Long ago, I dropped traditional grammar instruction for my high school classes in favor of quick hits and individualized feedback. The results were dramatic. Students actually learned how to use a comma, cared about fixing misspelled words before submitting final drafts, and came back from SAT Saturday to tell me they nailed the grammar section. One of my colleagues who taught juniors even told me he could tell which of his students had been mine when they were freshmen because their writing was fluid and error-free compared to their peers.
The solution? A three-fold approach:
1. MUGs – Once-a-week bell-ringer routine to reinforce mechanics, usage, and grammar rules
By the time students arrive on the high school campus, they’ve seen the grammar basics. They may not have mastered the rules, but they know the rules exist. They may claim that they’ve never been taught grammar, but that’s hogwash. Plenty of elementary and middle school teachers are breaking their backs with parts of speech, subject/predicate, and punctuation. True, high school students may not have learned grammar, but it’s not because it wasn’t taught.
At our level, it’s most important that students know how to apply common grammar rules to their own writing, so each Monday class begins with a MUG warm-up.
Step 1: Have this slide projected as students arrive:
Step 3: Ask for a volunteer or, when all volunteers have had a turn, call on a student to grab the whiteboard Marker of Destiny. Give that student 30 seconds to make any corrections they want and then allow classmates to help the student with suggestions of other changes to make. When everyone in the class agrees that all of the errors have been fixed, the student volunteer returns to their desk and the teacher goes over the edits, explaining applicable rules and answering questions as she goes.
Step 4: Using a different color of ink, students mark their notes with the corrections/edits. You’ll want to require students to switch pens so that the corrections stand out when you grade their work. Another option: They write the raw sentence in ink and mark corrections in pencil. As long as the difference is noticeable and not written in yellow highlighter (yes, that student had to re-mark their edits – come on now, my eyes are a half-century old), we’re good.
Step 5: Repeat the process with the second sentence and a new student volunteer. Make sure you keep track of which students lead at the board each week so that everyone gets/has to take a turn.
Every three weeks, collect students’ MUG notes. If the student has taken accurate notes/marked all of the edits, they earn three points per sentence. If they’ve missed any edits, subtract one point per mess-up. The most points a student can lose on a sentence is three. Basically, don’t go negative on the points. Sloppy or inattentive students quickly learned to take care with their MUG notes because these were easy points in an otherwise challenging class. Once students realized, “Oh, man, she’s really going to look at these,” it’s incredible how scores always soared on the second round of MUG notes. (6 sentences x 3 pts. each = 18 possible pts.)
By the end of the semester, “MUG Shot Monday” often felt like a game, with students working together to spot every mistake all while I’m trying to keep a poker face as they debate proper punctuation. Did they argue with each other? Yes. Were they arguing about the appropriate use of a semicolon? Also, yes.
2. Personalized feedback on writing using codes
To save my sanity while grading essays and make my feedback more meaningful for students, I built a code system featuring the 10 most common grammar mistakes I saw in my students’ writing. While grading their essays, mark grammar mistakes with one of the codes. When essays are returned to students, they must take note of the code by handwriting the rule from the code sheet and then showing what they would do to make the fix. They are not re-writing their entire essay; rather, they are focusing their attention on what would need to be done to avoid the error they committed. To see this process in action, watch the first 7 minutes of this YouTube video from my Grading Hacks series:
3. 1:1 remediation for students who struggle
Let’s say I was grading a stack of essays and noticed a couple of students struggled with comma splices. Rather than teaching the entire class how to identify and avoid the comma splice with a full lesson, I noted which students didn’t have that skill and then worked with them individually during our next SSR Friday in-class reading session. While everyone was reading their SSR books (more on how that system runs here), I quietly made my way around the room, speaking with each student individually and showing them the punctuation rule and pattern that would help them avoid the mistake. Then, I’d leave them with a worksheet from Purdue’s OWL (Online Writing Lab free worksheets available here) or give them a section from our grammar textbook to complete right then and there. When finished (this usually took them less than 10 minutes), they’d quietly turn their paper into me and we’d mark it together, explaining any questions they missed. This was not for extra credit or points back on a grade; it was simply for learning and preparing them for the next round of writing.
If a student needed even more practice, I’d send a different practice sheet home for them to work on over the weekend and return to me for marking on Monday. Again, this is all for learning, not for points. My mind equates writing students with athletes. Both need to complete drills to build skills and fine-tune technique. Athletes don’t earn points for practice, but those workouts help them prepare to excel during the Big Game. If you have students complete timed, in-class essays (my preference in our age of AI and overly involved parents), then the Big Game analogy is especially apt.
With these three strategies, you’re spending less than 15 minutes of instructional time a week to get outsized results.
Resources mentioned in this post:
• MUG (Mechanics, Usage, Grammar) bell-ringer slide set (paid product)
• 5-Minute Essay Grading System – e-book with editable code sheets and rubrics (paid product)
• Purdue’s OWL worksheets (free download)
• SSR (Sustained Silent Reading) program materials (free download)