Juli Kendall's Weekly
Writing Workshop Journal
A MiddleWeb Listserv Project
Members of the MiddleWeb Discussion List and other interested teachers
are joining together to explore the Writing Workshop and other ideas about
supporting young adolescent writers and readers. Juli Kendall, a reading-writing
teacher/coach in Long Beach, California, is helping moderate the discussion.
Last year, Juli kept a weekly journal from her Reading Workshop.
This year, Juli is continuing her journals, but this time she's focusing
on her Writing Workshop. Find out more about our project at our Reading/Writing
Workshop homepage. You'll find Juli's background article here.
Links to many of the tools created by Juli and her colleagues are embedded
in these journals. Most often, when you click on them, a PDF file will begin
to download. You'll find a list of the downloads here.
If you'd like to join the daily discussion that parallels Juli's Journals,
find out how here.
Writing Workshop
Week #12:
The Year of Punctuating Dangerously
Writing a short paragraph about Parents Night (Parents' Night) at
school is trickier than I thought. There's a difference of opinion about
whether or not to use the apostrophe following the "s" in Parents.
It's actually been a good activity for all of us--reminding us of the importance
of punctuation and written conventions. But what's the right answer?
My new copy of Strunk and White's The Elements of Style doesn't
even address this issue. It comes closest in Elementary Rule of Usage #1:
"Form the possessive singular of nouns by adding 's." The commentary
continues with: "Follow the rule whatever the final consonant."
But it's of no assistance in this matter.
For help, I turn to The Transitive Vampire: The Ultimate Handbook of
Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager and the Doomed by Karen Elizabeth
Gordon. The best thing about this book is that it doesn't take itself too
seriously. "This is a dangerous game I'm playing, smuggling the injunctions
of grammar into your cognizance through a menage of revolving lunatics kidnapped
into this book," she writes in the introduction. But it doesn't include
anything about the possessive singular or plural of nouns or how to use
apostrophes. So, on to the next reference
The Harcourt Brace College Handbook, 6th edition, which I purchased
as a sophomore in college and continue to use, tells it this way:
Use the apostrophe to indicate the possessive case (except for
personal pronouns), to mark omissions, and to form certain plurals.
However, none of the examples in the book help to clarify the issue with
Parents Night (Parents' Night). While trying to resolve my own punctuation
dilemma, I started planning for a two-week Unit of Study on Punctuation
in Writing Workshop and ended up devising a whole year of punctuation study.
Part of the intrigue of beginning a new unit in Writing Workshop is not
knowing exactly what you will get. I'm still wondering, "What happened?"
Expert punctuation users
Well, I really know what happened. It's because Janet Angelillo, from the
Reading and Writing Project at Teachers College, caused my paradigm to
shift.* Her book, A
Fresh Approach to Teaching Punctuation: Helping Young Writers Use Conventions
With Precision and Purpose, is moving me from one way of thinking about
punctuation to another. Now, I'm ordering copies of Strunk and White, compiling
books for an "Interesting Ways to Use Punctuation" book bin for
our class library, and reformatting student friendly rubrics for written
conventions.
On page 35 in her book, Janet outlines a year of study in punctuation. "We
want students to have many chances to become expert punctuation users, so
the initial unit of study, a large block of time when punctuation is our
major focus across all kinds of writing, takes place early in the year,
in October or early November," she comments. "It is followed by
at least one other deep study of punctuation later in the year."
Janet Angelillo's Plan for a Year of Study in Punctuation (p. 36) suggests
four units.
1. First unit of study (October to November)
2. Follow up unit of study (January to February)
[study within genre, of an author, of a specific mark]
3. Review unit-testing (March to April)
[using punctuation in formal ways]
4. Advanced unit of study (June)
[grows from student interests]
Reading Chapter 2, "Starting with What Students Know and Notice, a
First Unit of Study in Punctuation" helps me plan our first unit. In
this unit we'll investigate how readers use punctuation to make meaning
when they read and how writers use punctuation to make meaning when they
write. I'm using the structure for whole class work, mini-lessons and small
group work that she outlines.
At the end of the chapter, Janet explains how punctuation shapes a reader's
understanding.
Students need to notice punctuation, talk about it, and play
with it. Most of all, they need to discover it, not have it force fed to
them on worksheets or as rules to be memorized. They need to discover all
the ways that writers use the colon or semi-colon and the fun you can have
with dashes. Suddenly, the comma is not a rule to recall; it's a way to
shape your reader's understanding. This knowledge brings power to the little
dots on the page, and power is, after all, what we want to teach children
in their writing. (p. 52)
Thanks to Janet, I have my focus question for this unit of study, "What
is the meaning you are trying to communicate?" Applying this idea of
communicating meaning to my personal dilemma about how to correctly
write Parents Night, I conclude that it's "a night for parents"
not "a night belonging to parents." In that case, no apostrophe.
But from now on, my recommendation is to rename the event "Family Night."
Whew!
*WHAT IS A PARADIGM SHIFT?
"In 1962, Thomas Kuhn wrote The Structure of Scientific Revolution,
and fathered, defined, and popularized the concept of 'paradigm shift' (p.10).
Kuhn argues that scientific advancement is not evolutionary, but rather
is a 'series of peaceful interludes punctuated by intellectually violent
revolutions,' and in those revolutions 'one conceptual world view is replaced
by another.'"
"Think of a Paradigm Shift as a change from one way of thinking to
another. It's a revolution, a transformation, a sort of metamorphosis. It
just does not happen, but rather it is driven by agents of change."
Definition of "paradigm shift" from http://www.taketheleap.com
Additional resources for tongue-in-cheek grammar, punctuation
and syntax:
The New Well Tempered Sentence by Karen Elizabeth Gordon
The Disheveled Dictionary: A Curious Caper Through Our Sumptuous Lexicon
by Karen Elizabeth Gordon (Author) (Hardcover)
Sin and Syntax: How to Craft Wickedly Effective Prose by Constance
Hale (Hardcover)
Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe's Guide to Better English in Plain English
by Patricia T. O'Conner (Hardcover)
Words Fail Me by Patricia T. O'Conner (Hardcover)
Lapsing Into a Comma: A Curmudgeon's Guide to the Many Things That Can
Go Wrong in Print --and How to Avoid Them by Bill Walsh (Paperback)
Download Juli's Curricular Calendar
#4 (punctuation) for Writing Workshop
Download a comparison of Juli's Reading
and Writing Workshop plans
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