Tuesday Slice of Life : January 31, 2017.
It’s the end of January!
I always approach the end of January with a bit of reluctance. Really with a whole lot of reluctance. It means 4th quarter reports and end of the year reports. It means setting up my business files for a new year. And that all means a lot of clerical work which I’m not too fond of. But hey, with persistence, I finished what is due today (there will be more for other deadlines), and I still have one day left in January!
The hour is now late. My day is fading into tomorrow. But before it does, I’m determined to write very briefly about an idea that has been germinating for a number of months, an idea seeded by teachers. The idea? Putting sentences with their maps on index cards to share with teachers via my blog and social media. Perhaps I will post one each day, Monday through Thursday.
Sentence mapping is one way that I bridge grammar to text, develop writing at the sentence level, and practice our crafting skills. And with that over simplified explanation, I’m calling this day a very good day!
Click HERE to take a look at my first post.
I’d love to hear your thoughts, your ideas.
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As a kid I loved diagramming sentences. Every word has a special place on the line. As a teacher I taught diagramming. The students really enjoyed the practice too. It also helped with their sentence structure because they knew the purpose of every word put into the sentence.
Absolutely! Major impact on sentence construction. Also major impact on reading comprehension. 🙂
My daughter’s private school diagrams sentences. She loves it! I dreaded it in college! lol
Thanks for stopping by, Linsey. It is my personal opinion that the love / dread relationship with sentence diagramming is created by the way a teacher uses it. One of my rules: Diagram only what you understand in the sentence. This took a lot of pressure out of the work.
I loved diagramming when I was in school, and taught some of my students how to do it, too. I think this might benefit those who don’t know the “how-to”.
Thanks for the encouragement, Linda. 🙂
I think that this work is a dying art that would help many students learn more about their language, in a beautiful, under-appreciated way.
I agree with you! It’s all about showing how words within a sentence relate to each other, how they function to deliver meaning.
I LOVED diagramming sentences when I was in middle school. I should have known back then that it was a precursor to my love of language.
I never diagrammed prior to using it in my classroom. I started doing it because I thought it might help us analyze our writing on the sentence level and, thereby, be able to purposefully craft them . It did, and it impacted comprehension.
Fun and functional. I love the idea of sharing these cards. Thank you!
Thanks for saying so, Julianne.