HANDWRITING OR TYPING?
HANDWRITING OR TYPING? Each student lesson contains five sentence diagramming exercises, and each exercise consists of diagramming a sentence and filling in a chart. You (and your students) have two options for filling out these lessons. 1. Handwriting • This involves writing your answers and creating your sentence diagrams on actual paper with your actual hand. 2. Typing • This involves typing your answers and creating your sentence diagrams on a computer. In this resource, you’ll find tips for both of these options. Before you decide which works for you, you may want to look over these two articles. They contain some thoughts regarding the benefits of writing by hand. http://mentalfloss.com/article/33508/4-benefits-writing-hand http://mashable.com/2015/01/19/handwriting-brain-benefits/ I certainly don’t think it’s bad to use computers and keyboards. I love technology! But, I do think it’s important to consider that writing by hand – particularly in a learning environment – may have some advantages over typing on a keyboard.
HANDWRITING BENEFITS If you don’t want to read through those articles, here are some of the essential benefits of writing by hand. 1. Writing by hand prevents you and your students from being distracted. When the computer is sitting right there in front of you, it can be very hard to focus on your work. If it’s hard for adults to focus, imagine how difficult it is for young students to focus! If you only have a pencil and paper in front of you, it’s much easier to concentrate. 2. Writing by hand slows you down.
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Slowing down is a good thing. Life is very fast-paced these days, and sometimes the focus on speed comes at the expense of understanding. 3. “Writing by hand boosts cognitive skills.” Both articles express this idea, and although I’m not exactly sure of the science behind it, it certainly seems reasonable that the brain/body connection can help us understand and retain abstract ideas better than simply pressing letters on a keyboard. 4. Creating sentence diagrams by hand gives you a sense of pride. There is something very beautiful about the structure of language as shown in a sentence diagram. For some reason, people seem to be better able to access that beauty when they have thoughtfully crafted their diagrams by hand. I have seen so many students’ faces beam with pride after painstakingly using a pencil and ruler to create their own tiny work of art – a sentence diagram. When you make diagrams on the computer, some of the beauty gets lost. We may feel less connected to the final product, which causes us to not feel that same ownership of it.
HOW-TO TIPS FOR BOTH On the next few pages, you’ll find tips for diagramming by hand and for diagramming on the computer. Feel free to try one option and mix it up with the other if you’re feeling bold. Variety is good!
GET SMART: HANDWRITING/TYPING TIPS
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HANDWRITING HOW-TO Here are your three options for completing the exercises by hand. Option 1. Print the lessons. Print out the student lessons and have each student complete the exercises right on the printed lesson using a pencil and ruler. If you have a lot of students, this quickly turns into a lot of paper and ink! Option 2. Use the softcover workbooks. Order a softcover workbook for each student and have each student complete exercises there. The workbooks are $12 each. www.GrammarRevolution.com/products.html Option 3. Use blank paper. Have students look at the lessons online (either projected onto a wall or by having each student look at the lesson on a computer). Have them use blank sheets of paper to write their answers. The one drawback of this method is that each diagramming exercise contains a chart that students need to fill in. It’s a bit difficult to write answers on blank paper, but it’s certainly not impossible.
GET SMART: HANDWRITING/TYPING TIPS
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TYPING HOW-TO If you want to complete the exercises and diagrams on the computer, there isn’t a great solution for doing this easily L, but here are four ideas that I think you’ll find helpful. You’ll have to play around with these programs in order to get comfortable creating sentence diagrams with them. Idea 1. Use Adobe Reader. Opening your PDF files in Adobe Reader allows you to write and draw directly on the PDFs. That means that you can draw your diagrams and fill in the charts right on the PDF lesson pages! (In Adobe Reader, click Comment in the upper right-hand corner, and then use the Drawing Markups for lines and the text tool in the Annotations box.) Making diagrams with Adobe Reader is definitely possible, but it is a bit tedious. I have also not found a way to angle words here, so that means your word that should be diagrammed as slanted will simply be horizontal in front of a slanted line.
Note that you must download the files and open them in your computer first if you want to save your work. Most computers are set to automatically open PDF files using Adobe Preview, which doesn’t allow you to edit and save your PDFs, so if you’d like to draw right on your PDF lessons, you need to download the free Adobe Reader. You can get it for free here: http://get.adobe.com/reader/
GET SMART: HANDWRITING/TYPING TIPS
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Idea 2. Use your computer’s paint program. (Microsoft Paint or Mac Paintbrush) Play around with the program and create your diagrams. You can even save your images as JPGs (image files) if you’d like. Idea 3. Use PowerPoint. Many people diagram their sentences using PowerPoint, so that might be a good solution for you. Use text boxes for the text and the shape à line tool for the lines.
