Pan Lloyds Grammar Build-up For Secondary Students
Lilly Solo
Teaching grammar for sentence-level writing is advocated most strongly by researchers in the United States (US) (e.g., Graham et al., 2018). From this view, select grammar resources are seen as the building blocks of sentences, while sentences are seen as the building blocks of texts. Advocates argue that teaching and learning grammar for sentence-level writing in the early and middle primary school years prepares students for the writing demands of upper primary, secondary, and tertiary contexts. Importantly, this view suggests that spending a lot of time understanding all the grammatical forms and functions of words and word groups is unnecessary. But an emphasis on teaching and learning certain grammatical features is still important.
From a sociocognitive perspective, teaching children about basic grammar ideas helps them write grammatically accurate sentences with fluency, freeing up cognitive resources for other aspects of writing (Smith et al., 2021). Along with key lower-order skills (e.g., spelling, handwriting, keyboarding), this perspective views strong sentence-level writing as a necessary precursor of more complex, higher-order skills such as achieving a strong personal voice in writing and meeting specific communicative purposes for different audiences (Kubina & Yurich, 2012).
Broadly speaking, sociocognitive approaches do not require teachers to have strong personal knowledge of how grammar works at the word-, phrase-, and clause-levels in different written genres. This lowers the bar of entry for teachers substantially. Instead, these approaches suggest that grammar should be taught in a sequence of increasing complexity for the purpose of sentence-level writing. Once students have achieved high levels of accuracy and fluency with writing simple sentences, students engage in sentence combining tasks to form compound and complex sentences. This then leads to their writing of longer and more advanced stretches of text.
In a nutshell, SRSD involves teaching students cognitive strategies to help them engage in a set of writing processes (e.g., planning, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing) (Harris & Graham, 1996). Unlike process writing approaches, the strategies in SRSD differ by the genre being written (i.e., there are specific strategies that help students write narratives, arguments, descriptions, and so on). As the name implies, SRSD also teaches students self-regulation processes, such as setting writing goals, monitoring writing progress, and reflecting on their writing performances (Collins et al., 2021). This takes the focus of SRSD beyond the written text and the processes used to write it; SRSD also considers important elements such as the writing environment and student motivation for writing. This makes SRSD quite unique. Writing is a multicomponent literate practice, and SRSD has been designed with this in mind to address the important parts.
SRSD involves six stages that teachers and students work through in an explicit teaching process broadly similar to the gradual release of responsibility model (Pearson & Gallagher, 1983) and other explicit approaches (e.g., Rosenshine, 1995). As explained by Laud and Patel (2008) the six stages of SRSD instruction include:
While these six stages involve several elements not included in other explicit teaching approaches, at its heart, SRSD does follow the typical I do, we do, you do structure, moving from explicit teacher modelling to independent student writing. SRSD differs from other approaches, though, in its unique combined focus on genre-specific strategies, mnemonics, and self-regulation processes.
According to world experts in SRSD, Steve Graham and colleagues (2018), teaching about the features of sentences should start in kindergarten, particularly punctuation and capital letters. In the early primary years, students should be taught about breaking down oral language ideas and descriptions into writing as a series of simple sentences. Once students have mastered simple sentence writing, they should be taught about compound and complex sentences through sentence combining strategies. All of this involves a crucial but limited explicit focus on grammar.
Offering more specificity, Smith and colleagues (2021) argued that teachers following the SRSD approach may begin by teaching basic definitions of subjects (i.e., nouns) and verbs, then teach the idea of subject-verb agreement in sentences, then help students convert sentence fragments into simple sentences, and finally help them to develop their simple sentences into longer, more complex sentences (e.g., compound and complex).
The references mentioned at the bottom of this post offer useful starting points for learning more about SRSD. Given its research backing, SRSD is worth exploring if you value evidence-based practice.
I would also recommend having a look at the thinkSRSD website, which includes a variety of resources and offers online professional development opportunities that (in my view) are inexpensive compared to competing approaches to writing instruction.
In 1824 Col. William Lancey moved from Palmyra and settled at the Lancey Homestead on the corner of Easy and Main Streets. In a front room of the homestead a school was held for several years taught by Daniel Robinson.
