Navigating the Complexities of Sentence Structure

Hey, there and welcome back. I am so glad you are joining me today, because we are going to talk about one of my favorite topics. And that is syntax.

Now, if I am being honest, if you would have asked me like three years ago, what syntax is, I would have no idea how to communicate that to you. But as I have learned more about the science of reading and all of the aspects of language comprehension, I have realized that syntax is one such an important part of just the literacy process, both reading and writing. But also it can be a lot of fun. And there’s just a lot of like, really, I don’t know fun things that you can do with syntax.

So we’re going to talk about what syntax is, why it’s important, and I have three really simple strategies that you literally can start doing today, as soon as you’re done listening to this podcast without any planning or prep work, that will help your students increase their syntactical awareness and understanding.

Now, before we get to all the good stuff, let’s just quickly talk about what syntax is. And syntax is one of those terms that you’re like, I’ve probably heard that before, but I don’t think I could tell you what it means. That’s how I was for a long time.

But syntax is simply the system in which we arrange and order words in the English language to communicate meaning. So it is the rules that really govern how we put sentences together, in a way to where they make sense.

So for example, the sentence The dog ran in the park, is probably a sentence that you can understand, you can visualize, and you can create a mental image based off of that sentence. That’s because they’re in an order that makes sense.

Now, if I took those exact same words out of order, and I gave you the sentence, ran dog park, the the in, it’s the exact same words. But out of order, those words don’t really maintain the same level of clear meaning. Now, you could maybe think about it and figure out sort of what we’re trying to communicate. But again, the order of words matters. And syntax simply tells us how do we order words in a way to where it makes sense.

So why is syntax important? So first of all, having knowledge and really an understanding of syntax is really incredibly important, both for our ability to understand what we are reading, but also to be able to communicate our thoughts and ideas. And there are really many reasons why syntax is important.

But I think there are three that really resonates with you and your role as a literacy teacher. And the first reason why syntax is so important is because having knowledge of syntax is going to improve reading comprehension. We know that syntax is a part of the language comprehension strand. So we know that this is an element that leads to students becoming skilled readers.

You know, ultimately, students need to understand the rules of sentence structure in order to make meaning of the texts that they read. I have always loved this idea. I’ve read it once in a book and it sticks with me but comprehension begins at the sentence level. You know, if our students can’t comprehend a single sentence, they’re going to struggle to comprehend the entire text.

And the older students get the more complex sentences and phrases and punctuation exist within the text that they’re reading. And so students really need to be able to extract the core meaning of these complex sentences so they can understand the big topic and the big idea in these texts.

So you know, if a sentence has multiple commas and conjunctions, or connective words, students really need to be able to automatically separate into phrases and clauses in order to figure out what is being said. And you know, the only way that they can do that is if they have an understanding of the rules of syntax.

For example, we want our students to really understand things like the role that a dependent clause plays in a sentence and how that’s different from an independent clause. We want them to understand what an appositive is, how to identify it, and why an author includes it. We want them to be able to recognize different signal words and really understand, you know the difference between subordinating conjunctions and coordinating conjunctions. And again, why they’re being used.

Now, let me pause real quick and just share a disclaimer. If you just had a brief moment of panic as I listed off those items, because you’re thinking, oh my gosh, I don’t even know what an appositive is, or I couldn’t tell you what a dependent clause is, how am I supposed to teach this stuff to my students?

It is okay. I didn’t know these things super in depth when I was in the classroom, and I think is important for us to recognize that we can grow and learn alongside our students. And we don’t have to personally memorize all of the grammar rules in order to effectively increase our students syntactical knowledge and awareness.

So my main point for listing off all of those specific examples is not to stress you out and make you feel bad about not having all these grammar rules memorized. But I want to highlight just how complex sentences can be. And without a solid understanding of really how to break them apart, students reading comprehension will suffer. So syntax is very important for reading comprehension.

But having knowledge of syntax also is going to improve your student’s writing. And I think oftentimes, when we think about syntax and sentence structure, writing is the first thing we think about which makes sense. You know, in order for your students to be able to write clearly and correctly, they need to understand how words and phrases work together to form sentences.

