make me feel like I'm actually eating real food. It's a little gift to myself at the end of the day. The great news is Green Chef has given me some free boxes to share with you.
If you wanna give it a try, check the show notes for this episode and get the link or go to reading teachers lounge.com back slash quick links and click on the Green Chef button. If you're tired of cooking the same bland meals just to keep the piece and you need something simple, nourishing, and flavorable just for you, then Green Chef is worth it.
Welcome to the Reading Teachers Lounge. Mary's excited I'm, but I'm extremely excited. Both excited yes. To have our guest on because it's a topic I have wanted to have as a topic since season one. And we finally have met a literacy friend who ha has enough [00:02:00] expertise that can share with the audience and share with us about best practices around grammar and helping students understand syntax and all the things around the structure of the English language.
And so we are just so excited to to know you in real life and also to know you online Sara Lee. So thank you for coming to the, and talking with us in the Reading Teachers Lounge. And if you'll just introduce yourself to our audience and tell 'em about the work that you do and your work experience.
Sara Lee: Sure, and I'm glad to be here. So I came to literacy through Jen Petrich really, and through structured word inquiry. And I, before that was teaching English to speakers of other languages adults and children. And to that end, I have a master's in Applied Linguistics, and that's my background.
And so I was teaching ESOL and then I noticed that my kids' school, [00:03:00] some of their friends were struggling and the teachers would say, oh, you know, we're doing this, that, and this other thing. And I wanted to know how to help them. I was doing my best. But then when I, when I found structured word inquiry, that really was the takeoff.
And now I, I co-own literacy doctor with Jen Petrich.
Mary Saghafi: We're so happy to have you. And we have chatted with Jen previously, but I think that one of the reasons Shannon and I are so interested in this is because they kind of felt like grammar and syntax in general. And, and really these like fine parts of language that you have to teach kids the mechanical pieces of is kind of an area that we felt a little intimidated or maybe just not as confident in our, in our classroom practices.
So we really wanted to talk about that. So let's kind of like lay a foundation. Can you just. When we talk about grammar and syntax and cons, can you just sort of define the concepts that we're gonna talk about tonight? Today? Yeah. [00:04:00]
Sara Lee: So, so grammar really is an overarching term. People use it differently, but it's an, it's an overarching term for anything written.
So if you go back to the Greek route that we get it from, that the Latins got it from Latin speakers. It meant the art of letters, and I think that's fabulous. So syntax, semantics, morphology, that's all part of grammar. Syntax really refers to word order. If you studied other languages, you know that the order of words can be very different, right?
So for English, we follow a sub, a subject verb object, just as an example. And in other languages they might not, they might have subject object verb. And that's just an example.
Shannon Betts: Or like in Spanish, you know how they'll say the adjective after the noun, correct?
Sara Lee: Yeah. And some, sometimes they can say it like before the noun or after the noun.
That's also a really, I use that example a lot when I'm talking about [00:05:00] determiners and how people get determiners and adjectives confused or they kinda lump 'em together. But you, you're not gonna see a determiner after a No. That's just one of the differences. Right. But yeah, it's an example.
Shannon Betts: So syntax is a part of grammar.
Sara Lee: Yeah.
Shannon Betts: Okay.
Sara Lee: Mm-hmm.
Shannon Betts: And are parts of speech related to that because it's, is that where parts of speech would, would come in? So like types of words or is that some different arm of grammar?
Sara Lee: Yeah. So usually when we're talking about grammar, we're talking about two different forces at play. We have grammatical form. Which is really what people tend to think of when they think of grammar.
So they think of nons verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. Those are the big four, right, that people talk about. Parts of speech can be a little misleading, right? Because we're also writing them down. So linguists usually call them word [00:06:00] classes word forms. But those are all different types of forms.
Grammatical forms, grammatical functions is actually what those words are doing and what phrases they're nestled in, what those are doing in a sentence.
Mary Saghafi: That's really interesting. So I've never been able to really like, explain and, and dilute that down. So, most of the time when I would approach a, a lesson for grammar, you know, it would be included within the sentence. And we would be picking out these forms of speech then, right? The, the parts of speech, the noun, verb, adjective and, and helping kids to kind of.
Identify them. But then I, I didn't always have a great way of having them practice the skill outside of a worksheet or I, I didn't always feel super confident either in my own ability to really say, okay, this is you know, however, [00:07:00] I'm, I'm breaking down the, the form of the sentence, or, or the, I guess even the function of the sentence.
I can talk about meaning and why it was phrased this way, but I always got a little bit intimidated and I didn't ever feel like our curriculum really helped me you know, kind of navigate that through the classroom either. Mm-hmm. I know that there were a couple times where I, and I feel so cringey, but I would be like.
That's just the way it sounds, which is absolutely not helpful to a te a student who is learning English, but also any, any learner. That's just how it sounds is not, it's not helpful, but I didn't have any other source to kind of go to. So if there are other teachers who are feeling like that, what's the first place that you would point them for a resource?
So, that's a great question. Trying to put you on the spot, Sara.
Sara Lee: So there, there, I will just be honest that there is a [00:08:00] very large lack of resources for grammatical function.
Mary Saghafi: Yeah. I think that that's true and that's fair. 'cause it sort of validates, like, I, I'm not an incompetent teacher, but I just didn't have the resources at my disposal and I didn't really have time wherewithal to really like.
You know, dive in, dive deeper into it. But I do see how you know, these missing gaps can lead to foundational gaps for students, especially when they're trying to apply it to their writing.
Shannon Betts: True story. Mm-hmm. Like at my first four years teaching, I was actually fortunate enough we did not have reading textbooks, but we had grammar textbooks.
