I never used to be a lover of grammar. Rules and diagramming held little appeal for me. All that I needed or wanted as a reader was to have the words paint pictures in my mind and to take me away to another time and place. As I became an English teacher, and more recently a teacher of students with English as a second language, I find the ways in which words fit together unbelievably daring and magical.
In Grade 8, we have the standard of discovering verbals (gerunds, participles, and infinitives) which often is maddeningly frustrating. Each year, as we review these "verbs gone wild," I find myself noticing them everywhere I read. I find myself rereading certain passages desperate to share them with my cohorts-in-shenanigans on the Grade 8 hall.
I love imagery and sensory language and diving in headfirst into another world, and lately, that has included the grammar side of things.
Just tonight, I read a passage in the book Sabriel by Garth Nix that I keep returning to. I noticed the beauty of the word choice itself - personification, imagery, specific language. But then - then I noticed the participial phrase, and I stumbled on the noun clause. I reread the sentence over and over and thought to myself, "Self, if you diagrammed this sentence, it would like like a spell written in an old spell book. Wouldn't that be something - sentences as spells, words as magic."
Of course, words ARE magic. I only hope my students can discover that magic for themselves.
The sentence, if you care to know, can be found on page 137 and is as follows:
"Books lined the walls, following the curves of the tower around, save for where the stair rose from below, and the ladder climbed to the observatory above."
*sigh*
I think I shall work on putting that one in my Word-Spell book.
In Grade 8, we have the standard of discovering verbals (gerunds, participles, and infinitives) which often is maddeningly frustrating. Each year, as we review these "verbs gone wild," I find myself noticing them everywhere I read. I find myself rereading certain passages desperate to share them with my cohorts-in-shenanigans on the Grade 8 hall.
I love imagery and sensory language and diving in headfirst into another world, and lately, that has included the grammar side of things.
Just tonight, I read a passage in the book Sabriel by Garth Nix that I keep returning to. I noticed the beauty of the word choice itself - personification, imagery, specific language. But then - then I noticed the participial phrase, and I stumbled on the noun clause. I reread the sentence over and over and thought to myself, "Self, if you diagrammed this sentence, it would like like a spell written in an old spell book. Wouldn't that be something - sentences as spells, words as magic."
Of course, words ARE magic. I only hope my students can discover that magic for themselves.
The sentence, if you care to know, can be found on page 137 and is as follows:
"Books lined the walls, following the curves of the tower around, save for where the stair rose from below, and the ladder climbed to the observatory above."
*sigh*
I think I shall work on putting that one in my Word-Spell book.
