Teaching Elementary Grammar with Mentor Texts

Teaching Elementary Grammar with Mentor Texts: Ready to Use Lesson Plans for Grades 3-5 contains detailed grammar lesson plans for teachers in grades three, four, and five. The lesson plans in this book incorporate the research-based best practices of grammar instruction and apply those practices to the teaching and learning of grammar instruction. They present grammatical concepts in the context of effective writing by using mentor texts. These mentor text examples, which students read from a writer's perspective, deepen students' metacognition of the importance of grammatical concepts and help them see the elements of grammar as tools for strong writing that authors use strategically to make their work as strong as possible. The book provides elementary school teachers with user-friendly lesson plans that they can easily use to put mentor text-based grammar instruction into action in their classrooms. These lesson plans feature published examples of grammatical concepts from contemporary children's and middle-grade books, activities that help students connect their reading and writing experiences, and reflective activities that facilitate students' metacognition of the importance of grammatical concepts. The thorough plans in this book will help teachers put the best practices of grammar instruction into action in concrete, practitioner-oriented ways.

Sean Ruday (he/him/his) is a professor and program coordinator of English education at Longwood University.

Contents Introduction: Reimagining Elementary School Grammar Instruction with Mentor Texts Section One: Lesson Plans Recommended for the Third-Grade Classroom Lesson 3.1: Let's Agree: Subject-Verb Agreement Lesson 3.2: Descriptive Information: Adjectives Lesson 3:3: The Power of Explanation: Adverbs Lesson 3.4: Building Sentences: Simple, Compound, and Complex Sentences Lesson 3.5: In Dialogue: Using Commas and Quotation Marks When Writing Dialogue Section Two: Lesson Plans Recommended for the Fourth-Grade Classroom Lesson 4.1: A Big Deal: Capitalization Lesson 4.2: Showing Conditions: Modal Auxiliaries Lesson 4.3: Elaborating on Information: Prepositional Phrases Lesson 4.4: Providing Detail: Relative Clauses Lesson 4.5: Clear and Powerful Language: Strong Verbs and Specific Nouns Section Three: Lesson Plans Recommended for the Fifth-Grade Classroom Lesson 5.1: Linking and Connecting: Conjunctions Lesson 5.2: Showing Emotion: Interjections Lesson 5.3: Pronouns and Clarity: Pronoun-Antecedent Agreement Lesson 5.4: Beyond the Literal: Figurative Language Lesson 5.5: Toward Clarity: Using Commas for Clarity Section Four: Final Thoughts and Resources Conclusion: Putting Mentor Text-Based Grammar Instruction Into Action in Grades Three to Five Appendix A: Annotated Bibliography of Mentor Texts Appendix B: Reproducible Graphic Organizers Appendix C: Lesson Plan Template