Idea 4. Use your computer’s word processing program. (Microsoft Word or Apple’s Pages) This is very similar to creating diagrams in PowerPoint. Use text boxes and the shape à line tool.
sentence
is diagrammed in
Th is
Microsoft Word
Go forth and diagram your sentences with pride! J Elizabeth
P.S. I use Photoshop Elements 10 to create my diagrams. GET SMART: HANDWRITING/TYPING TIPS
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HANDWRITING BENEFITS If you don’t want to read through those articles, here are some of the essential benefits of writing by hand. 1. Writing by hand prevents you and your students from being distracted. When the computer is sitting right there in front of you, it can be very hard to focus on your work. If it’s hard for adults to focus, imagine how difficult it is for young students to focus! If you only have a pencil and paper in front of you, it’s much easier to concentrate. 2. Writing by hand slows you down.
GET SMART: HANDWRITING/TYPING TIPS
© www.English-Grammar-Revolution.com
1
Slowing down is a good thing. Life is very fast-paced these days, and sometimes the focus on speed comes at the expense of understanding. 3. “Writing by hand boosts cognitive skills.” Both articles express this idea, and although I’m not exactly sure of the science behind it, it certainly seems reasonable that the brain/body connection can help us understand and retain abstract ideas better than simply pressing letters on a keyboard. 4. Creating sentence diagrams by hand gives you a sense of pride. There is something very beautiful about the structure of language as shown in a sentence diagram. For some reason, people seem to be better able to access that beauty when they have thoughtfully crafted their diagrams by hand. I have seen so many students’ faces beam with pride after painstakingly using a pencil and ruler to create their own tiny work of art – a sentence diagram. When you make diagrams on the computer, some of the beauty gets lost. We may feel less connected to the final product, which causes us to not feel that same ownership of it.
HOW-TO TIPS FOR BOTH On the next few pages, you’ll find tips for diagramming by hand and for diagramming on the computer. Feel free to try one option and mix it up with the other if you’re feeling bold. Variety is good!
GET SMART: HANDWRITING/TYPING TIPS
© www.English-Grammar-Revolution.com
2
HANDWRITING HOW-TO Here are your three options for completing the exercises by hand. Option 1. Print the lessons. Print out the student lessons and have each student complete the exercises right on the printed lesson using a pencil and ruler. If you have a lot of students, this quickly turns into a lot of paper and ink! Option 2. Use the softcover workbooks. Order a softcover workbook for each student and have each student complete exercises there. The workbooks are $12 each. www.GrammarRevolution.com/products.html Option 3. Use blank paper. Have students look at the lessons online (either projected onto a wall or by having each student look at the lesson on a computer). Have them use blank sheets of paper to write their answers. The one drawback of this method is that each diagramming exercise contains a chart that students need to fill in. It’s a bit difficult to write answers on blank paper, but it’s certainly not impossible.
GET SMART: HANDWRITING/TYPING TIPS
© www.English-Grammar-Revolution.com
3
TYPING HOW-TO If you want to complete the exercises and diagrams on the computer, there isn’t a great solution for doing this easily L, but here are four ideas that I think you’ll find helpful. You’ll have to play around with these programs in order to get comfortable creating sentence diagrams with them. Idea 1. Use Adobe Reader. Opening your PDF files in Adobe Reader allows you to write and draw directly on the PDFs. That means that you can draw your diagrams and fill in the charts right on the PDF lesson pages! (In Adobe Reader, click Comment in the upper right-hand corner, and then use the Drawing Markups for lines and the text tool in the Annotations box.) Making diagrams with Adobe Reader is definitely possible, but it is a bit tedious. I have also not found a way to angle words here, so that means your word that should be diagrammed as slanted will simply be horizontal in front of a slanted line.
Note that you must download the files and open them in your computer first if you want to save your work. Most computers are set to automatically open PDF files using Adobe Preview, which doesn’t allow you to edit and save your PDFs, so if you’d like to draw right on your PDF lessons, you need to download the free Adobe Reader. You can get it for free here: http://get.adobe.com/reader/
GET SMART: HANDWRITING/TYPING TIPS
© www.English-Grammar-Revolution.com
4
Idea 2. Use your computer’s paint program. (Microsoft Paint or Mac Paintbrush) Play around with the program and create your diagrams. You can even save your images as JPGs (image files) if you’d like. Idea 3. Use PowerPoint. Many people diagram their sentences using PowerPoint, so that might be a good solution for you. Use text boxes for the text and the shape à line tool for the lines.
Idea 4. Use your computer’s word processing program. (Microsoft Word or Apple’s Pages) This is very similar to creating diagrams in PowerPoint. Use text boxes and the shape à line tool.
sentence
is diagrammed in
Th is
Microsoft Word
Go forth and diagram your sentences with pride! J Elizabeth
P.S. I use Photoshop Elements 10 to create my diagrams. GET SMART: HANDWRITING/TYPING TIPS
© www.English-Grammar-Revolution.com
5
