Hi, 
Several of you have asked what the sixth and eight graders are  being 
expected to master, so I went to the state website and copied it  below.
 
I just object to the whole mess.  Expecting me to teach  commas, for example, 
in one year is ridiculous.  It's one of the most  complex decisions a writer 
makes.  I've spent the entire year trying to  show my kids that language comes 
in chunks that we can move around to improve  meaning. To do that we've 
looked a prepositional phrases, verbals, appositives,  participial phrases, 
infinitives, etc., but it was all with an eye towards  improving their writing.  
We've written participle place poems, pronoun  story books, and all manner of 
projects around grammar; again, the emphasis has  been on what these various 
pieces do to our writing and meaning  making.
 
One of the best days of the year came Thursday when we were looking  at some 
sentence imitating from a sentence combining book I have, and one of my  kids 
called out, "Hey, Mrs. Le, look up there. He started the sentence with a  
participial phrase to make us see the action he was doing!  Just like us  
yesterday." We another had a great discussion about how moving the participial  phrase 
around changed the sentence and the meaning the reader got from  it.
 
Now I'm being presented with this disconnected and seemingly random  list of 
things that I'm responsible for, and I'm at a loss.  How much time  do I spend 
dragging them through parts of speech so that each and every one of  them 
"knows" the parts of speech.  (How many discussions here on the list  are about 
the function of a word and how we'd classify it?  How much is  enough for 
seventh grade?)  What do I leave out to make time to do  that?  I have no problem 
teaching participles and infinitives (I just  finished a section on those), but 
is that all?  
 
I'm back to my basic gripe, though.  If not this, then  what?  My school 
wants to put up our benchmarks and standards on the  website so that parents know 
what we do.  What do I give them instead of  this mishmash?
 
Did I mention that I have a whole 1.5 hour meeting to thrash this  out with 
the sixth and seventh grader teachers?
 
~Gretchen
 
Sixth Grade:
Students write and  speak with a command of standard English conventions 
appropriate to this grade  level. 
Sentence  Structure
1.1 Use simple, compound, and compound-complex sentences; use  effective 
coordination and subordination of ideas to express complete thoughts.  
Grammar
1.2 Identify and  properly use indefinite pronouns and present perfect, past 
perfect, and future  perfect verb tenses; ensure that verbs agree with 
compound subjects.  
Punctuation
1.3 Use colons  after the salutation in business letters, semicolons to 
connect independent  clauses, and commas when linking two clauses with a 
conjunction in compound  sentences. 
 
Eighth Grade:
Students write and  speak with a command of standard English conventions 
appropriate to this grade  level. 
Sentence  Structure
1.1 Use correct and varied sentence types and sentence  openings to present a 
lively and effective personal style.
1.2 Identify and  use parallelism, including similar grammatical forms, in 
all written discourse  to present items in a series and items juxtaposed for 
emphasis.
1.3 Use  subordination, coordination, apposition, and other devices to 
indicate clearly  the relationship between ideas. 
Grammar
1.4 Edit written manuscripts to  ensure that correct grammar is used. 
Punctuation and Capitalization
1.5 Use  correct punctuation and capitalization. 

To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
     http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
and select "Join or leave the list"

Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/