Welcome to the Shurley English Blog! For the past thirty-four years, our mission at Shurley Instructional Materials has been simple. We do all we can to help teachers and students experience grammar and writing success. With that goal in mind, we wanted to create a space where our team of educators could share tips, tricks, and techniques to ignite learning. It’s all about educators helping educators on the Shurley English Blog. We invite you to join the conversation!
As teachers, the concept of “word choice” is common language in classrooms around the United States. Careful word choice is the key to effective writing and speaking. Selecting appropriate and precise words helps to increase the impact you have on your audience. Ideally, this is what teachers try to convey to their students at each grade level, but a child’s learning continues
Read More“Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words can change your brain.” Wait a second, that’s not how I learned it! Many of us grew up reciting some version of this common idiom, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” This childhood chant means that hurtful words cannot cause any physical pain and thus will be ignored. I will speculate and say that as we grew older, we all learned that this chant is not true; words can and do hurt; they can actually change your brain!
Have you ever been on the receiving end of someone’s
Read MoreWriting is a tool for communication, and language is the system of words and the methods of combining them that we use to express our thoughts and feelings to each other. As teachers, we want our students to think carefully as they select the words they use to convey meaning, but Word Choice can be a tricky discussion. (Don’t worry! I’m here to help.)
Read MoreA contraction is a word or phrase that’s been formed by combining two words and adding an apostrophe to replace the letter or letters that have been left out. Since the root word “contract” means to squeeze together, the concept of forming a contraction makes logical sense to most kids.
When two words are combined to form a contraction, the first word
Read MoreThe Shurley English Writing Folder will help your students move through the writing process with ease. This foldout, four-pocket folder keeps students organized with a dedicated space for their prewriting, rough draft, revised draft, and edited paper. It is packed with handy references, checklists, and tips to ensure students have exactly what they need to produce a polished piece of writing.
Read MoreWriting is a tool for communication, and language is the system of words and the methods of combining them that we use to express our thoughts and feelings to each other.
Did you know that good writers use certain traits that make their writing more successful? They’re called the Traits of Effective Writing, and although they take a lot of hard work and practice, they consist of skills that can be learned and mastered.
Read More
One of my favorite things to do is to play with words. I love to figure out how to turn a phrase in just the right way to make my meaning clear. That’s my goal for all students so that they can master the language and control it. Being able to manipulate language to fulfill your own purposes for communication is, in my opinion, an endeavor worth pursuing.
One of the features of Shurley English that I enjoy dabbling with is the Mover and Shaker Sentence. It is the off ramp from the Sentence Blueprints I have discussed in an earlier post. This kind of skill practice can help a student writer take the next important step toward highly refined revision skills. If you can convince a student writer to explore word and phrase arrangements to maximize their impact on a sentence, you have truly helped to elevate their writing. Here’s an example from our text that will show you a basic Mover and Shaker maneuver that you can have student writers begin practicing immediately.
To get started, guide your students through a Sentence Blueprint to construct a good focus sentence. After that, be sure to have them go through the revision process initially to make sure they have chosen the most effective words to express their thoughts. Then, try a Mover and Shaker strategy like the one in this example. Notice, we have done a little finagling with the verb. (In Shurley English, we teach students early and often about verb forms, so it will be a walk in the park for them to understand a verb form change from the past tense to the progressive tense. We also teach students how to manage affixes with expertise, so in the case of the verb tromped from our example, we drop the –ed past tense ending and replace it with the progressive tense –ing suffix.) Next, we take everything after the verb and, along with the new verb form tromping, we move it to the front of the sentence. Now, all that’s left is to come up with a new past tense verb to replace tromped from the original sentence. In this case, the verb bellowed serves up a great visual. Can’t you just picture it?
When your students have demonstrated their knowledge of basic revision skills and you want them to breathe new life into their sentences, why not try a Mover and Shaker strategy? It’s like word to word resuscitation! Until next time…
Having the right tools in your writing toolbox can make all the difference when it comes time to revise a composition. Do your students need a creative way to link ideas and show association? Then look no further than the correlative conjunction! First, let's look at this simple definition:
Today, we will focus on connecting two nouns for the purpose of simplification. Remember, the reason for the correlation determines which pair of correlative conjunctions to use. Here are three examples to model for your students that will show them how to associate two ideas in a logical manner.
Either – or can show choices.
