Colorless green ideas sleep f​uriously.

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​warm-up

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​What do you think of this sentence?

Syntax refers to the grammar rules.

​Put it simply...

​Syntax is the arrangement of words in sentences, clauses, and phrases, and the study of the formation of sentences and the relationship of their component parts.

​Syntax

​Syntax isn’t just about identifying whether a word is a noun, verb, adjective, or other part of speech.

Understanding sentence structure is what’s really key.

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​Activities for Teaching Sentence Structure

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• Sentence scramble: Write each word of a sentence on a card. Give the cards (out of order) to your students. They must arrange the words into a complete, grammatically correct sentence.

• Sentence elaboration: Start with a simple subject (The cat). Then ask the W questions as readers gradually add more information.

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“Who?” the cat.

“What about the cat?” The cat ate. “What did she eat?” The cat ate a cicada.

“Where did she eat it?” The cat ate a cicada in the front yard.

“Why did she eat it?” The cat ate a cicada in the front yard because she was hungry.

“When did she eat it?” This morning, the cat ate a cicada in the front yard because she was hungry.

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​Example of Sentence Elaboration

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​Activities for Teaching Sentence Structure

​Sentence combining: After reading a fiction or nonfiction text to your students, share two related sentences. Discuss how the sentences relate to each other and choose a connector to combine the sentences.

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​After reading aloud The Three Little Pigs, you could post these sentences:

The Third Little Pig was smart. The Third Little Pig built a house of bricks.

Talk about how the sentences relate. Do they have contrasting ideas? Does the second sentence give more information? Does one sentence provide an explanation? Do the sentences show events in a sequence?

In this example, the first sentence explains why the pig built a house of breaks: he was smart.

Here are two ways to combine the sentences:

The third little pig was smart, so he built a house of bricks.

The third little pig was smart; therefore, he built a house of bricks.

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​Example of Sentence Combining

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​Semantics refers to the study of the meaning of sentences.

​Semantics

​Semantic skills include an ability to recognize and define words, to predict the plot of a story, understand the characters, to talk about the meaning of a whole paragraph or section of a book and to discuss a book as a whole after reading it. It also means being able to swap out words and differentiate words with similar meanings. For example, "cup" and "mug".

​Semantics

​Activities for Teaching Semantics

(meaning-making)

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• Call attention to new vocabulary words and teach them in context.

• Stop to examine challenging sentences and and provide support to help students make sense of them.

• Plan both low and high level questions in advance.

• Teach narrative structure and informational text structure.

• Call attention to text features.

• Teach our students to use comprehension strategies such as visualizing, making connections, and monitoring comprehension.