On July 26, 1819, the year Pittsfield was incorporated as a town under the name of Warsaw, $150.00 was raised at the first town meeting for the support of schools. Four years later (1823) the town was divided into five school districts, and teachers were secured at salaries of $2 and $3 per week. If cash proved unavailable the instructors accepted corn and wheat as pay for their services.
Evidently their report was heeded for in 1889 the Lancey Street School was built, and in 1893 the upper story of the Riverside School was finished. 1897 marked the completion of a two- room school on Hartland Avenue at a cost of $5,500. All schools were overcrowded with 79 pupils enrolled in the primary room of the Lancey Street School and 58 in the Riverside primary room.
Mr. Roy Sinclair of this town was the founder of the original Sinclair Act which pioneered the way for school re-organization throughout the State of Maine. With the assistance of this movement, the citizens of the three towns of Pittsfield, Burnham and Detroit began a school district study in the Spring of 1965.
Members serving on this study group were: Roosevelt Susi, Wendell Bickford, Paul Gilmore, Burton Hammond, Samuel Lloyd, Rowena Fields, Geneva Basford, Lyle Chadwick, Ernest Poulin, Allen Bancroft, Evelyn Austin, Allan Sidell, Frank Hazeltine, George Newhouse, Lorraine Raymond, Joe Schissler, Freeman Patterson, Marion Snowman, Virginia Bryant, Jeannette Fitts, Donna Perkins and June Vaughn.
In September 1967, for the first time in the history of the town, education for Freshman students was provided in the public school system, thus having Maine Central Institute serve the district for its secondary students in the three upper grades.
Constructed of brick in 1888 at a cost of $10,000, the Lancey Street Grammar School accommodated primary, intermediate and grammar grades. It was located on Lancey Street where the Manson Park School parking lot is now. Demolished around 1965 to make room for building the new Manson Park School.
MCI was founded in 1866 by Oren B. Cheney, Nathaniel Weymouth, Ebenezer Knowlton, Going Hathorn, William C. Stinson, Lot L. Harmon, Jesse C. Connor and Aura L. Gerrish. For a complete history of MCI from its founding until 1961, see The History of Maine Central Institute, A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in History, Division of Graduate Study University of Maine, Orono August 1961 by Kemp Moulton Pottle BA, Colby College 1952. [docx file will download]
Built in 1890 at a cost of $4,000, and served intermediate and grammar students. In the 1959 the Riverside School building was sold to C.M. Almy Church Goods when they first moved to Pittsfield. As of 2006 it was being used as an apartment building.
We writing practitioners, researchers, and scholars find ourselves at a juncture where foundational assumptions about the teaching of writing, its place in higher education, and its ability to help foster a truly inclusive democratic society are increasingly contested. Trust in literacy has been eroded over the past decades, coming to an acute crisis in the most recent years where basic facts are in dispute, meaning has been decontextualized, and information weaponized for political gain. Moreover, technology now threatens real human to human communication in the form of A.I. algorithms trained on Large Language Models like ChatGPT. Indeed, the very premises of what it means to be literate and to teach literacy are undergoing rapid change and it is in this moment we set forth guidance to postsecondary teachers, departments, administrators, policy makers and legislators on what our research expertise tells us about how to move through these changes responsibly, ethically, and with equanimity.
As such, language and writing bring us together, build community, and strengthen our democracy. Reading and writing are acts of taking ownership of language and the stories that circulate around us and through us. It is therefore vital for American higher education and tertiary education abroad that the postsecondary teaching of writing
To that end, we detail the following guiding principles and enabling conditions that can help writing teachers, writing program administrators, department heads, library staff, deans, university administrators, and policy makers make decisions that support sound writing instruction. The principles in this document are grounded in the past sixty years of research. This reaffirms our belief that literacy education is part of our commitment to the democratic ideal that we can work among differences toward a better future for all.
What follows below is a brief discussion of each of these principles and conditions. Please note how these are braided (Powell and Mukavetz) rather than separate strands. Thus, explanations may attend equally to multiple principles and multiple principles may speak to different explanations.
c80f0f1006