So if you notice that your students struggle to write in complete sentences, and they have a lot of fragments or run ons, then that is a clue to you, that they are struggling with syntax, and they are lacking in their syntactical knowledge.

But when students do understand how words, phrases and clauses work together, then they are able to write a variety of sentence types, you know, they have no problem including things like subordinating conjunctions or appositives and using them correctly in their writing because they understand how to put words and phrases together to communicate meaning.

But in addition to reading and writing, and this one is kind of grouped into reading, but it has its own specific focus, having knowledge of syntax is going to improve student’s fluency and their ability to read smoothly and correctly. And if you think about it, when we think about the different aspects and elements of fluency, phrasing is a really important part of fluency and being able to know when to pause, you know when to emphasize things.

But it is going to be really hard for students to work on their phrasing, if they don’t know what a phrase is. And if they can’t identify it. You know, so if your students can easily identify a noun phrase, a verb phrase, or a prepositional phrase in a sentence, then they are able to recognize clues that are going to help them with the phrasing while they’re going to read, and they’re probably going to be much more likely to read smoothly.

But if a student is lacking that syntactical knowledge, then they’re going to understand how to break up a sentence and where to pause and where to, you know, add emphasis and how to group things together. And a lot of times, if you’re reading about fluency, you know, there’s going to be fluency strategies that are going to encourage students to practice something like scooping phrases and putting two to three words together into a phrase that makes sense. But again, unless students really know how to identify a phrase, there might scoop the words incorrectly.

So for example, here’s a sentence that I’m going to read correctly with good phrasing. The brown dog ran quickly through the pouring rain. So I was able to group the sentence together by the phrases, because I could easily identify what words go together.

But if I’m a student who doesn’t know how to identify phrases in a sentence, I might cluster and group the words together in an incorrect way, which is really going to have an impact on how I read. So I might read that same sentence as the brown dog ran quickly through the pouring rain.

Because I don’t know where the phrases are in the sentence, I’m incorrectly grouping words together and scooping them and then my reading just doesn’t sound very fluent. And I’m going to have a hard time understanding what I’m reading if I’m not fluently reading the text.

So as you can see, syntax not only helps students with their reading, their writing, but it also helps them with their fluency, which we know is obviously going to contribute to reading comprehension in the long run.

So it’s obviously very important, but sometimes we struggle to know how to accurately teach it. You know, I don’t know about you, but understanding syntax is really something that I didn’t start to understand or learn until I started to do my own research on the science of reading. And I really understood the role that it plays in language comprehension.

And I think maybe that’s one of the reasons why I also love talking about it on the podcast and sharing resources with you guys because I know that this is something that is not usually taught in college or in PD, but it is so important.

And I know for sure, I did not have any college classes that talked about syntax, I don’t even think we learned about how to teach grammar effectively in college. And of course, when I started teaching, I knew that grammar skills, which does cover a lot of syntax was important. And I did need to teach it. But I never really understood how it directly connected to reading comprehension or writing and fluency.

But now that I do know, I want to share that knowledge with you. So I want to share some really easy, practical ways that you can support students in raising their syntactical knowledge and awareness, because so much of it is just helping them develop an understanding and awareness.

So we want to make sure, first of all, that we are explicitly teaching and defining a lot of these syntactical elements. So we want to make sure that we are doing specific lessons on teaching our students about clauses and phrases and types of sentences and, you know, punctuation.

But we don’t want to stop our instruction, just after those introductory lessons or a single lesson, we really want to be intentional about doing things to increase our students and tactical knowledge. So really, anytime that you are doing a read aloud, or you have students at a small group table, you want to point out something connected to syntax.

And I always love reminding teachers that you see your students for about 180 days every year. And if every day you did one small thing that focused on syntax, it would make such a huge impact on your students overall knowledge and understanding of syntax and as a result, improve their reading comprehension, their writing and their fluency. And sometimes it’s doing those small things consistently over time that have a big impact.