Like, and, and actually it was better than nothing. You know what I'm saying? Like, nothing. It wasn't great. You know what I'm saying? Right. But it actually, like, I gave homework out of there every single night because the application of some of the things, like the closed passages where [00:09:00] they had to. You know, fill in the blank, you know, and use what they understood about, I guess the word order.
Mm-hmm.
You know, to, to make the sentence make sense. And then there were always like a lot of passages with errors that the students would've to find the errors and fix. And it, it, it really did help my students I guess get better at those isolated tasks, although they didn't always apply it in their own writing.
And I, I, I, I had a hard time bridging that. So, but anyway, I just wanted to say that as just like an aside, because it was very unusual. Like, that was the only, it was the only four years I've ever had a grammar textbooks and I don't think they even make 'em anymore. I don't know.
Sara Lee: Okay. That's, that's, a little bit bad.
Yeah. But I do like the Killgallon texts, so I usually recommend those. They are called grammar. Hold on. Oh no. Did I write it [00:10:00] down for you guys?
Shannon Betts: Don't worry about it. We'll add it, we'll link it to the show notes.
Sara Lee: Okay. Yeah. So, and they've done different books, but I, I do like the way that they have students modeling grammatical structures, so they're writing them right away.
Right. So it, it does translate to their writing. I actually had a high school student that I worked with on the high school text, and it was just modeling different grammatical structures. And she came to me one day and she said I had to write an essay and I really wanted to do well. And I took this book out, I found a fabulous sentence, and I made one just like it.
And she had the autonomy to do it, and she felt really good for, for some students, they need things a little bit more explicitly. Marie Foley and I are making some materials just because they're needed and they're gonna be on the grammatical functions.
Shannon Betts: That's exciting. I mean, [00:11:00] can you give an example, like, I'm really trying to even picture what a, a, a high quality curriculum resource would look like and what they, what would it ask the students to do?
Sara Lee: So for instance, knowing that a sentence is made up, big structure of a subject and a predicate, your two functions are subject and predicate. So notice I didn't say noun in verb, right? Because that's just not, truthfully, that's not always all that's going on, right? So what happens is when you say noun in verb, and a kid gets a sentence that says Swimming is fun, some of my students would say, well, there's a verb swimming, there's a verb is and there's a verb.
Fun, right? And so what we're really doing is what is this sentence about [00:12:00] and what am I saying about the subject, right? So, I have found that those two overarching functions really help my students to cr to write sentences. And I have had, I mean, we teach across the US and Canada, and I mean, I've had high schoolers that really don't have a good understanding of what a sentence is and what it's made of.
And when you point to words, sometimes they can say, oh, that's a verb, but they have no idea what it's doing, and they don't know any of the bigger structures that that verb is in. Yeah,
Mary Saghafi: I, I'm definitely noticing that the sentence level is so critical. And I don't think that students even some of my struggling readers, fourth graders, are really working on very basic parts of sentences. And I feel like a lot of times the general education [00:13:00] programming will jump from sentences to paragraphs so quickly that it's not mastered and it's then glossed over. And, and that's just my own perception. But I feel like I am doing so much work on coming back to just sentence level and writing a sentence that has even a conjunction in it.
Can we make a complex sentence? And getting kids to one orally start to say sentences that would be. Using a, a voice and a tone that is appropriate for writing and the context of how they're doing it. But just giving them, you know, the space to not write it down, but just orally say state it. I'm finding that there's a lot of gaps and, and trying to understand.
And I wanted to just touch real quick, because Shannon had mentioned this too. I think I'm seeing it stronger. When I'm pro providing, you know, kind of like a picture and we start to discuss what's in the [00:14:00] picture. I'm really seeing that. But what I'm also seeing is in their comprehension, if I'm doing a closed passage, I'm trying to understand and see are they predicting appropriate sentence patterns?
Do they understand varied sentence patterns? And I'm seeing gaps with both of those activities for sure. So I know I have to come back to sentence level with my students but can, can we kind of describe this a little bit more? Like how about how does students understanding of sentence structures and grammar then maybe influence how they make meaning for text?
Sara Lee: So that is something that I keep rediscovering. Now that I am working with dyslexic adults. They have been able to tell me so clearly what they needed, and that's been hugely valuable to me. And so [00:15:00] really once we start looking at grammar, we also find that reading comprehension goes up because now maybe they just know, okay, this is what the sentence is about.
This is the subject and the predicate is what I'm saying about the subject. Okay. What is this writer saying about this subject? Right? Are there adverbials that are telling me about time? You know, are there, are there modifiers that are telling me more about the noun? That, that right there I think is huge because I didn't say adjectives.
Adjectives are one thing that can modify a noun. So can prepositional phrases, right? So the boy at the store, right? So at the store is modifying the boy, it's telling me which boy I am talking about, and, and telling me a little bit more about him, right? [00:16:00] So just seeing the meaningful chunks, the constituency I have seen comprehension go up, but I've also seen people be able to, okay, now I can actually chunk my own writing.
Now I can actually say, okay, this is how I'm gonna modify this noun. And you're starting to think about your audience. So you're starting to be kind to your reader, right? So now it's not just a dog, right? It's a, it's a shaggy dog with a glorious tail and tiny paw. Right, and it, and it actually really helps the reader get a picture in their mind.
What, what Really the goal of writing is, in my opinion, is to take what's in your head, your meaning, and give it to the person reading your words. And so I feel like just studying what words are [00:17:00] doing has really improved that for a lot of my students.
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Shannon Betts: I wanna hear more detail about that because I, I'm a strong reader myself, and also I'm actually very strong in grammar. 'cause I was raised by an English professor, an English college professor.
