{"id":3887,"date":"2021-12-12T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-12-12T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/itslitteaching.com\/?p=3887"},"modified":"2025-03-14T10:28:00","modified_gmt":"2025-03-14T14:28:00","slug":"how-to-sequence-grammar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/itslitteaching.com\/how-to-sequence-grammar\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Sequence Grammar in the High School English Classroom"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Even my senior high school students struggled with basic grammar. They didn’t capitalize “I.” Their punctuation was wrong or flat-out missing. When our students are lacking so many grammar foundations, where do you even begin?<\/strong> In this post, I want to share how to sequence grammar in your high school English classroom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Want to skip trying to figure it out for yourself and just grab some done-for-you lesson? Check out all of my grammar lessons right here<\/a> or really finish your lesson planning with my entire High School Grammar Unit Bundle here!<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can also grab more tips for teaching grammar right here.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links that earn me a small commission, at no additional cost to you. I only recommend products that I personally use and love, or think my readers will find useful.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Pinterest<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Sequence Grammar Step #1: Determine How In-depth You Need to Go<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Before you even start mapping out your grammar curriculum, you need to take a look at your student population.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where are these kids right now?<\/strong> Honors and AP students will probably start with different skills than your ELLs or regular students. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where do these students want to go<\/em>?<\/strong> With those AP and Honors students, you will need to prepare them for college-level work and beyond. Based on their course selection, a college degree is probably their goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But if you know your students are not pursuing higher education, you won’t need to teach grammar as in-depth. These students need to be able to write effectively, but they probably don’t need to be able to define an “appositive” or identify every prepositional phrase.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Need to establish a baseline for your students? The assessments here<\/a> make seeing where your students are and tracking their progress easy!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

That doesn’t mean that you won’t teach those students grammar well. It just means that you may be able to skip some obscure grammar rules to better focus on the ones students will need daily.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you have no idea where your students are starting from and where they’d like to go, find out!<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A great idea is to give students some kind of pre-assessment during the first week of class (like the pre-assessment included here!<\/a>). You can give a formative assessment to find out their current skill level or hand out a survey about their goals post-high school. You can even assign a quick writing task (like this email assignment) to take student writing samples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also recommend talking to your school counselors.<\/strong> Where, statistically, do your students go after they graduate?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My Students’ Needs<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

I worked at a Title 1 alternative school. Most of my students did not pursue higher education after they graduated.<\/strong> (In fact, many were the first in their families to graduate high school). The ones that did go to college usually went to a technical college. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These same students often came into their senior year with a third-grade reading level. They did not know how to capitalize or use periods. Realistically, I wasn’t going to take them from where they were starting to collegiate level grammar in the single semester I had them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I could,<\/em> however, build up their foundations, teach them about sentence structure, and give them the tools they needed to make sure that their writing was acceptable for a career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like everything else, make sure you’re planning for your<\/em> students and meet them where they are. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n

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Sequence Grammar Step #2: Determine How Far Back You Need to Go<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Ok, so you know where your students are going. You know where they are now. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The next question to answer is this: how far back do you need to go to build upon their existing knowledge and skill level?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n

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This lesson<\/a> is a great introduction to show students why they should care about grammar at all. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Unfortunately, for many even high school students, that means the parts of speech. My senior students remembered mostly what a noun was, verbs and adjectives sounded familiar, and everything else was lost. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You might have students that can write complete sentences naturally, but fumble when it comes to more sophisticated punctuation like the semicolon. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Obviously, the further back you have to go, the less you’ll probably be able to cover. Remember, however, that sometimes you do have to go slow to go fast later. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rest of this post is my suggested sequence of grammar topics. If your students need to start at the beginning, start at the beginning!<\/strong> If they can start with punctuation, do that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I don’t recommend jumping around. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before you even begin teaching <\/em>grammar, it might be helpful to show students why <\/em>they need to learn it.<\/strong> Explaining the importance of grammar and proper punctuation to my students always provided a little bit more buy-in and fewer groans when I began my lessons. This lesson and activity is quick, fun, and does the job.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n