The very idea of grammar has students immediately turned off, right? There’s something about it that is dull and difficult and students don’t often see the importance or the benefit to understanding how a sentence works. We know as language-lovers that it’s crucial to correctly word a sentence in order to build better and more able writers, but how do you tackle it in a way where students see it, value it, and want to apply it?
The book “Quickwrites” by Linda Rief is such a fantastic resource with short mentor texts and engaging prompts for students to engage with. Jennifer Berry used these as bellringers, giving students the chance to think and write creatively with the option to share after. This was an excellent opportunity to model the writing process and share what the drafting, revising, and publishing cycle looked like. Mentor Texts offer students engaging pieces of writing which demonstrate many of the skills we want our students to replicate. Any text works, but Berry liked how the texts were all pre-selected with specific questions students could answer in journal form.
She used the book exactly as Rief set it up:
1. Read the Mentor Text
2. Pick one of the “Try this” prompts
3. Write
This student wrote a nice, creative piece – why not take it a step further by adding some dynamics to the sophistication of the student’s expression? Here’s where it got fun. Students enjoyed the Quickwrites. They learned to appreciate the opportunity to write for the sake of writing – getting words on a page helps tackle the fear of blank pages. Not having a grade attached to this writing allowed students to write and improve; all students are wary of taking risks when there is a grade threatening them.
Grammar comes with risk because there are so many rules and regulations; students aren’t 100% sure of them so don’t use strategies that may be incorrect.
Mini-lessons were a quick and easy way to tackle grammar. Too much grammar at one time could become overwhelming, whereas small segments were easier for students to grasp and apply. When tackling varied sentences, English 10 focused on Comma use. Adjective commas are a wonderful way to add variation to sentence flow, but students weren’t sure of how to do this. We went through examples and edited our work accordingly.
Is there a difference between the first and second draft? Yes. Did the student see that they improved their writing when adding commas? YES. Over the course of a few months, students began applying the different variation techniques as they wrote. Berry always had new techniques for the students to try, but seeing them apply what they had already learned made their writing more sophisticated and left the students feeling more confident when writing across all subjects.
This activity can easily be modified for all ability levels and for an endless list of skills. Pre-AP students practiced adding rhetorical devices into their writing, pushing their writing skills further and helping them to see how these strategies worked and why they influenced the reader of their piece. Students sometimes found quality writing strategies in the mentor texts – this was a useful strategy on days when students couldn’t find their own words and instead found or added the techniques to the writing.
Mentor Texts are amazing resources in the ELA classroom because students need to see good writing to BE good writers. Rather than test grammar strategies, having students look for, practice, and apply these techniques will only help their writing become stronger and the confidence grow greater!
[…] other ideas about quick writes check out this post or this post on ELA […]