Image Grammar: Using Grammatical Structures to Teach Writing » (1st Edition)

Harry Noden has taught eighth-grade English/language arts for thirty years at Hudson Middle School in Ohio. In 1996, he was selected as Ohio's Outstanding Middle School Language Arts Teacher by the Ohio Council of Teachers of English Language Arts. Noden has contributed articles to The Reading Teacher, English Journal, and Lessons to Share on Teaching Grammar in Context (Boynton/Cook, 1998), edited by Constance Weaver.

For decades, scholars have urged teachers to integrate grammar and writing, yet few have provided teachers with enough strategies and materials to do so. With this ground-breaking book, Harry Noden meets this need in a unique way.

Image Grammar is based on the premise that a writer is much like an artist who "paints" images, using grammatical structures as tools. In presenting this approach, Noden divides chapters into two sections: concepts and strategies. The concepts illustrate how professional writers have used "image grammar" to develop their art; while the strategies provide teachers with classroom-tested lessons to help students discover what Joan Didion calls the "infinite power of grammar."

This book comes with a companion CD containing more than sixty complete lesson strategies and one hundred illustrative examples-all of which are ready for use at the push of a button. The CD works with any Web browser, contains dozens of images to stimulate student writing, and features more than eighty links to thousands of additional images.

Above all, this is both a practical and time-saving book. Every concept described can be put to immediate use, saving teachers countless hours of preparation.

The Artist's Eye: Seeing Specific Details

The Artist's Rhythms: The Music of Parallel Structures

From Imitation to Creation: Learning from the Masters

The Artist's Special Effects: The Grammar-Meaning Connection

Toward a Grammar of Passages: Linking Images Beyond the Sentence

Story Grammar and Scenes: Shapes for Fiction

Nonfiction Form #5: A Close Examination of a Feature Article Form

Systematic Revision: Form, Style, Content, and Conventions