Studying modifiers for my grammar blog has been very beneficial for me. I have personally learned more about modifiers in grammar. However, I have also gained some ideas of how to teach modifiers to students in my elementary school classroom.
Learning about adjectival and adverbial clauses/phrases was the newest learning for myself. As I mentioned in posts above, I have been using them and even demonstrating them in class, but never knew this is what they were called. Using the clauses and phrases I feel is going to be a great way to push students with their writing. Instead of just describing a character, a setting, etc. in one word they will be able to describe using phrases and clauses. This will be especially helpful when teaching English Language Learners. I can encourage them to speak in sentences. This will help with their English language development.
A dangling modifier was another new term for me during this study of modifiers. Dangling modifiers seemed very important to me. I feel that sometimes my students and even myself when trying to change wording around when writing errors can happen in this area. It is so important that I pay close attention to what I am writing. If I do not I may not be conveying meaning in the proper way.
I really feel that I am more comfortable with modifiers now than I was previously. I feel more confident when I need to teach students about modifiers. I found some great teaching tools for modifiers. I found videos, visuals, and examples for students in my classroom. When I researched about common mistakes with modifiers I feel that helped me prepare for misconceptions that students may have. Having these possible misconceptions in mind will help me prepare my lessons for my students.