Yes. So we had a lot of grammar discussions at the dinner table and things like that. And she's probably [00:18:00] listening right now and she's like, yep. Okay. So anyway we had Timothy Shanahan on last season and he's also written a lot of blog posts about text cohesion. Mm-hmm. And I think what you were also describing was that details antecedent connection.
Right. And as a, as a someone who has a good grammar understanding and a strong comprehender. I am automatically always sort of almost, it's almost like lines where I'm like, when I get that detail about the subject or I get that detail about the object of the prep, you know? Yeah. Of the, of the verb or the object of the preposition.
I'm like drawing a line. Oh, they're talking about that thing. Oh, okay. They're talking about that. Oh, okay. They're talking about that. And it might even be too soon. It says later and I, right. I bring it back to that. But I've had a very hard time over the years and a complete lack of resources of how do I like break that down to help my students be able to see texts the way I do.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So it sounds like that's what you're doing with your students when [00:19:00] you've shown them grammar and then they get that better understanding of the flow and the structure. Right. And so how do you, how do you bridge that? Because I've never just been able, like I've learned over the years to be able to break down my own thinking in terms of like phonemic awareness and morphological awareness and all these other.
Awarenesses where I can like talk about my meta cognition and like go backwards from my own learning and then bring my students, you know, to the starting point and then back up there. Okay. But I can't do, I, I don't know how to do that with grammatical awareness.
Sara Lee: I, I mean, I think a good start is just highlighting a phrase and saying, what is this doing?
Because what happens, I think a lot of times when kids have been taught tips and tricks, they rely on those and they, and, and the thing that always loses is meaning, right? So they're trying [00:20:00] to comprehend something. Huge. Not knowing how to break it up. Not even actually sometimes one of the first things I do.
I'll ask kids what, what words go together? You feel like, what are the phrases here? And I'll, you know, I might give them some examples so they know what I'm doing. And some of them will break up a prepositional phrase. They don't actually see that as a unit. So showing the units, I think showing the different elements in, in constituency, I think is a really huge thing that we need to start with.
With some, I actually start with propositional phrases. What is this doing? Well, it's telling me where the boy is, okay, what is it doing here? And I can move it. And then it's doing something totally different. Maybe now it's modifying a verb that for some kids needs to be very, very explicit.
Mary Saghafi: I totally see what you're [00:21:00] saying.
And I don't think I've ever had it fully explained to me in this same light, but sometimes I have heard dyslexics described as being able to see the whole forest. They really like the big picture, but it's those discreet trees that they cannot identify and pick out. I think this is such a good example of being so explicit with your thinking and your instruction that you, you teach them where the pauses are so that you can pause in your reflection and pause the movie to see what's actually happening with the comprehension that you're doing that movie in your mind.
I have recently, I mean not recently, but in the last week or so, it's part of a lesson for fluency. I will create slash marks at appropriate grammatical points or, or phrases while the student is reading and they have to pause and then read the next phrase. And I had a student who just looked up at me and went, I can see it now.
I can see it [00:22:00] happening. And, and that was just such a light bulb moment for me. They don't know where those stop signs are. So it's almost like you have to put the glasses on for them so that they know where to look or what to notice about what those phrases look like and actually teach their mind to pause and, and think it through.
And if they don't have a clear understanding, that's your. Next signal. Oh, Hmm. I don't think I, that's very clear. Let me go back and reread it. Oh, Hmm. That one doesn't make sense. Maybe it's because it's tied to an idea that's two phrases behind. And actually going back several phrases, some kids do not understand that concept.
And, and I've noticed that along the years across the years anyway. So yeah, I appreciate you like breaking it down into details this way. 'cause that it really resonates with me.
Shannon Betts: Same. And I breaking it down to the phrase level, I can see why, you know, you were saying the kids rely on the trips and tips [00:23:00] and tricks and tips and then they almost lose sight of more complexity of text.
Like if we, maybe a flippant statement by a teacher is like, oh, a word in ING, it's probably gonna be a verb, but a lot of times it's not,
you know? But then also I can see. If you focus so much on the word level of like
Shannon & Sara: mm-hmm.
Shannon Betts: Here's 20 sentences, write down all the nouns and underline them, you know, or circle the verbs or whatever.
Then they're losing that phrase comprehension, and they're not even aware that, that it's the whole, it's, it's all the words in the order. It's groups of words that's important. Not just this word by word, by word by word.
Sara Lee: It's communicating. It's like going, it's like going letter by letter.
Shannon Betts: Right. Right.
Sara Lee: That's what I, I related to going word by word is like going letter by letter and, and then we lose the word Right. Often when we do that.
Shannon Betts: Yeah. So we're losing the sentence, we're losing the meaning of it by doing those kind of [00:24:00] practices. But I'll be honest, that's what I've done a lot of times when we've done grammar in the other years of my teaching when I didn't have those grammar textbooks.
But what others things should teachers be doing? During those times, if they even devote time in their literacy block to grammar? Or is it all, should it all be embedded in the writing and in the reading?
Sara Lee: Well, I would say that I have students work a lot with pictures because sometimes they, when you take text out of context and you're looking at just sentences, for instance, a lot of times you, you'll lose the meaning.
Or if they're too abstract, then the student's losing the meaning. So I bring in pictures a lot, tons of images, usually what they're interested in, right? So I'm following their interest. And then for instance, having them describe things [00:25:00] and not saying, let's use adjectives, right? So. One thing that I like to do is pull up Canva.
I use Canva a lot, and Canva has an AI picture gen generator. Okay. Some of us don't love AI and I get that, but this is really fun for kids because they will modify something for me. I'll say, I'll just want you to modify this the best you can and see if AI can generate what you've modified. So I, I did this with a kiddo today and he was like, I am gonna see if I can kind of stump this ai or if I can get it to give me a beautiful picture.
