I kid you not.

Yesterday marked the first Sunday of spring break around here for teachers and students. On a typical Sunday, I'm finalizing my lesson plans for Monday--making notes--thinking about how everything will fit together for the week--beginning to order ideas and activities and time slot allotments. Transitions, music choices, students, personalities, extra handouts, extra guidance for those who will need it, extra pushes for those, extra extensions for those--you see where I'm going with this? Oh, and at about 5 p.m., the ultimate feeling, right? How can I extend the weekend? It's not just the scholars. We love our classroom communities, but let's be real about it. 

Today, though, I am  thinking about my freshman. It is the beginning of fourth quarter around here, and I Kid you N O T <-- (litotes), I have been asked by students to teach them about commas and syntax.

How are we supposed to know this? I have heard it from behind my back--sometimes in a whisper, or How do they expect us to know where to put a comma? or now and again from far corners of the room where students are working with a partner: How do they expect us to know this when they haven't taught us? They pretend to, but they haven't. Sometimes these messages are much louder--bolder--S  H  O  U  T  E  D     a  c  r  o  s  s   the room a little louder than it should be but it doesn't matter because it is just before break and we are all so excited and we will be back soon anyway and we are freshmen and Ms. Nelson has promised to put something together for us for when we return that will help us think differently about how we might go about using commas and other syntactic patterns to our advantage.

I kid you not. There was excitement. Before break. About these things.

Knowing that parts of speech, sentence types, and punctuating sentence types are things that are currently assessed on our level ten, semester one final exam, I'm already thinking about what the students need to know--regardless of whether or not that assessment will remain in place. In addition, I'm considering syntactic styles--phrases, verbals perhaps, word classes, and so on--groupings that can assist students in achieving certain EFFECTS (I like to call this the Big E:) in their writing. And with these goals in mind, I move backwards.

Next, I need to find out what my students know. And finally, I want to be able to provide them with the things that will be most helpful to them--individually--and we are a wildly diversified bunch!--Yes, I am SO very lucky! 🥰

We are beginning with some crical thinking about shrinkingapples. And we'll go from there! Scholars will be working individually, in pairs, and in teams. And from there, I'll begin matching syntactic arrangements with amped-up writing goals for the final quarter.

Interested?

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