Rocket Language

I very clearly remember 4th grade Language class. That was the year when we learned parts of speech and began to . . . diagram.

As a fourth grader, I hated diagramming. All the way through Jr. high and high school I hated it. However, when I got to college I found out that those endless many long lessons about diagramming and those many hours of practice paid off. Thanks in part to the in depth lessons diagramming had given me about parts of speech, I was able to test out of both Grammar and Composition I class in college.

So, when I became a teacher, I determined that my dear fourth graders would not have the same dislike for diagramming that I did. . . if I could help it, that is. So I sat down and brainstormed.

This is the first diagramming that 4th graders encounter after basic subject/verb diagrams. Do you remember these from your days in school? Don’t they kind of look like rockets to you? I thought they did!

 

This is what I came up with.

I start by talking about Clumsy Captain Conjunction (which we have talked about before as connecting words). The students already know what subjects and verbs are, so I teach them that if there is a captain for the subject, then it goes on a rocket, and the same with a verb. Of course, the captain is rather clumsy and smashes those subject/verbs right into a wall. . . but. . . the students absolutely love it. I let them practice with sentences by writing on the rockets with dry erase markers.

I throw in a countdown or two, and it makes my third graders super eager to get to “Rocket language” next year!