Practice, Practice

I cannot fully express the shock I felt in the moment after I opened up to page 64 in Anderson and saw the word "Fragment" written across the top.  Words cannot describe what I thought was never going to happened and in all honesty, after the shock wore off I was disappointed.  These readings in the past have discussed the use of skill and drill and its ineffectiveness.  Why are these parts of grammar being thrown in our faces? 

In this particular section Anderson discusses the uses of fragments, run-on sentences, dangling modifiers, wrong or missing predispositions, the double negative, and the absolute.  Obviously since I have already discussed my biased feelings on this particular subject matter I took the reading with a grain of salt.  In a way it was a nice refresher to see the rules laid out again.  To help see what children would have problems with.  But at the same time I did not always agree with the rules.  Does that make me a bad writer? 

For example with fragments, Anderson explained how she would always discuss with the class the two questions needed for identifying a sentence.  "Who or what did or is something" and "What did they do or what are they"  These questions identify the subject and the verb; the two basic components for a simple sentence.  Yes I agree, and I think it is important that our students understand that but then again I've seen and entire paragraph entered as one word.

Yes.

simple and powerful, usually answering a question proposed in the previous paragraph.  When is it okay to use that liberty then?  Never?  I'm afraid these mini lessons leave me with more questions. 

Yet Anderson uses a technique that I did find very interesting; "I want the kids to practice visualizing sentences. 'Close your eyes and picture a dog approaching you.'"  Seeing the action of the sentence taking place in your head- seems like the simplest "duh" statement anyone could think of, but in my own writing my head is moving so fast with thoughts I don't usually take the time to step back and look if my message is conveyed correctly.  I don't read the sentence word for word picturing the action in my head.  When I really should.

The reading for Noden was, ...interesting?  I do not know the correct word I am looking for in this very moment.  I never entertained the idea of an original sentence.  Yes a sentence that I write is mine but there has to be another sentence out there some where that is like any sentence I write down.  Does that involve plagiarism?  No, not at all, I am not intentionally stealing their words for my benefit.  Yet Noden takes the approach of modeling sentences.  Such as taking these mentor texts that we have been collecting and creating them anew.  One models after the sentence structure rather copying the content. 

At this very moment I am not sure how I feel about the idea.  When looking at grammar I am sure it is a fantastic example of how to use a certain piece of grammar in a context to bring your point across. 

What I really did like was his examples using the different types of logs, or using the imitated sentences and creating them as your own.  I think students will have a chance to play with language and see how it and form and create meaning by what they add where.