As our last group of starters, we began some sentence diagramming today. Most classes spent about 15 minutes on it before moving to Great Expectations character presentations.

In school I always felt a little like a freak because while everyone else was complaining about diagramming sentences in school, I enjoyed it. Taking a jumble of words and placing each one in its own slot to indicate its precise function in the sentence felt like drawing meaning and order out of what would otherwise be near chaos. Sentences are a jumble of words that we comprehend without giving it much thought (if we’re fluent), yet within that apparent jumble is a simplicity that we can demonstrate graphically, even if it is a bit tricky to find that order for some sentences. Other kids groaned and complained about it, but for me, each sentence I had to diagram was a little puzzle I could crawl inside with a tool belt and take the whole thing apart as if it were a toy the inner workings of which had entranced me for ages. I knew, though, that I could put the sentence all back together, and I didn’t have that kind of assurance when pulling apart toys.

Yet even today, there are a number of sentences that flummox my diagramming ability. Look at that last sentence, for example. Had I not originally written “when I was pulling apart toys” I wouldn’t have seen the subtle, almost-hidden clause in the revised “when pulling apart toys.”

It’s these little idiosyncrasies of language that I hope to help students discover by going over sentence diagramming with them as a starter these final days.

Homework

• English I Honors: 
  • study for the AOW vocab quiz (27 May);
  • begin preparing for the “Letter to Next Year’s Students” assignment (28 May) by
    • looking at previous students’ letters again;
    • reviewing the rubric for the assignment.