Reading Like Writers and Writing Like Readers

Photo by Yannick Pulver on Unsplash

An audible gasp escaped from several 4th and 5th grade students as I read aloud a text they were following along in: “Either my dad didn’t see me rolling my eyes, or he was ignoring it.”*

The gasp was not in response to the content, but to (dare I say it?) the mechanics. Yes, it was the “Pattern of Power” that we’d been examining in the first 5-10 minutes of every class this week: “I use a comma and ‘or’ to join two sentences to present choices.” 

One of my goals this academic year (April 2021-March 2022) is to explore using this approach with 4th through 7th grades. The longer I stick with it, the more students are really grasping the connection between reading and writing, and the choices writers make to produce an effect for their readers. (“Why Learn Grammar and Conventions?” was my initial post.)

Other patterns: Earlier this fall we had done “I use a comma and ‘so’ to join two sentences to show cause and effect” (“Scavenger Hunt: Examining Writers’ Choices”). Before summer break we had worked with “I use a comma and an ‘and’ to join two sentences,” and “I use a comma and a ‘but’ to join two sentences to show contrast.”

One day recently, as students were combing through mentor texts calling out, “I found a ‘comma so!’” and so forth (they were really just supposed to be looking for “comma or,” but we were discovering that those were a lot rarer than all the others), a student who had just joined the class this term called to me excitedly about every comma he found: “I found a ‘comma I’! What does that mean?” I told him it was a great question, and we’ll examine it later.

Another day this week, students were writing, and one called out, “I used ‘comma or’!” My husband says I may get hooked on elementary…

We’re not covering the ground we would in a traditional grammar unit, but I think by the end of this year these 4th and 5th graders will have a working understanding of mechanics that will stick with them. I’ve had honors and AP English students tell me they’re just totally confused about when and why to use commas. 

I’m looking forward to continuing the experiment.
 
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*“Spicy!” from Jamie Sears’ Not So Wimpy Teacher 4th grade personal narrative writing unit