So the three things that I’m going to share with you, they’re quick, they’re easy, you literally can do them with very little planning. But if you did these three things, or one of these three things every single day, it really would make a difference with your students overall, just knowledge and understanding of syntax.

Now, before I share these ideas, let me really quick just let you know that we are making some really big updates to our whole group lessons inside the Stellar Literacy Collective. We are so excited about what we are creating for our teachers.

And since we know how important syntax is there is a built in syntax section to our whole group lessons and the texts that we’ve included. So if you know as you’re listening to this, you’re like, Okay, I understand that syntax is important, I still am not very competent in my own ability to teach it, we would love to be able to support you through our lessons.

You know, we’ve got the texts with the sentences pulled out and slides and scripted teacher lesson plans that are really all ready for you to print and teach. So you don’t have to worry about am I defining this clause in the right way? Or am I actually identifying the phrases correctly? We would love to be able to support that, you know, support you with the resources inside our membership.

Our doors are currently closed, and we’re not going to open them up until later this summer. But like I said, when we do open them up, we would love to support you, especially with these new resources that we are creating. So if you would like to learn more, and if you also want to check out some of the resources that you’d get access to go ahead and add your name to the waitlist.

We have some special emails that go out just to teachers on our waitlist that share previews of the new resources that were being added. So you can add your name to the waitlist at stellarteacher.com/waitlist. And then of course, when doors do open the summer, you’ll be notified in case that sounds like something that would support you.

So while we would love to support you this next year, I also want to make sure you understand that the ideas that I share, you can implement without our resources. So I’m going to share three ideas for you. So if you are listening to these and you’re like, Yeah, I got this on my own, then of course, you can get started using them. If you want more support and sort of the heavy lifting of the work done for you add your name to the waitlist, and you’ll get access to our resources next year.

But let’s jump in. And I can share these three really quick and easy strategies. And for each of these ideas that I’m going to share, you don’t really need to do a ton of planning, you just need to be able to select an important sentence from either a read aloud text or a shared reading text or a text that you’re reading in a small group. And then prompt your students with one or all three of the ideas that I’m going to share with you.

So the first thing that you can do to increase student’s understanding of syntax is to identify or really have them identify and name the types of phrases in a sentence. And a phrase is simply a group of two to three words that serve a specific role or function within the sentence.

It can be really helpful for students to identify phrases so that they can identify who or what the sentence is about, which would be the noun phrase, they also can identify the action that is happening, which is the verb phrase, and then they’re able to recognize any additional information that might be included in a prepositional phrase or an adjective phrase.

So here’s an example of a sentence. For the next hour wind and rain pounded the house. So students would identify and I always like having students start with a noun phrase, first the verb phrase, and then whatever else is left over just because it helps them understand who, what, and then anything extra.

So students would identify the noun phrase as wind and rain. And this is great, because this is an opportunity for you to point out to your students that this sentence has a compound subject, we’re talking about both wind and rain, we’re not talking about one or the other, we’re talking about both. So it’s a compound subject.

Students would also identify the verb phrase as pounded the house with the verb been pounded. So really, if we’re talking about like the core of the sentence, we’re talking about wind and rain, pounded, and of course, this is a good time to point out pounded is in past tense. So this is somebody who is reflecting on something that has already happened.

And then students would identify for the next hour as a prepositional phrase, which gives us more information about when.

And being able to identify these types of phrases is going to help students both with fluency, and understanding what is happening in the sentence. And like I said earlier, comprehension begins at the sentence level. So it’s important that our students can understand the sentences that they read. So one super quick idea that you can do.

Another thing that you can do with the sentences that you’re reading, or any text is have your students identify the parts of speech, and name the function for each. So again, another super, really easy thing that you can do, it does not take a ton of time.

But you know, have your students really pay attention to the parts of the speech in a sentence, and they don’t have to identify and name every single word, you know, if it’s a long sentence, have them identify the main parts of speech or you know, what they can recognize. Sometimes there might be multiple adjectives or multiple nouns, or lots of pronouns, and you can name all of those. But the really important thing is for students to focus in on the function or really thinking about what is the job or the role of that word in the sentence.

