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One of the most important things I have learned through my experiences teaching ELA in grades 6-9 for many years is that while teaching trends come and go, some of which are awesome and life changing such as the massive growth in YAL, the influence of the reading/writing workshop model, the 6 Traits of Writing, and the addition of so much useful technology, to name a few of my favorites (while other trends thankfully fade away quickly!), the “basics” are still vitally important, things like organizing an essay, annotating literature, note taking, studying vocabulary, and, of course, grammar.

Unfortunately, grammar, which is challenging to teach because it is a massive, abstract, and sometimes controversial topic, is too often relegated to the occasional mini lesson, if it’s taught directly at all. I think that is a mistake.

Here is the ironic story of how I ended up writing grammar books: I once found my time for literature and writing squeezed by a very fine, but very heavy “elements of language” textbook that contained what seemed like all of the grammatical knowledge in the world. I believed in having a solid understanding of grammar, and I believed in doing my part to help establish this in my students, but I also became determined to shrink its role in an ELA curriculum down to the most useful, practical, and developmentally appropriate grammar concepts for middle school writers–so there would be plenty of time for more literature and more writing!

My Richbaub’s grammar books are the result of this quest. Refined through trial and error with thousands of students and many generous colleagues, these books were created to provide teachers with a smart, sensible way to deliver just the right amount of meaningful, practical grammar instruction middle school writers need.

My favorite middle school ELA topic actually is writing–how to organize an essay, how to support one’s ideas, how to improve one’s writing voice, how to describe things effectively, how to begin, how to end, how to improve the flow of one’s sentences, and on and on. Mini lessons are effective for teaching writing because there are so many resources for engaging examples–including students’ own writing–and students can dive right in and try out what they learn. Writing is something tangible. Students can feel it and see it and flop around in it!

To most people, grammatical concepts feel disconnected from the gritty, tactile, and often beautiful world of hands-on writing. Therefore, teaching grammar is a difficult chore–but steadily doing the hard work to lay a foundation in grammatical knowledge is so very important, especially as students push on toward high school. Richbaub’s grammar books make it possible to create that foundation steadily, week by week, throughout a school year–a vast improvement compared to weighty grammar textbooks or sporadic remedial lessons.

Students with a foundation in grammar can tap into this special knowledge to not only meet the technical requirements of academic writing and soar on standardized testing, but a grasp of grammar’s fundamentals can accelerate their development of a more sophisticated, more effective writing style.

Some of the most impactful writing lessons involve leveraging students’ grammatical knowledge: Upon learning about prepositional phrases, students may notice that far too many of their sentences begin with one. Upon learning about participial phrases, students may notice that very few of their sentences include them. Upon learning about the utility of subordinate clauses, students may adopt a better way–beyond the ubiquitous compound sentence–to increase the overall complexity of their written expression.

In addition, lessons about run-on sentences, comma splice errors, dangling modifiers, parallel construction, pronoun usage, agreement, active vs. passive voice, etc. all require students to have a root system firmly established in a bed of grammar knowledge.

With grammar, there is always plenty of reminding and reteaching, and the dividends are not always in sight or even within reach early on, but there is no doubt that the hard work of teaching grammar enriches the journey and facilitates the growth of students who are striving to become better writers. Grammar is one of the vitally important “basics” your ELA curriculum should include!

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