Overview

Lesson Procedure

70-75 minutes of class time across 5 phases.

1. Warm-Up10 minutes
2. Direct Instruction20 minutes
3. Guided Practice15-20 minutes
4. Independent Practice15 minutes
5. Closure10 minutes

1. Warm-Up10 minutes

   Warm-Up Prompt

   "Write one sentence of about thirty words describing a crowded hallway between classes. Then describe the same hallway in four sentences of three words or fewer. Which version feels faster? Which feels more crowded?"

   Ask three students to read both versions aloud. Record the class's words for each effect (breathless, choppy, flowing, piled up). Point out that the words may be nearly the same; only the syntax changed. Tell students that today they will see professional writers make these choices on purpose and then make them in their own drafts.

2. Direct Instruction20 minutes

   Part 1: A syntax toolkit. Introduce six terms with the examples below: a fragment (a sentence with no main verb, used on purpose); a periodic sentence (the main clause is held back until the end); a cumulative sentence (the main clause comes first and modifiers accumulate after it); inversion (the verb comes before its subject); a parallel series (items in the same grammatical form, such as three verbs or three phrases); and an interruption (a parenthesis, dash or tag such as "she thought" that breaks into a sentence). Then read the Dickens opening aloud while students mark every sentence that has no main verb.

   1London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snowflakes—gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better; splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers, jostling one another’s umbrellas in a general infection of ill temper, and losing their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if this day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest.

   2Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little ’prentice boy on deck. Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon and hanging in the misty clouds.

   3Gas looming through the fog in divers places in the streets, much as the sun may, from the spongey fields, be seen to loom by husbandman and ploughboy. Most of the shops lighted two hours before their time—as the gas seems to know, for it has a haggard and unwilling look.

   4The raw afternoon is rawest, and the dense fog is densest, and the muddy streets are muddiest near that leaden-headed old obstruction, appropriate ornament for the threshold of a leaden-headed old corporation, Temple Bar. And hard by Temple Bar, in Lincoln’s Inn Hall, at the very heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery.

   • Fragments for a static scene (T1, paragraph 1)

     "London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln's Inn Hall. Implacable November weather."

     Result: None of the three has a main verb: "sitting" is a participle, not a finite verb. The fragments read like notes or stage directions and set the scene without any action, as if the city itself were stuck. In fiction, fragments used this deliberately are a style choice, not an error.

   • A periodic sentence with inversion (T1, paragraph 4)

     "And hard by Temple Bar, in Lincoln's Inn Hall, at the very heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery."

     Result: Three place phrases come first, then the verb sits, then the subject. The order moves the reader inward through the fog and saves the Lord High Chancellor for the end, so the syntax places him at the center of the fog, which is where the chapter's satire aims. Diagram 2 maps the sentence.

   • A cumulative sentence (T2, paragraph 5)

     "Pride held her erect, inheriting, handing on, acquainted with discipline and with suffering."

     Result: The main clause, "Pride held her erect," is complete in four words; three modifiers follow and extend it. The sentence grows the way a thought grows, which suits Woolf's narration of Clarissa's mind.

   • Consulting a reference to revise

     A student's draft: "The bus was late. It was raining. Maya waited at the corner. She held her science project under her coat." The student wants the reader to feel Maya's patience, not a list of facts.

     Result: A reference such as Tufte's Artful Sentences shows how published writers build a sentence around one clause and attach modifiers. Revision: "Maya waited at the corner, her science project under her coat, the rain thickening, the bus already twenty minutes late." One main clause now carries the scene, and the added details accumulate the way the waiting does.

   • Balance for the ear (T3, paragraph 3)

     "The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here."

     Result: The sentence balances two halves around but: what we say against what they did, little note and long remember against never forget. A listener hears the contrast because the two halves share a shape; the repeated "here" closes both halves. Ask students to read the sentence aloud and listen for where the two halves meet.

   Show Diagram 1. Ask: where does Dickens use his shortest sentences, and where does Woolf use her longest? What does the pattern of bar heights suggest about each writer's pace? Then show Diagram 2 and have students label the main clause in each sentence before you reveal it.

3. Guided Practice15-20 minutes

   Read the Woolf opening aloud. In pairs, students highlight main clauses in one color, modifiers in a second and interruptions (parentheses, dashes, and tags such as "she thought" or "she sighed") in a third. For each paragraph, pairs write one sentence explaining how the syntax shows the difference between the street outside and the thoughts inside Mrs Dalloway's head. Share two answers per paragraph.

   1Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the gloves herself.

   2Big Ben was striking as she stepped out into the street. It was eleven o'clock and the unused hour was fresh as if issued to children on a beach. But there was something solemn in the deliberate swing of the repeated strokes; something stirring in the murmur of wheels and the shuffle of footsteps.