And I think so often, we just have students name the part of speech, you know, find the nouns, find the verbs, find the adjectives, but what we really want students to understand is not the name of the part of speech, but what is the function and the role and the job of that word in the sentence.

Again, if we think about syntax, it’s really understanding how words work together. And in order for students to do that, they need to understand that every word in a sentence has a job to do, and we want our students to be thinking about this.

So for example, if your students read the sentence, The dog barks loudly in the park. You could have them identify the following: Dog is a noun, and it answers the question who; barks is a verb, and it answers the question does what? Loudly as an adverb and it tells us or answers the question how so how’s the dog barking? And in the park, is a prepositional phrase, in is the preposition and it answers the question where.

So when students engage in an activity like this, they’re going to realize that each word has a specific job to do in a sentence. And having this type of knowledge can really help students in their own writing, because they recognize that we can’t have a sentence without a noun to tell us who or what.

And we also can’t have a sentence without a verb that tells us you know, is or was doing, but also it can be really helpful to have additional, you know, additional words like adverbs and adjectives and prepositions because it gives us more details and information. So super quick activity doesn’t take a ton of time, but this will increase your student’s syntactical awareness.

And then the last idea is to have your students identify signal words and explain their function. Again, so much of this is not just having students be able to name something, but to be able to communicate what is the job or what is the role of this specific thing.

What we want students to do is recognize that there are often things called signal words in sentences. So if you think about it, like conjunctions, a conjunction can be a signal word, a transition word can be a signal word. And we want our students to understand sort of the purpose of those. You know, there’s a lot of different ways that we can classify and categorize signal words. And there’s also a lot of jobs that they do.

So conjunctions sometimes can indicate a change of direction. So for example, the word but can sort of signal that okay, some some we’re taking a turn here with with the sentence. So in the compound sentence, I was so excited it was Friday, but my teacher assigned us homework over the weekend, that signal word, but lets us know that it’s like okay, our excitement dwindled, because we got these we got the homework assigned to us.

So signal words can also highlight important relationships. For example, in the sentence, since I got an A on my test, my mom took me out for ice cream, and that signal word since lets the reader know that the reason why the author got to go out for ice cream is because they got an A on their test. So that communicates an important relationship.

Sometimes signal words can communicate a set of conditions that the reader needs to be aware of. So for example, in the sentence, I love watching movies, unless they are horror movies, lets the reader know that it’s like, Okay, I like watching movies. But there’s this category of movies that I will not watch. And so unless as a signal word.

And as skilled readers, as adults, we understand and recognize these things automatically. We don’t need to think about what is unless telling us what is since telling us what is but telling us. But sometimes these things are less automatic for our students. And so we want to be intentional about pointing out signal words about talking about conjunctions, and explaining what are they doing in the sentence.

So let me just remind you of the three things that you can do to help build syntactical awareness using any text. Those three things are to identify and name the types of phrases in a text, identify the parts of speech and name the job in the sentence, and then identify signal words and explain their function.

Again, none of these things take a ton of time. They don’t take long to implement, they don’t take a lot of time to plan. But we just need to consistently do them so that way, we can really help our students become more aware of how words and phrases work together to form sentences.

So your challenge this week, is to try to do at least each of these activities one time and just see how it goes. Try it out with your students. And of course, I would love to hear from you if you decide to test them out. Reach out to me on Instagram at @thestellarteachercompany or you can always send me an email [email protected]. I do love connecting with our listeners and hearing from you guys and what is what is helping you in your classroom.

So I hope you will take some of these things, put them in place. And I also hope you’ll join me next week because we’ve got two special guests. I think this is the first time that I’ve brought on two guests for one episode. But I have Melissa and Lori from the wildly popular podcast, Melissa and Lori Love Literacy. If you have not tuned into their show, it is absolutely great.

But next week, they are coming on my podcast to be sharing some answers to those literacy questions that really keep you up at night. Like things like, should you be teaching reading comprehension strategies in isolation? And if not, what should you be doing instead? We had a really great conversation, it is definitely one that you’re not going to want to miss. So I will see you next Monday.