It so he, I mean he really did a fabulous job and
Shannon Betts: can you tell us the details of like what the prompt was and
Sara Lee: Sure. It, so he was holding an object. I said, you don't have to show it to me. It can be a surprise to me too, and I'm gonna try to get it in my head too. And so, he was holding a [00:26:00] star. And so he said it is a metal star, and it says, secret at the top, inside a circle in the star, and see and service at the bottom of the circle and in the middle it says us.
Now, at first, he didn't capitalize us and I said, now what do you think AI is gonna come up with? Is it gonna be exactly what you want? So then he was like, oh gosh, we've gotta capitalize that. And AI came up with almost the exact picture of what he was holding. Now. This is like the third time he's done it because it is, he loves it so much that we do it every session now.
So he will modify something in his room. But the first time we were modifying my tall yellow cup, you know, that's [00:27:00] that is thermal. And he first was just like yellow mug, so it gave him pictures of a yellow mug and he was like, that doesn't even look similar. So then he kept modifying and kept modifying and he was coming up with prepositional phrases and he was coming up with adjectives and he was coming up with les.
Those are all modifiers. And so now that he has function modifying, I am able to give him participle adjective. Why does this one look kind of verby? Well, it is a verb plus ING. Guess what? That's, we call that a participle and we can use it to modify. So once we have our functions, now we can have form, but I think
Mary Saghafi: it makes so much sense.
Sara Lee: Does it? Okay.
Mary Saghafi: Because I feel like Yes. Feeding the form train. Yeah. No because I think we just do it backwards so often and, [00:28:00] you know, it's, it's so similar to how I'm also teaching consonants and vowels and how we're recognizing phoniums within words and so many other concepts. But we're not taking you know, we're taking something that is familiar, like the object we're giving them, then the vocabulary that describes it.
But we're letting them use language. You know, in their own way and in their own terms, which is very natural. That's how we learn language, that's how we use language. And it is rather innate. Whatever language you, you start with. So that makes so much sense. That is like an eye-opening thing for me. I would've never thought to use ai, but I think it's a great way to allow kids to experience their own language translated into an image.
That's fantastic.
Shannon Betts: It also shows like the importance of like precision in writing so that the reader understands what's in your [00:29:00] brain, right?
Sara Lee: So then you can go back to books, like if they're reading a book at school and. Say, okay, how is this author modifying this character? Right? And then sometimes the kid will go, oh gosh, I was picturing them totally differently.
Right Now I understand what the writers is really saying that this person looks like or that this person acts like. Right.
Shannon Betts: So because they might have skimmed those details in the paragraph,
Sara Lee: they might have skimmed them or really if they were in a very complex sentence, or sometimes, you know, authors are not being as blatant, right?
With some of their descriptions, they can be a little bit hidden for some kids. So pulling them out I think is really important. And then seeing that these are traits, right? And then you have your character traits and you can talk through how modifiers can be character traits and that kind of thing.
Shannon Betts: So it sounds like the three biggest things you've talked about are like understanding, like [00:30:00] subject and predicate and understanding modifiers.
Sara Lee: So those are, yeah. So those are three of the big, functions, grammatical functions adverbial so I call it adverbial, the junk drawer of grammar. Because if you don't know what it is, it's probably an adverbial because they do so much, right?
Modifiers can modify nouns, adverbials, , they just modify everything. And they can go different places in the sentence. They're, they're amazing. And they can be so many different forms. That's another big one. Of course we have determinative, predicator predicate is referring to like the whole verb, so is swimming, that kind of thing.
And you know, there's different grammars out there, so. You'll get different people saying different things like adjunct and that kind of thing. You really need to find either a good grammar text or you know, a, a person who can explain it [00:31:00] in, in such a way that is what you agree with and what you understand
Shannon Betts: to then provide that structure.
Sara Lee: Yeah.
Shannon Betts: For the students. Okay. Can you give me an example in a sentence of the adverbial that you were talking about?
Sara Lee: So just something like, it can be as something as easy as, I went to the store yesterday and yesterday is telling about not me, it's telling about when I went. So that would be an adverbial .
And you could have the adverbial, prepositional phrase, so it could be in the morning we set out for the park. Right. So they call that a fronted adverbial, , just 'cause it's coming before the independent clause. Gosh, those guys, some of the, some people like to test if something's an adjective by putting an adverbial in front of it or an adverb in front of it.
So he was so tired. That would be a past [00:32:00] participle. But you could do it with an adjective too, like very pretty or so pretty. That's a good way to test. Do I have an adjective right now? Right. Do I have a modifier even?
Shannon Betts: Yeah, because you wouldn't say so yesterday.
Sara Lee: Yeah,
Mary Saghafi: that's true.
Shannon Betts: Okay. Yeah.
Mary Saghafi: So those are great examples.
Yeah, that's, that's really helpful for me. I'm wondering if you can give, give us some advice and like what should teachers really be mindful of if they're supporting students who are acquiring language, like multi-language learners or even students who have some communication deficits. What, what are some things that our, our teachers can be really mindful of, especially regarding like the syntax and the order of the words and sentences?
Sara Lee: I mean, it's, it's very helpful to know what language they're coming from. And so, I mean, you don't have to learn that language, but learning a little bit about [00:33:00] their grammar can be really helpful. Knowing what word order they're used to. Right. So, so when we were talking about Spanish, that's a good example.
So just being able to show where modifiers can go in English. So I, I think knowing that, I think also knowing that you need to tie to pictures, especially at the beginning, and I remember when I used to teach out of a picture dictionary, because then you're not just relying on translation, you're actually putting a picture in the mind of a thing, right.
And that, that can be a really helpful tool as well. So describing pictures particularly if you find out it's something the kid is into or knows a lot about, then that increases their, their output as well. So then you're able to even see what they're struggling with more.
