Teaching Grammar Can Be Fun: An Oxymoron?

by Lisa Patrick

Teachers and students alike often yawn when it comes time to study grammar and mechanics. These topics tend to be dry and boring, but they are required skills according to Ohio's Academic Content Standards. In Ohio's Writing Conventions Standard:

Students in grades 6, 7, and 8 are required to "use all eight parts of speech (noun, pronoun, verb, adverb, adjective, conjunction, preposition, interjection)."

Students in grade 9 are required to "maintain the use of appropriate verb tenses."

Students in grade 10 are required to "use clauses and phrases."

Students in grades 11 and 12 are required to "use correct grammar."

According to the Writing Conventions Standards, students are expected to "grow more skillful at using the grammatical structures of English to effectively communicate ideas in writing and to express themselves."

So how can we get our students to grow more skillful? I have found great success in using picture books to teach grammar and parts of speech. Elementary school teachers have long been advocates of using picture books in the classroom, but they can be valuable resources for middle and high school teachers too.

One of the masters of the picture book, Maurice Sendak, in his introduction to James Marshall's book George and Martha: The Complete Stories of Two Best Friends (1997), believes, "The picture book is a peculiar art form that thrives on genius, intuition, daring, and a meticulous attention to its history and its various, complex components. The picture book is a picture puzzle, badly misunderstood by critics and condescended to by far too many as merely a trifle for 'the kiddies.'" Quality picture books contain memorable language and beautiful illustrations. If you have ever experienced reading a child's precious picture book aloud, you know the value picture books can provide to adults and children alike.

I teach a class to educators at Ashland University on teaching children to write. In this class, I encourage teachers to use picture books with students of all ages to illustrate quality writing. According to Kurstedt and Koutras (2000), "The rich language and beautiful rhythm of picture books make them excellent choices for introducing the characteristics of great writing. . . .  Students can more easily understand and appreciate how literary elements work from a short, complete work than they can from longer chapter books and novels" (p. 5). The concise format of picture books offers teachers a practical tool for modeling great writing. Picture books also offer students authentic examples of correctly written grammar and parts of speech, as opposed to isolated worksheets and exercises.

Teaching Grammar with Picture Books

I like to use mini-lessons to teach the rules of grammar. Mini-lessons are short lessons designed to introduce, model, practice, and apply skills. For example, if I want to teach my students about adverbs, I might begin my mini-lesson by reading Ruth Heller's Up, Up and Away: A Book About Adverbs (see below). After a discussion about what an adverb means and where to locate adverbs within sentences, I would model how to effectively use adverbs in a piece of writing. Next, I would provide guided practice in using the skill by giving my students a variety of action words and having them practice writing appropriate adverbs to describe these verbs. Students could then apply this skill by searching in their writer's notebooks for correctly written adverbs. They could also search their individual writing pieces for verbs and add adverbs to help describe the actions in more detail.

A number of authors have written picture books that explore grammar and parts of speech.

Ruth Heller

Ruth Heller has an impressive series of picture books that address a variety of language arts concepts. This World of Language series is a valuable resource to help students who struggle with using grammar correctly in their writing.

Heller's picture books not only provide detailed definitions of the various parts of speech; they are also powerful models of grammatical structure. Using lively verse and vivid illustrations, Heller's books combine grammar definitions with a multitude of examples. She uses playful rhyme to teach the rules of grammar. And her books are very appropriate for older students, as they cover high-level grammatical concepts. For example, the author doesn't stop at defining a pronoun; she also covers more difficult concepts like reflexive and interrogative pronouns.

At the end of her first book, A Cache of Jewels and Other Collective Nouns (1987), Heller introduces her World of Language series this way:

But nouns aren't all collective,
    and if I'm to be effective,
I'll tell about the other nouns
    and adjectives and verbs.

All of them are parts of speech.
    What fun!
I'll write a book for each.

Ms. Heller went on to write seven other engaging books that focus on various parts of speech.

In Kites Sail High: A Book About Verbs (1988), the author observes:

A VIGOROUS VERB
is super superb.

It tells you
fireworks EXPLODE

or horses THUNDER
down the road.

In this book devoted to verbs, she describes a variety of different verbs: active, passive, linking, auxiliary, tenses, irregular, imperative, indicative, and subjunctive.

Many Luscious Lollipops: A Book About Adjectives (1989) offers this apt rhyme:

An ADJECTIVE's terrific
when you want to be specific.

Predicate, demonstrative, possessive, proper, comparative, superlative, and irregular adjectives are covered in depth.

In Merry-Go-Round: A Book About Nouns (1990), Heller writes:

Nouns name a person, place or thing...
a damsel, a forest, a dragon, a king.

These NOUNS are all COMMON,
and they're very nice,
but PROPER NOUNS
are more precise.

The book defines a variety of noun categories: proper, common, abstract, concrete, compound, collective, singular, plural, and possessive.

In Up, Up and Away: A Book About Adverbs (1991), Heller rhymes charmingly:

ADVERBS work terrifically
when asking most specifically,
"When?" and "How?"
and "Where?" and "Why?"

WHEN do owls hoot?
HOW do you do?

WHERE in the world
is Timbuktu?

Heller clarifies positive, negative, irregular, comparative, and superlative adverbs.

In Behind the Mask: A Book About Prepositions (1995), she explains:

Of PREPOSITIONS
have no fear.
They help to make
directions clear.

In addition to describing prepositions, she also defines phrasal prepositions and distinguishes between prepositions and adverbs.

Mine, All Mine: A Book About Pronouns (1997) informs readers that:

PRONOUNS take
the place of nouns...

so we don't have to say...

"Mike said Mike walked
Mike's dogs today.
Mike walked Mike's dogs
a long, long way."

How boring ...