   3No doubt they were not all bound on errands of happiness. There is much more to be said about us than that we walk the streets of Westminster. Big Ben too is nothing but steel rods consumed by rust were it not for the care of H. M.'s Office of Works. Only for Mrs Dalloway the moment was complete; for Mrs Dalloway June was fresh. A happy childhood—and it was not to his daughters only that Justin Parry had seemed a fine fellow (weak of course on the Bench); flowers at evening, smoke rising; the caw of rooks falling from ever so high, down down through the October air—there is nothing to take the place of childhood. A leaf of mint brings it back; or a cup with a blue ring.

   4Poor little wretches, she sighed, and pressed forward. Oh, right under the horses' noses, you little demon! and there she was left on the kerb stretching her hand out, while Jimmy Dawes grinned on the further side.

   5A charming woman, poised, eager, strangely white-haired for her pink cheeks, so Scope Purvis, C. B., saw her as he hurried to his office. She stiffened a little, waiting for Durtnall's van to pass. Big Ben struck the tenth; struck the eleventh stroke. The leaden circles dissolved in the air. Pride held her erect, inheriting, handing on, acquainted with discipline and with suffering. How people suffered, how they suffered, she thought, thinking of Mrs Foxcroft at the Embassy last night decked with jewels, eating her heart out, because that nice boy was dead, and now the old Manor House (Durtnall's van passed) must go to a cousin.

   Syntax organizer for the Woolf opening (pairs fill in the last two columns)

   Paragraph	Structure you notice	Effect on the reader
   1
   2
   3
   4
   5

4. Independent Practice15 minutes

   Listening for syntax. Lincoln wrote out more than one copy of the Gettysburg Address, and printed editions differ in punctuation and in a few words. Read Version A aloud to the class while students listen with the text face down, then read Version B. Students note where they heard the strongest pauses in paragraph 3. Then they turn the texts over, compare the punctuation of the two versions, and write a paragraph on how each version's punctuation would guide a speaker and a listener.

   1Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

   2Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

   3But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

   1Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

   2Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

   3But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us; that from these honoured dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

5. Closure10 minutes

   Exit ticket: (1) Copy one sentence from any of today's texts and name its structure. (2) In one sentence, explain what that structure does for a reader or listener that a plainer sentence would not.

   For homework, students revise the draft below, which is written almost entirely in short sentences of the same pattern.

   Our school garden started three years ago. It was a small plot behind the gym. Students planted tomatoes and beans. The first year most of the plants died. The soil was too sandy. A science teacher tested the soil. The class added compost. The next year the garden grew. Now it feeds the cafeteria salad bar twice a week. Volunteers water it every morning. Many students have learned to grow food. The garden is important to our school.

   Teacher note: both public-domain passages keep the spelling and punctuation of their editions (kerb, honoured, "Scope Purvis" in The Dial, where the novel of 1925 has Scrope). The Gettysburg texts are two printings, not a draft and a final copy; do not tell students one is Lincoln's "real" punctuation, since the surviving copies themselves differ.

Differentiation Strategies

Assessment Guidance

1. Question 1 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   In paragraph 1 of the Dickens passage, what do "Dogs, undistinguishable in mire" and "Horses, scarcely better; splashed to their very blinkers" have in common?

   ABoth are periodic sentences that hold their main verb until the very end BBoth are fragments: a noun plus descriptive words, with no main verb CBoth are passive-voice sentences in which the animals receive the action DBoth are questions whose question marks the narrator has left out

2. Question 2 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   The first sentence of paragraph 4 repeats and: "The raw afternoon is rawest, and the dense fog is densest, and the muddy streets are muddiest ..." What is this device, and what does it do?

   AAsyndeton: leaving out the conjunctions makes the clauses rush together BInversion: each verb is placed before its subject for emphasis CA fragment: the sentence names places but has no main verb DPolysyndeton: the repeated and piles up clauses that intensify

3. Question 3 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   In paragraph 1, Dickens writes that foot passengers have been slipping "since the day broke (if this day ever broke)." What does the parenthesis add?

   AA correction of a factual error the narrator made earlier in the sentence BA citation telling the reader where the description of London came from CAn ironic aside doubting that the day ever dawned, adding dry humor DA new main clause that replaces the foot passengers as the subject

4. Question 4 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   The Woolf story opens with a short, plain sentence: "Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the gloves herself." How does it work with the paragraphs that follow?

   AIt states an outward fact; longer sentences then move into her mind BIt summarizes the plot of the whole story in a single sentence CIt is a fragment that the next sentence completes and explains DIt is a periodic sentence that builds suspense about the gloves

5. Question 5 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   In paragraph 5, Woolf writes: "How people suffered, how they suffered, she thought, thinking of Mrs Foxcroft at the Embassy last night decked with jewels ..." What does the placement of "she thought" show?

   AThat the narrator disagrees with what Mrs Dalloway is thinking BThat the words before the tag are her thought, in her own voice CThat the sentence is copied from a letter Mrs Foxcroft wrote DThat she is speaking these words aloud to someone on the street

6. Question 6 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Near the end of paragraph 5, Woolf interrupts a sentence: "now the old Manor House (Durtnall's van passed) must go to a cousin." What is the best reading of the interruption?

