Last week I tried using sentence annotations (a variation of his approach to teaching grammar and usage) in my English class. We are reading a few chapters in Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, and I chose a several rich sentences from the novel to use for this activity. After retyping the sentences in a large font, I handed out a sheet with six unique sentences, and as a class we modeled how to annotate them for capitalization and punctuation. Once students began working in pairs to continue their annotations, they marked up parts of speech and figurative language, which (excitingly!) went beyond the scope of what I intended for the activity.

Just as Anderson promised, my students found greater meaning and learning in sentences that came from actual texts they have read and loved, as opposed to random ones in workbooks, which feel rote, repetitive, and devoid of personal meaning. Additionally, by examining individual sentences, the small grammar, capitalization, and punctuation issues which usually get lost were front and center. The activity was fun for my students and, I think, beneficial. I'm looking forward to seeing if I notice an improvement in the quality of their writing (specifically editing and proofreading) in the next few weeks.
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