Shannon Betts: How can grammar [00:34:00] and how should it be assessed?
Shannon & Sara: Okay.
Shannon Betts: I mean, we live in a world of assessment, right? Yeah. I mean, a lot of times the, the state test, sometimes we'll ask to identify the part of speech and things like that, or, you know, make these, make the subject in verb agree and things like that. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. So some of our classroom assessments do mimic that, but in an ideal world....,
Sara Lee: So, and, and I know what you're talking about because I'm helping a kiddo who's preparing for the ACT and sometimes I just feel like laying on the floor just with him. But, but you're right. We live in a world of assessments.
Mary Saghafi: I, I love your honesty with that. I just asked to say That's right.
Sara Lee: I get it. Me too. Oh my gosh. And so I, I would say though that writing is such an, a window into what a kid is struggling with. [00:35:00] You can see more patterns in writing than you will ever see. With matching exercises or true false right. Or multiple choice.
And I, and I think that's one of the thing, you know, I, I wrote a blog out of frustration one time called, that was called The Death of Practice. And I think we kept it up even though it was written in a time of dress. But I, I don't think they're practicing writing enough. And so if you have gone over a grammatical function, for instance, you will be able to see in a sentence, if a kid is able to, for instance, write a complete sentence, right?
I don't have them really label as much, but I have them write, and so I can totally see, okay, they're using fragments. I found, recently [00:36:00] that one kiddo had a lot of trouble with pronouns and she didn't think that pronouns made a complete sentence. Huge discovery. Huge discovery. 'cause now she does. Right.
Shannon Betts: I have a lot of students where they'll, they'll start with the pronoun, you know, like from the first sentence on. Oh yes. But they never give the antecedent first. And I have to kind of break them up that,
Sara Lee: yeah, that's a big one.
Shannon Betts: Yeah. Oh my goodness. I forgot what question I was gonna ask because I wanted Yeah, go for it, Mary.
Mary Saghafi: So I guess within the literacy block, you know, we're, we'd love to give some like, really helpful tips. What, so I would say in, in the realm of writing how would you suggest that teachers start to kind of like, dig a little bit deeper into this? So, so you're part of your writing block. How could you, how would you share, share how [00:37:00] teachers could get started?
Sara Lee: I think whatever you're reading or whatever. I mean, if you find any, any cool passages. I mean, at, at the school that I'm working with right now, we do read aloud. We also do like novel studies. If you're doing that and you pull out some sentences and you go over them with students to really dive into the meaning and the grammar of them, the function, what is this, what is this telling us about?
What is this word telling us about? What is this phrase doing? That, that would actually just be huge. That would be huge. Right? Because sometimes they're really not doing that. They're trying to comprehend a whole paragraph or a whole page. Right. And they can really miss things in a sentence. And so that's just a really good way of getting kids to start even looking at grammatical structures in, in interesting sentences and [00:38:00] sentences that they're reading anyway.
Mary Saghafi: I have found really quickly that even just adding conjunctions for my students too. A lot of times when you're working with a struggling writer or a struggling reader, they're going to default to the easiest possible words that they know and keep their sentences very simple. And so I'm constantly working on creating more complex.
And so I've been really explicit lately about if you're gonna add, because to your sentence, because it's gonna then lend itself to facts or statements that are true. So what, what do we already know that's true? And we kind of back up and we go back to it or a so is sort of an indicator that it's an if then this happens.
So, so. If this is true, then what's gonna happen? And same with you know, but, but is almost like making a u-turn in a sentence. You're going to restate something that's a little bit different. So I've been trying to start with some, like sentence [00:39:00] stems for some of the students too, or it, if it's not a sentence stem, it might be, okay, we're gonna use you know, these conjunctions in three different ways.
Here are some words and giving some open choices to starting some sentences. And then I will build onto it and then they will add on and, and we might come up with three sentences that you know, kind of all flow with the same directionality. Maybe not a full paragraph, but kind of create ideas with, with complex sentences.
Sara Lee: That's really beautiful. So, so. I love that you're doing that. A lot of times with a student, I will start with what's called the sentence nucleus. What words or phrases have to be here for the meaning to be the same? So an example would be an example that I worked with is grandma smelled the flowers in that every single word is needed in there.
If you just say grandma smelled totally different meaning, okay, so grandma [00:40:00] smelled the flowers, and then from there we add modifiers. Okay, maybe we add a a determiner so we could say, my grandma, my precious grandma smelled okay, let's modify the flowers, the beautiful flowers in the park. Now we have a totally different picture probably in our heads, right?
And kids can get really creative with it. And, and you could do that from a picture or you can have them create the picture and then, and then the different groups in a class will come up with a different picture, right? So the grandma sitting in a wheelchair smelled the flowers as her son pushed her through the park, right?
They're gonna draw a very different picture than somebody whose grandma's just smelling flower flowers in a vase, [00:41:00] right? So all of those are phrases and clauses that we're adding.
Shannon Betts: I could almost see it as like starting with that nucleus and then seeing, you know, a challenge to the class of what everybody could come up with. Yeah, that's good. And then having really rich conversations around language comparing and contrasting what they came up with. Oh yeah, it's really cool. And I mean, that's.
I guess until this conversation, I've never really fully understood the concept of like, grammar being embedded in your reading and writing instruction. You know, but that, that all the activities we've been describing in this discussion do seem a lot more powerful to me and more meaningful and transferrable as opposed to just like a nouns unit.
Sara Lee: Yeah. Well, 'cause what do they do with that? That's great. That, you know, nouns good.
