Ensure consistent writing practice — AND integrate purposeful grammar — ALL YEAR LONG!
 
One of my greatest challenges with teaching secondary English is giving enough attention to teaching phrases and clauses. Inevitably, I get caught up in the text we’re focusing on and convince myself that I “don’t have time” for dedicated grammar practice. I usually start the year strong, but grammar often falls by the wayside by the winter season.
 
Thankfully, my most successful year YET of doing grammar justice in my classroom was the year I implemented THIS project.
 
Students write a narrative over the course of the whole school year. Each month, they write a new blog post that serves as a diary entry from their character’s perspective.
 
For each post, I marry a purposeful grammar skill to a particular literary element. (Think “characterization” and “appositive phrases.”) The phrase or clause students must use in their post is intended to best augment the literary element featured for that month.
 
The purpose of the project is to help students see the relationship between sentence structure and literary effect— how an absolute phrase creates a certain tone, for instance, and gain appreciation for using intentional grammatical structures in their writing.
 
With this project, students have a low-risk place to explore sentence structure and play with language.
 
The upcoming post on our calendar each month ensured that I taught each phrase/clause throughout the year and gave my students time to practice. The project kept ME accountable!
 
Additionally, allowing students time to work on this project in class makes for the perfect sub plan when needed!
 
Materials Include:
-9-10 grade Common-core aligned standards
-Teaching recommendations for project implementation
Student Facing Materials:
-Project introduction & requirements overview
-Website setup requirements for blog
-Character/Setting Brainstorm
-10 Blog Post Directions, one for each month of the school year, giving directions on establishing a new literary element of students’ narratives and including a specific grammatical structure
-Project Rubric (fully editable)
-Besides rubric, resource is a non-editable PDF
-Of course, project can be modified into any timeline desired (such as a mini-unit)
 
 
Note: This resource DOES NOT include grammar teaching resources. Teachers will need to introduce phrases and clauses separately to implement this project.