Heller writes about a variety of pronouns: possessive, demonstrative, indefinite, reflexive, interrogative, and relative.

Finally, in Fantastic! Wow! And Unreal! A Book About Interjections and Conjunctions (1998), interjections take center stage first:

INTERJECTIONS are words we use
to declare ...
Good grief!
Out of sight!
Holy cow! That's her hair.

They're capitalized
and punctuated,
and stand alone
when emphatically stated.

Many forms of interjections are covered, as are conjunctions, including coordinating, subordinating, correlative, and compound.

Brian P. Cleary

Brian P. Cleary is another author with a series of picture books on grammar. Like Heller's books, Cleary's picture books clarify grammar concepts using a myriad of examples. Cleary has written books on nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, and prepositions. His books are written for much younger readers, but they get the point across admirably. For example, in I and You and Don't Forget Who: What Is a Pronoun (2004), he instructs:

"Indefinite pronouns" tell about people and things without being specific

as in someone around here is quite a good cook and something in here smells terrific.

Here are other books by Cleary (all published by Carolrhoda Books, Minneapolis, MN).

A Mink, a Fink, a Skating Rink: What Is a Noun? (1999)

Hairy, Scary, Ordinary: What Is an Adjective? (2000)

To Root, to Toot, to Parachute: What Is a Verb? (2001)

Under, Over, By the Clover: What Is a Preposition? (2002)

Dearly, Nearly, Insincerely: What Is an Adverb? (2003)

How Much Can a Bare Bear Bear? What Are Homonyms and Homophones? (2005)

Pitch and Throw, Grasp and Know: What Is a Synonym? (2005)

Stop and Go, Yes and No: What Is an Antonym? (2006)

Lime, a Mime, a Pool of Slime: More About Nouns (2006)

Slide and Slurp, Scratch and Burp: More About Verbs (2007)

Rick Walton

Unlike the books by Heller and Cleary, Rick Walton's books on grammar are actual stories. Walton illustrates the parts of speech by highlighting them within the text itself. Walton's books (published by Gibbs Smith, Layton, Utah) are fast paced and engaging. The illustrations are unique and humorous.

	Suddenly Alligator: An Adverbial Tale (2004) recounts the antics of a boy who encounters an alligator in a swamp. Each adverb is highlighted in green. An example of the text follows. "The alligator was right behind me. He lunged at me, growling loudly."
	Around the House the Fox Chased the Mouse: A Prepositional Tale (2006) follows a wily fox chasing a mouse all over a farm. The prepositions are written in a large font and highlighted in different colors, as in "... into the barn, out the window..."
	Herd of Cows! Flock of Sheep! Quiet! I'm Tired! I Need My Sleep! (2002)― a story about a sleepy farmer, a flood, and the local fauna― is peppered with interjections that serve as a lesson in the use of exclamation points.

Robin Pulver

	Robin Pulver is the author of a valuable picture book about the importance of punctuation. Punctuation Takes a Vacation (Holiday House, New York, 2003) examines what it would be like if every punctuation mark took a vacation from the classroom. The disappearance of the punctuation marks causes chaos and confusion in a classroom, so the students decide to write postcards to the marks, entreating them to return. The author includes a short list of punctuation rules at the end of the book. One idea for applying this book is to have students write postcards to the various punctuation marks, highlighting the job they perform.
	In another book by Pulver, Nouns and Verbs Have a Field Day (Holiday House, 2006), the students participate in a field day, inspiring the nouns and verbs in the empty classroom to hold a field day of their own. When the nouns form teams only with other nouns and the verbs only with other verbs, they find that they are unable to accomplish anything and eventually learn that "Things happen when we work TOGETHER."

Lynn Truss

Lynne Truss, well known for her best-selling book on punctuation: Eats, Shoots & Leaves, has written a similar book for younger readers. Eats, Shoots & Leaves: Why, Commas Really DO Make a Difference! (Putnam's, New York, 2006) is a clever book that documents the importance of correct comma use. Ms. Truss employees a special book design to illustrate how changing the placement of a comma can change the entire meaning of a sentence. She writes the same sentence on both the left page and the right. However, she places the commas in different positions in each sentence. Bonnie Timmons, the illustrator, uses her drawings to reflect the difference in meaning the comma change causes.

As an example, one of the left-hand pages says "Go, get him doctors!" and shows a teacher yelling at a group of students to go get a doctor for an injured child. The opposite page reads "Go get him, doctors!" and shows someone yelling at a group of doctors to chase after a run-away child. At the end of the book the author includes a technical explanation for each set of illustrations. For the first example I shared, the author explains, "The comma separates the two independent clauses Go and get him doctors." For the second example, the author points out, "This comma makes Go get him a command directed at the doctors." Students could explore the importance of comma placement by creating their own humorous examples of mirrored sentences and illustrations.

My daughter's fifth grade teacher read Lynn Truss's book to her students. Following is my daughter's attempt to write her own version of the difference commas can make.

Learning grammar doesn't have to be a drudgery of filling in tedious worksheets. Instead, open a stimulating picture book, and introduce students to an authentic example of the skillful use of grammar.
 

References

Kurstedt, R., & Koutras, M. (2000). Teaching writing with picture books as models. New York: Scholastic.

Marshall, J. (1997). George and Martha: The complete stories of two best friends. New York: Houghton Mifflin.

Lisa Patrick's background is in elementary education. She taught for many years in the intermediate grades. Her master's degree is in curriculum and instruction, with an emphasis in integrated teaching and learning. Currently, she holds two part-time positions in the field of education. She supervises student teachers for Ohio Wesleyan University's Early Childhood Education Department. Also, as an adjunct professor, she teaches literacy courses at Ashland University's Columbus Center in the Curriculum and Instruction Department.

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