Strategies for teaching grammar in the classroom have evolved over time. Although it gets less focus today than in writing classrooms of the past, students still need instruction in basic rules of grammar in order to be able to write, communicate, and understand others effectively. Grammar skills can be divided into several major categories, two of the most important being morphology and syntax.
Morphology
Think of morphology as grammar at the word level. A morpheme is the smallest unit of sound in a language that carries meaning. For example, short words like “cat” and “skip” are morphemes because they do not contain smaller parts that carry meeting. Larger words can also be morphemes themselves if they do not consist of smaller parts that contain meaning. All prefixes and suffixes are also morphemes. Even though they typically can’t stand on their own, they still carry meaning by themselves.
These individual morphemes can combine in almost endless combinations to create new words. The word “jump” can become “jumped,” by adding the morpheme “ed.” The added morpheme (a suffix, in this case) gives the word new meaning. Combining morphemes strategically to create new words is called morphology.
Syntax
Syntax refers to the order and choice of words in sentences. While there are many ways authors can communicate the same thought or idea in writing, they are strategic about the wording they use in order to get across exactly what they want to say in the way they want to say it. Syntax also includes all of the specific rules about word order. In other languages, adjectives sometimes go after a noun, while in English, they always come before a noun. Subjects always come before the verb, and helper verbs always come before the main verb (will go, am swimming, etc.)
Some other “rules” of English syntax are a bit more flexible. For example, there is flexibility in where we place the adverb in the sentence. We could say “I quickly ran to the store,” or “I ran to the store quickly.” We could even say “I ran quickly to the store.” All of these versions are correct and communicate the exact same idea. This flexibility makes learning English both easy to approximate and difficult to perfect.
Suggestions for Fitting Grammar into Instruction
A common concern in classrooms today is that teachers don’t want to take away valuable instructional time that they should be giving to cognitively rigorous tasks like analyzing the meaning of text, rather than its structure. But there are ways to keep that precious instructional time intact while also giving students the tools and language they need to master these important grammatical concepts. Here are some ideas:
Teach morphology through phonics. Skills in morphology have a lot to do with phonics. Affixes, for example, are always explicitly taught in phonics programs. Actually teach students the words “morpheme” and “morphology,” as well as what they mean and examples. It won’t take up much instructional time and will help them see the structure of words more clearly.
Embed small skills into writing workshop. Teaching students about word choice (and that there is a correct word order!) doesn’t have to take up an entire writing block. Integrate small skills in sentence structure into the writing workshop. Choose one or two a week, and take just a few minutes to explicitly name the skill, model it for them, show some examples, and have them try to use it in their own writing. Whether you teach them to capitalize the beginning of their sentences, or to put adjectives before nouns, there are so many ways to incorporate these skills into lessons you are already teaching.