While I was getting all misty-eyed about my years at Chapman Elementary School the other day, I stumbled across another interesting piece of debris in the jumbled, cobwebbed recesses of my memory. Sentence diagrams. There were a few diagrammed sentences sticking out of the boxes where my fourth and fifth grade remembrances are kept. Those diagrams were incomplete. Down the hall, where my teaching remembrances are stored, I found a box containing a stack of completed sentence diagrams.
The diagrammed sentences from my teaching years were not done by me; they were done by my students. And while I would love to stand before you and declare that it was I, Mr. Savelle, who imbued my students with their unexpected love of sentence diagramming, I cannot. But it was a love, there was enthusiasm, and there was certainly a payoff. My teaching colleagues had done the work before those wonderful students arrived at my doorstep. I was fortunate enough to benefit from the students’ collective enjoyment.
We played games with sentence diagrams. Sentences came to life. Their parts were broken down, understood, twisted around. We examined every nook and cranny of subjects, predicates, and their modifiers. We saw diagrams that were nearly straight lines, and others that resembled an alien race’s drunken petroglyphs. Using one simple, pre-ballpoint-pen tool, writing and grammar changed from chore to joy, from mystery to companion.
Not being a math teacher, I wonder if there is a similar concept or exercise that breaks down numbers the same way. Also, how many of you out there teaching language arts today find yourselves walking the angular pathways of the sentence diagram with your students? Furthermore, if you do embrace diagramming (if it’s even possible to do within the curriculum frameworks you must adhere to), are there modern (aka “high tech”) tools you use?
Sound off! Your comments are always welcome.
I used to LOVE diagramming sentences, but today, I don’t see how any ELA teacher could spend as much time as they take to do in this day and age of testing. To me, diagramming sentences was a math I could actually understand!
Kristen,
Secondary Solutions
I remember diagramming sentences, I have done short simple versions with my 4th graders. It helps when they have to determine if a sentence is a complete sentence or not. They take the writing STAAR test in Tx. and Revising and Editing is part of it. It makes it easier for some of my more visual kids.