[suprchq]

I teach 5th grade and a Walk to Read class that is mostly higher level students, but they still struggle w/ the parts of speech. When I was in school we learned how to diagram a sentence. Do you think this is still a valuable tool that can help students or is it not worth it. If you think it is a good idea, how do you explain the concept to your students and explain why it is s good skill for them to learn?

Thanks
Susannah

My school system uses the Shurley Method which is great! There are chants to learn the 8 parts of speech and how they relate to a sentence. There are no diagonal lines to draw (which I never got). The students simply say something like this while labeling each word with the abbreviation for its part of speech: Read: The slow cat walked quickly under the house. What walked quickly under the house? Cat. Subject noun. What is being said about cat? Cat walked. Verb. Walked how? quickly. Adverb. What kind of cat? slow. adjective. The, article adjective. This is really diagramming for dummies!

As a student myself, I struggled with diagramming in junior high and college (we never saw diagramming in high school). As a student teacher trying to help a young girl edit an essay, I pointed out a faulty sentence, but was unsure why the sentence didn't make sense. The student immediately began to diagram the sentence to find her error! After that, I was hooked!

I taught junior high language arts for 10 years. My students diagrammed sentences every day. As a result, they not only learned how words functioned in sentences, but they were better able to correct grammatical errors in their own writing and knew how to use commas correctly. They were also able to construct sentences of varied length and style without constantly being tripped up by dreaded run-on sentences (which, by the way, they were able to find and correct on their own).

My own daughter learned to diagram in eighth grade. She knows grammar very well, and says that the diagramming of sentences is what helped her. She is about to graduate high school and has taken Latin for all four years. She says her knowledge of grammar, learned through diagramming, was a tremendous help to her study of Latin.

Now I am a graduate student preparing my proposal for action research to be conducted in the fall. My research will seek to answer the very question Susannah has asked - Does sentence diagramming help students? I am looking for any related research on sentence diagramming (which is what brought me to this site). If there is anyone out there who knows of research, please let me know.

weigleacentenarycollege.edu

Thanks!

Susannah - Please remember that diagramming is not an end in itself, but merely a tool for the study of grammar. When I taught language arts, I never graded my students on diagramming.

[fun_friend]

I have heard arguments for and against diagramming. I want to go on record as "for." I think it is a visual way to understand how the words in a sentence work. I don't think diagramming is an end unto itself though. I've had fun with it though. I would put the kids in pairs or trios with small slates and dry-erase markers. I would project the a sentence for the kids to diagram. The ones who got it right first would get points. The kids enjoyed it.

[SusanTeach]

I honestly never understood diagramming when I was in school. I was a good student, but I didn't like the "mapping" of sentences. I was able to speak and write clearly, so the whole diagramming concept seemed silly to me. When I taught 5th grade (I teach 4th now) I never taught diagramming. We taught parts of speech, complete sentences, compound sentences, etc... and they practiced it all in writing. I was very happy with the results. If you really feel like teaching it, it could possibly help some that need that visual more. I just wouldn't spend a considerable amount of time on it.