Shannon Betts: Right, right. And like as I was doing it, I was [00:42:00] almost, you know, I kind of knew like, oh, if this could be better, but I didn't know how to make it more effective and more meaningful. And so you're showing that through all of this you, you do these kind of activities with students of all ages?
Yes. Wow. Yes. I, and
Sara Lee: it, it just depends on, you know, the kid in front of me or the person in front of me. Some of them, you know, just very quickly I had a student say, why am I not doing this in school?
Shannon Betts: Okay. I was like,
Sara Lee: okay. I don't know how to answer that. But you're not, you're doing it with me.
Shannon Betts: Yeah.
Could you, what activity was it? Can I ask?
Sara Lee: I actually, he, so we had started, he was in high school and we started writing together and I was having him write, and I think it was like a, a sentence nucleus. And I was like, okay, I just want you to tell me more about this noun and let's write some things.
And he was like, we got to the end and it was such a [00:43:00] moment. He goes, that is such a good sentence, you know, that he had written. And he was like, why am I not doing this more? Oh, okay. You know, because he was so used to being given a spreadsheet. That had possible ways to start a sentence. And then he would choose one and he would copy and paste, and then he would just have to complete the sentence.
And his whole paper was like that. And that was his scaffolding. And he was like, you know, I really don't like it because I don't actually feel like I'm writing it. And so some of the sentences he would get done and I would say, what does that sentence mean? And he would, he would go, I really don't know.
So we just put that aside and I was like, tell me about football. Right. Explain to me what your position is on the team. If we needed to break it down more. I mean, even what does your uniform look like? Right? [00:44:00] I mean, these were just things that he, he had never written, he had never been asked to write in this way.
You know, and so I, I feel like it, I mean, he told me that he just felt independent in his writing, which for a teacher, that's, that's gold, right?
Shannon Betts: Yeah. If it, well, you want him to have agency in his life, right? Yeah. And so if he can feel that in the academic setting, hopefully it, you know, applies to regular life too.
What could a the youngest students understand? Like, like a first grader? I think they could do the, the grandmother sentence. I could see that happening. Yeah. But what, well, what are they, what are they able to developmentally comprehend about grammar at that, you know, at like a first grade level, a second grade level,
Sara Lee: I have actually had success with subject predicate.
And so a lot of times I'm writing them. Okay. Just, just tell me, and actually I did, I did this [00:45:00] activity not long ago. I gave the subjects and they gave the predicates. So you know, I might have a picture of a flower and just say, the flower, right? Or the dog. And then they're supplying the predicate, dug a hole in the yard.
Right? And kids that age are talking all the time, right? They know how to use language and all. We're just, we're teaching them how to write it down and how to write it down for a specific audience, right? And I, and I always say, you know, you can, you can give your audience the gift of meaning. You have to know your audience too, right?
And, and when you have a kiddo that's writing really casually, give them the space to write casually, okay? We're gonna write to your best friend. We can write in a way that your best friend will understand. Now we're going to do the same [00:46:00] writing, but we're gonna do it to your teacher. Oh, I have to change my language.
Correct. Yes, you do. Right. And so I feel like that's another, I, I really don't start writing with a kiddo until we've talked about the audience, the purpose, what time they're going to be using. Because one of the huge struggles of many students is tense right now. I have, I have a lot of students who are not using the perfect tense and don't understand when we use it.
Mary Saghafi: It's so interesting. I'm really seeing that more often as well too. And I think I just sort of put it on the, the. I don't know in the bucket of, oh, well maybe these kids just have more developmental language you know, needs. And, but I do think that, and I hate to say that I blame everything on COVID, but you know, this group of young kids that are coming up [00:47:00] did not have oral language practice with a lot of people outside of their family.
And now they are in school and hearing a lot of different types of conversation didn't necessarily happen. And so I do see that there are more language deficits with some of the kids that I see coming in. Just for my practice.
Sara Lee: I would also say social media and texting. Yeah, because when you're texting your audience is usually casual.
Mary Saghafi: True.
Sara Lee: And with the amount that kids are texting, they're practicing it a lot. And so you especially have slang right now that's like, I'd be there at three. Right, right. And, and so they might not even be thinking about, and because our people teaching literacy have really relied on sound for a long time.
If we don't fully pronounce a structure, they often don't know it's [00:48:00] there.
Mary Saghafi: That's a really good point.
Sara Lee: So Right. So we have, instead of Yeah. That we have, we have would of Right. We have we have eliminating the future altogether because they might not even hear it.
Mary Saghafi: Yeah. Oh, wow. I love that your ability to be so explicit about this type of instruction because I think this is what I was really missing.
And not really being able to have as much insight just. You know, it's not within my circle, and I don't think that a lot of teachers have this within their circle necessarily either. But I do think that the tide might be shifting. And, and so I think that's really helpful. Great.
Shannon Betts: Where we talked sort of the lack of resources of like, you know, curriculum resources that the teachers could just like immediately use with their students.
But what if teachers, like you got, you learned a lot of this in your training because you Yeah, yeah. Because like you, you didn't go through like the elementary school pathway like we did elementary school [00:49:00] major pathway. So how could teachers educate themselves about this function, these functions and forms, so that then they can know more to modify some of the current curricular resources they have available to them and also just weave more of this natural grammar into their instruction.
Sara Lee: Mm-hmm. I mean, I'm always available to talk about it. I love it. Thank you. Well, we will, that's fun.
Shannon Betts: We'll share your contact information and we will link to your blog and everything so they can learn more from you. Where else could they learn more? Like are there good manuals or something or,
Sara Lee: well, I would say the Killgallon books are, are gonna be good.
They, they don't go into function as much as they do what they call chunking and that kind of thing. There is a blog, bass Arts has called Grammarisms that I really like and he talks about form and function there. And he lays it out [00:50:00] pretty explicitly. He is though, in the British grammar arena. I mean, like, he literally wrote the book on it and I think he contributed to the national curriculum for them.