   AIt is a printer's error that later editions of the story corrected BIt corrects the name of the house that the cousin will inherit CThe street breaks into her thought, so the syntax imitates it DIt shows that Mrs Dalloway is the one driving Durtnall's van

7. Question 7 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   In paragraph 3, Version A (T3) separates "we can not dedicate," "we can not consecrate" and "we can not hallow" with dashes, while Version B (T4) separates the same clauses with commas. How would the dashes in Version A most likely guide a speaker?

   AToward longer pauses that set each verb apart and stress each denial BToward running the three clauses together quickly in a single breath CToward raising the voice at each verb as if asking a question DToward dropping the repeated words so the sentence sounds shorter

8. Question 8 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   In Version B (T4), what structure is "government of the people, by the people, and for the people"?

   AA periodic sentence whose main clause is delayed until the end BAn inverted clause in which the verb comes before the subject CA cumulative sentence made of three independent clauses DA parallel series of three prepositional phrases on one noun

9. Question 9 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   What kind of reference is Tufte's Artful Sentences, and how does the standard expect students to use it?

   AA dictionary of word meanings, used to check definitions and spellings BA style manual whose required formats a research paper must follow CA collection of published sentences grouped by structure, used for models DA list of grammar errors that students must avoid in formal writing

10. Question 10 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    A student wants to build suspense in a narrative. Which revision uses a periodic sentence?

    ANadia opened the envelope, which had come after three weeks of checking the mailbox and two false alarms. BNadia opened the envelope. Three weeks of waiting. Two false alarms. One sleepless night before it came. CNadia opened the envelope, and she read the letter, and she read it again, and then she started to cry. DWhen the envelope finally came, after three weeks of checking the mailbox and two false alarms, Nadia opened it.

11. Question 11 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Which revision uses a cumulative sentence to add sensory detail to "The fishermen hauled in their nets"?

    AThe fishermen hauled in their nets, arms shining with spray, voices low, gulls wheeling overhead. BAlthough the morning was cold and the sea was rough, the fishermen hauled in their heavy nets. CHauled in by the tired fishermen were the nets, which had been in the water since before dawn. DThe fishermen hauled in their nets. They were tired. The sea was rough. It was very cold that day.

12. Question 12 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Why do speeches like the Gettysburg Address use more repetition and balance than a written report usually does?

    ABecause speeches are less formal than reports and can repeat freely BBecause listeners cannot reread, so repetition helps them follow ideas CBecause repeating words makes a speech long enough for a ceremony DBecause style manuals require repetition in speeches but not reports

13. Question 13 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    A student admires Dickens's verbless sentences and wants to use them in a lab report on water quality. What is the best advice?

    AUse them freely, since deliberate fragments are a sign of strong style BNever use fragments in any writing, including fiction and speeches CKeep complete sentences in the report; save fragments for narrative DUse fragments only in the report's conclusion, where style matters

14. Question 14 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    In the last sentence of Version B (T4), a listener hears several goals in a row. Which feature most helps the listener hear where each new goal begins?

    AThe word that repeated at the start of each goal in the series BThe spelling honoured, which differs from the 1905 printing CThe word rather, used twice earlier in the same paragraph DThe number of commas in the address's first paragraph

15. Question 15 of 20 · Short Answer

    Explain how the syntax of paragraph 2 of the Dickens passage ("Fog everywhere. Fog up the river ...") supports what the paragraph describes. Quote at least two phrases.

    Show model answer

16. Question 16 of 20 · Short Answer

    Combine these four sentences into one cumulative sentence and, separately, into one periodic sentence: The runner crossed the line. Her legs were shaking. The crowd was on its feet. The clock read a new school record. Explain how the two versions differ in effect.

    Show model answer

17. Question 17 of 20 · Short Answer

    In paragraph 3, Woolf writes: "Only for Mrs Dalloway the moment was complete; for Mrs Dalloway June was fresh." Analyze the syntax of this sentence and its effect in the paragraph.

    Show model answer

18. Question 18 of 20 · Short Answer

    Compare the endings of the two versions of the Gettysburg Address: Version A (T3) joins the final goals with dashes, and Version B (T4) with semicolons. How might a listener hear each, and which would you use to deliver the speech? Explain.

    Show model answer

19. Question 19 of 20 · Short Answer

    Explain how you would use Tufte's Artful Sentences, or a similar syntax reference, to revise a paragraph of your own. Name the structure you would look up and describe the steps.

    Show model answer

20. Question 20 of 20 · Short Answer

    Write two versions of an announcement that the library will close early on Friday: one for the morning announcements read aloud, and one for the printed school bulletin. Explain one syntax difference and why it fits each context.

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These standards connect to L.11-12.3: prerequisites to review first, parallel standards at the same level, and next steps that build on it.

Standard text: Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts & Literacy. © Copyright 2010. National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and Council of Chief State School Officers. All rights reserved.