A Shout-Out for Diagramming
I was a skeptic and a touch apprehensive when I started researching sentence diagramming. My worry was that I would lose my students in the complexities of the task. I took the plunge and decided to try it in my classroom. Sentence diagramming has been a game changer for my students. Working definitions of adjectives and adverbs are great; however, diagramming adjectives and adverbs turbo charges learning. I can still hear my adult English Language Learners share, “I finally understand!”
I am now a strong advocate. I tell everyone that they should be diagramming sentences to unlock the complexities of English and develop critical thinking skills. My students know the fundamentals of sentence diagramming, but more importantly, they know the questions to ask to determine a word's part of speech. Questions like: Which one?; What kind?; How many?; and Whose? are all questioning techniques they use to confirm a word or phrase's function in a sentence.
I had a student question my classification of the word, three as an adjective. I pointed to the question and asked, “How many puppies?” The answer, “Three puppies…” I asked, “Why in this situation is it an adjective?” The student acknowledged that it answered the question, “How many?” I then gave another example sentence - Three is my favorite number. In this sentence I asked, “What or who is the subject?” I could see the light bulbs going off. It was a powerful moment in our classroom. My students knew that the subject of a sentence is the function of a noun. They understood that in some cases how a word is used in a sentence determines its part of speech.
I recently was attending a professional development with all the English Language Development teachers in my school district. We were learning about the functional approach to language development. My colleague questioned whether a word was an adjective or an adverb. I quickly answered, adjective. She looked at me and asked, “How did you know that so quickly?” I shared with her my classroom experiences with sentence diagramming. She looked at me and said, “Are you some kind of genius? Sentence diagramming is hard!”
Sentence diagramming is not hard. Yes, it takes time and effort but it pays off in spades. When applied in the classroom, the learning is transformative. Diagramming allows the student to see the picture of the sentence. It forces the student to understand the logical connections between the parts of a sentence. Sentence diagramming also leads to better editing skills. For example, sentence diagramming allows a student to know why a sentence is a run-on or incomplete. As students’ skills advance, they can use their sentence diagramming knowledge to improve their writing and give constructive feedback.
Finally, I have made another connection beyond writing with sentence diagramming. A diagrammed sentence clearly features nouns and verbs. In our stress-timed English language, nouns and verbs often receive the stress in spoken English. Sentence diagramming puts the nouns and verbs front and center clearly providing a visual that written and spoken English are built upon these foundational grammatical forms. I truly can’t say enough about diagramming. Sentence diagramming is now an integral feature of my classroom.
With Gratitude,
Susie Lenny, M.A.
Owner of Catching English, LLC
