In a message dated 6/26/2000 11:40:06 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
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<< I imagine there is a continuum rather than discrete categories. Once
 again, I think pointing out the distinction is useful, because people
 HAVE been talking past each other.
  >>

Johanna,

I think this is a good way to characterize the approaches.  I like the
continuum image, rather than the Great Schism!  Personally, I came looking
for some advice on how to rebuild my approach to grammar in the classroom.  I
can see how that would tend to make me a minimalist, but I'm wondering if
it's an either/or sort of question.

If you don't have the time or resources to devote large hunks of time in the
classroom to grammar, are you forced into a minimalist stance?  In other
words, can my kids come to an understanding of say, the comma splice (to pick
one we keep citing) without having to learn two or three different grammars?
I did (as one of my colleagues keeps repeating), but I was an adult before I
returned to writing.  I was one of those who thought writing was about
subj/verb agreement rather than communicating ideas.

I'm hoping there is a middle ground.  I'm still groping my way towards the
advice that Jeff gave me and Connie indicated she also follows  - "The 22
Must Haves of Grammar" or whatever you choose to call them.

In my "youth" this was easy.  Start with identifying complete
sentences/fragments (a darned sophisticated notion, btw for youngsters!),
draw a line between the complete subject and the complete predicate,
underline the simple subject once and the simple predicate twice, draw arrows
from the adjectives to the nouns they modify, etc.  I spent years approaching
grammar like this.  We diagrammed and made living sentences for hours.
Didn't work for most of my kids.  I saw little or no transference to their
writing.

So I plead again.  When you advise me to design series of lessons, what
progression would you advise me to use?  I would love to individualize a
program for each student, but I don't want to leave huge holes.  What are the
"Must Covers" for middle school students?  Any ideas?

Maybe even more importantly, what shouldn't I be covering?  Ed mentioned that
perhaps I shouldn't even mark comma errors with regard to clauses so as not
to discourage the experimenting with clauses that should be going on.  Any
other things I shouldn't be doing?

I know what doesn't work; I'm still trying to figure out what I should be
doing instead.  Ed's program is laid out, but seems to require years of
spiraling.  Ed, what would you do if you had one year?

Connie, what grammar resources do you send your students out into the
sometimes cold, cruel world of public school teaching with?  What do you
advise them to do if they walk into a department with a bookroom full of
Wariner's?

Harry, what did the sixth grade teachers in your school do for grammar
instruction so that you could use the wonderful techniques you developed in
_Image Grammar_?  What foundation did they come to you with?

Any other books you know of/have written that I should read/review?

Thanks again (and I'm hoping you don't collectively wish I'd stayed in Big
Sur!),
--Gretchen the Nag
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