But he, but he explains it very well. There might be some differences between there and here, but I haven't found a lot of things or maybe anything that I disagree with him on. I like linguistics Girl website. I believe her name is Heather, and I forgot her last name, but she has a very clear website and she also does some structured word inquiry and then some like phrase analysis and that kind of thing.
English is also that related to the British curriculum. It has different exercises and things like that on it. There are. There are books, but they tend to [00:51:00] be written by linguists and they tend to be pretty dense, dense, thick, long involved. Right. I mean, and I'm still going back to my texts.
Mm-hmm. And buying, you know, like a, like the true nerd. I am buying new ones and getting all excited about them. And you know, if a new, new version comes out and a new edition, I have it. So I would also say for kiddos who need help with editing
Shannon & Sara: mm-hmm.
Sara Lee: The daily paragraph editing books are good.
And the, the, what I like about them, and I don't grade them, but what I like about them is that some kids are just not attending. Yes. Okay. And so, yep. Loud and clear. I hear you. I was gonna use an object after that, and then I was like, no, they're just not attending.
Mary Saghafi: Yeah.
Sara Lee: And so that helps them attend.
And I make it like, I'll say there [00:52:00] are 11 errors in this paragraph. I wanna see if you can find them all right. Yeah. And so, I mean, they will go on a hunt and they'll be like, I see a capitalization that wasn't, you know great.
Mary Saghafi: That's one of my favorite techniques actually. 'cause I do a lot of dictation and the kids hate checking their errors.
But I will also do a dictation. I'll let them dictate a sentence to me and I will create errors. Mm-hmm. But I also like naming how many errors I see because it sort of takes the, you made this mistake sort of thing as to like, can you search and find it? Here's your challenge. There's, there's a lot to be said about you know, just kind of reframing what it is.
Because I do think editing is painful for kids because they don't see the big picture. They see it as, I didn't do it perfectly. And that is something I think that becomes more nuanced the older that you get. But it's, it can be painful and we have to be cautious about not shutting our kiddos down, especially our struggling [00:53:00] ones.
So I love the idea of making it a challenge.
Sara Lee: Yeah. I, I like to say that, writing is not snapping a photo, it's painting a picture. Hmm. And the cool thing about the process of painting is that you can go back and fix things. It's a privilege. It's not a punishment.
Shannon & Sara: I love that. You get to go back and make it more beautiful.
Sara Lee: You get to go back and make it a little bit more clear
Shannon Betts: and showing them even like, you know, a fast track of an artist doing that or something. You know, like one of those time-lapse videos or something of an artist doing that. Because I see it too, when they're not having to edit at the sentence level.
But when I would do writer's workshop and they would have to edit their final piece, I mean, when they've been working on a writing piece for like two weeks or something, like they are so done and they want it to be published and then the fact that editing is like the last step. But if you frame it that way, it would make it, oh good.
I get to polish it to get it ready to hang in the gallery. Right.
Sara Lee: Yeah. And letting them [00:54:00] edit in in between times. So I. I think with all my students, I have a checklist and they usually create it or they help me create it. And it is what things they usually struggle with. And what they do is instead of looking at it just at the end, they look at it before they ever start writing.
And so their brain goes, okay, I need to, I need to really think about capitalization. So we're not waiting till the end to think about capitalization. We're doing it beginning, middle, and ending. Right. So a, a checklist can really help with that.
Mary Saghafi: I am so happy that you phrased it that way. I think I'm constantly preaching that, but maybe it's also one of those things that I sort of do naturally with my students, but they have such a hard time, especially students who have attentional issues or inhibition you know, difficulties, but.
Like, okay, who, let me think before I start this task, what should I be [00:55:00] paying attention to? Or what am I going to improve? Can I set a goal for this that often it doesn't occur, especially in our younger students, but, but our fourth and fifth graders who you know, may not be performing quite at that like executive functioning level they definitely need to have that really clearly spelled out for them.
And so I think the checklist one takes it away from them. I also. We'll let them know, like model it in a negative way and I'll be like a checklist. I might as well just check it all off, all right now because I already know all the things that I need to know. I don't even need this. I don't know why the teacher gives it to me.
And you know, I'm like really silly, but I know exactly what they're thinking in their head. And so you know, then, then I'll be like, okay, teacher, what do you have to say to me? And then I'll let them speak to me like a teacher. And so there's always these ways that you can kind of like slide it in. I call it teaching, teaching around the back [00:56:00] door.
You know, sometimes you just can't do that traditional way of approaching, but you're undercover undercover all the time. So, you know, I would say like, don't be shy to, you know, model the negative and be silly about it and bring humor into it because. It could be painful and the opposite of that painful, it can be humor and mm-hmm.
And it can be light and, and it doesn't have to be so serious. Oh, man.
Shannon Betts: I like the idea too of like making it what their traditional weaknesses are. I mean, a lot of times, you know, we can find like a cute ready-made checklist or something, but then some of those things are not relevant to them. Yep. And if it's a list of like 10 things, it feels overwhelming when only like four or five of them are really relevant to them.
Right. But if they always, you know, struggle with the, you know, spelling changes with suffixes or something, that could be something that could be added to their checklist.
Sara Lee: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Shannon Betts: You know?
Sara Lee: Yeah, it's true.
Shannon Betts: Yeah. I like that.
Sara Lee: Even if it's something like, go to a [00:57:00] thesaurus. Mm-hmm. Okay. Right. That's a good, that's a good thing because in case
Shannon Betts: they've said, said in every single
Sara Lee: highlight, the, I had one that on her checklist was highlight words that I overused.
Go to Word Hippo and change them.