The dog made a mess in the kitchen. The cat made a mess in the kitchen.
Either the dog or the cat made a mess in the kitchen.
Neither – nor can show the absence of choices.
Maria cannot go to the game tonight. Tammy cannot go to the game tonight.
Neither Maria nor Tammy can go to the game tonight.
Both – and can show a link between two words or phrases.
Henry will be here soon. His big brother will be here soon.
Both Henry and his big brother will be here soon.
Don't forget to mention to your students that both sides of their sentence should be parallel in structure when using correlative conjunctions. Any pronouns or verbs used at the end of the sentence should agree with whatever is mentioned last.
As your students grow in their abilities to use correlative conjunctions effectively, they will show an increased level of maturity in their writing. This is a skill that they can take with them into their future college and career adventures!
EXTEND THE LESSON: Why not make this a group activity?!? Here's an idea to get you started.
Across the Curriculum activities are intended to be purposeful and meaningful, but coming up with a great idea that truly connects content can be tough. Today, let's explore an Across the Curriculum activity that you can utilize during your ELA block using Sentence Blueprints.
What is a Sentence Blueprint?
Sentence Blueprints are a unique feature in Shurley English. Writing Sentence Blueprints helps students make the connection between grammar and the writing process. Writing Sentence Blueprints from grammar labels establishes a foundation for sentence composition. Then, students learn to expand and improve their original sentences, using revision strategies to write improved sentences. In addition, Sentence Blueprints sneak in many other skills, including sentence analyzation and sentence sense work while the student is experiencing the power of revision as they focus on only one sentence.
In our Across the Curriculum activity, your students will use vocabulary from an area of focus to help them build understanding in two ways. First, they will learn to build and revise their writing. Secondly, they will grow in their knowledge of the content area you are exploring.
Getting Started:
First, decide on a theme or topic from another subject area. For example, if your school is focusing on the theme of fitness- emphasizing exercise, healthy eating, good sleep habits, and living a balanced life, you can design a lesson with Sentence Blueprints that helps your students focus on the vocabulary related to that emphasis. Here's a quick checklist that you can follow:
Here's an example of a completed Across the Curriculum Sentence Blueprint using a fitness theme:
IMPORTANT REMINDER: Don't forget, an important step in this process is going through the sentence showing the six revision strategies. This will help your students see the power of revising as they participate in the writing process at the sentence level. (We'll dive deeper into the six revisions strategies on another day.)
In a previous post, I shared my keen interest in Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences. I discussed how the Shurley English Jingles give the intelligences of Word Smarts, Picture Smarts, and Body Smarts a workout. Now, I would like to take it just a bit deeper into the next level in Shurley English.
After students master the Shurley English Jingles, the jingles become a fertile knowledge base upon which the Question and Answer Flow (Q & A Flow) is built. The Q & A Flow is a simple, pattern-based system of questions that the students learn to ask aloud orally. Yes…Shurley English teaches kids to talk to themselves; rather, to ask themselves questions—questions that elicit logical answers that their brains know to be correct, based upon what they have learned from the jingles. I call this kind of questioning “Thinking Out Loud.”
After much practice and rehearsal, using the Q & A Flow, the students then know how to analyze every word in a sentence. We call this Sentence Classification, but it goes way beyond just determining if the sentence is a statement or a question. Students learn to classify the words in a sentence based upon the specific questions they answer from the Q & A Flow. Compared to the way English grammar was always taught years ago, students learned to classify words, but usually only so that they fit into a static list of seemingly unchanging vocabulary. With the Q& A Flow, something quite different and extraordinary replaces that old system. Instead of grouping words into lists that have parts of speech headings, students learn to evaluate how specific words are actually functioning in a sentence, based on context. You see, by the old system, the word basketball is just one of the words that fits into a Noun list. But with the Q & A Flow, students begin to think in terms of the attributes of a word and its use in the context of a sentence. For example, take a look at the following sentence:
We cheered loudly at the basketball game!
Students, using the Q & A Flow, determine that the word basketball, in this context, is really an adjective. I don’t know about you, but when I am working with students and trying to help them comprehend what they read and to be able speak and to write with expertise, I would prefer their brains be adept at this kind of analysis! Can you see how a student’s Word Smarts and Logic Smarts can benefit from this kind of thinking? I consider it nothing less than brilliant.
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