Shannon Betts: I don't think I know that website. I'm gonna look it up.
Sara Lee: Oh, you'll love it. You'll love it.
Mary Saghafi: That is so smart. I, I really, you know, these like little nuances are things that we have to put into the brains of kids. And we know that, you know, there are some kids who are going to just take off and they know a lot of this naturally.
But we have to spend some additional time because the kids that are not necessarily you know, understanding this at an innate level necessarily, they probably are gonna be the ones that have the most fantastic you know, creative things to say. They just can't get it written down yet. So we have to really give them the opportunity [00:58:00] to do that.
That's true.
Shannon Betts: And I can see, you know, we didn't really talk about how structure word inquiry and morphology kind of fit in with the overall framework of grammar, but we've spent a lot of other episodes the last season of the season talking about that. But I just wanna draw, like what's being clear to me from this conversation.
It's like, I understand word inquiry is like understanding the structure of like the way words are spelled, you know, and like why the spelling choices were made and things like that at the word level. Mm-hmm. But then like you're showing how grammar is related to that at the phrase and sentence level.
Shannon & Sara: Mm-hmm.
Shannon Betts: But it is all about structure, right? How our language is structured.
Sara Lee: It's, yep. Yeah. Actually I asked kids to describe, I said, what is grammar? One of 'em said nouns and verbs and stuff. I was like, okay.
Shannon Betts: I think I would've said that at the start of our conversation.
Sara Lee: Yeah. And [00:59:00] I said to my son, I said, what is grammar?
And I kind of held my breath. 'cause I was like, okay, what have I done in your life? And he said, it's the structure of language. I was like, okay, thank you. One win for the day. Right. Because he was, he, he has an understanding that just as words have a structure, phrases have a structure, sentences have a structure, and then they're nestled inside each other.
That's a good understanding.
Mary Saghafi: I have never heard it explained that way. And I just, it's so obvious and true, but just like all things, I just needed the flashlight like shown in that direction, like should tell me the language that I need to use to express this to my students. Like that is so helpful.
'cause I think I also would've just said nouns and verbs and adjectives, but, but grammar as the structure of language makes so much more sense to me. Especially that I've like kind of more [01:00:00] recently dove delved into like the oral language and how important oral language can be and what that means for our students and expanding you know, their understanding.
Man, just illuminated it for me today. Sara Lee. Thank you.
Shannon Betts: And Sara, that reminded me of that phrase that, Dr. Pete Bowers has been using so much like in the last year that nested, what is it? Nested Combine Combinatoriality \\\\.
Sara Lee: Mm-hmm.
Shannon Betts: And he's mostly talking about that at the word level. Right. But like, yeah.
You know, because he's saying, you know, like letters, phon names, graphemes, you know, like morphine. Yeah. Nested. But you just described that nesting perfectly. Mm-hmm. With words to phrases, to sentences. And then even like larger, right. Like paragraphs to chapters to,
Sara Lee: yeah. It's a thread that runs throughout.
And he and I have talked about it, and I think now he could probably explain it better than I can he just the way he does. But I mean, once you start looking at the threads in our languages, [01:01:00] oh my gosh. It's, it's just fabulous. It really is. And, and, and not something we wanna take from our students.
We want them to be able to experience that too. Yeah. Yeah.
Shannon Betts: I'm really, really excited about where this whole conversation has taken us. And
Shannon & Sara: too,
Shannon Betts: last year was like my, like, structured word inquiry year, you know? Right. And I feel like just like this is gonna send me on like this whole grammar pathway. 'Cause I really do wanna help students
build their language comprehension from this direction. Mm-hmm. Or include this as part of it.
Sara Lee: Yeah. Because if we're just giving kids words and we're stopping at spelling words by themselves don't have a lot of meaning. Right.
Mary Saghafi: That's right. That's exactly right. Yeah. Oh, I'm so glad that we have been able to dive into this.
So, while we have you on air, is there anything else that you'd like to [01:02:00] share with our audience?
Sara Lee: Just that grammar Doesn't have to be boring. Yeah, it could. I'm enthused. Good. Yeah, it can be fun. I mean, it really can be fun. I had a, I had a kid and we were learning online and I said, and I could tell that she was doing something different.
And I said, what, what are you doing right now? You can tell me. I don't care. Just, just wondered what you were doing. And she goes, oh, I just went to the thesaurus because I have a word that's just overused. And I wasn't even on the editing yet. Like, I was still talking to her about like, her day. And she had already, you know, been excited to change her words and update them.
And I just think, you know, if, if we could hone that and make it a, a normal part of writing, I think it would just be fabulous. And we'd be giving structure back to kids and meaning back to kids and, then maybe they wouldn't hate writing. [01:03:00] You know? Can I say that? A lot of kids do. Yeah.
Shannon Betts: It makes it approachable.
Yeah.
Sara Lee: Yeah, it does.
Shannon Betts: Oh, I love that. I think, I think your, your last statement is gonna be like one of the sound bites from this episode.
Mary Saghafi: Yay. Yeah. Amen. Thank you so much for spending time with us and sharing all of your knowledge. This is, this is really great and maybe we can have you back again, because I would love to you know, get, even dive down into a, a little bit more of some of these like, great lessons that you have shared or, or just ways to get kids engaged.
It's really helpful.
Shannon Betts: I'm gonna have follow up as I start doing some of this with the students. Yeah. I'm gonna have follow up questions and, okay. Pick your brain of, okay, well I did this, you know, is that, was that the right thing? Or how should I have changed, you know, changed it, so,
Mary Saghafi: yeah. Sure. Thank you again for joining us and we look forward to chatting with you more later.
Thanks so much. I enjoyed it. Thank you, [01:04:00] Sara.