Patty McGee visited the show on episode 112 Grammar Study & Grading Policies to discuss how grammar instruction must evolve toward greater inquiry-based learning that emphasizes curiosity and joy within language. How can the way different authors use grammatical structure (and violate those norms) give students access to richer understanding of author intent and perspective?
Michael Ralph: Pressure to improve reading and writing performance is bringing fresh scrutiny to language instruction. Author Patty McGee joins us to discuss a curiosity focused curriculum that eschews rules and correction to foster literacy growth. How can literary structure unlock new layers of meaning for readers.
MR: For our first segment, we read, “Not your granny’s grammar. An innovative approach to meaningful grammar instruction.
Laurence Woodruff: This was written by Patty McGee.
MR: This was published in the California Reader in 2025. This article argues grammar teaching has historically been ineffective and introduces her own collaborative inquiry based approach connecting grammar to authentic writing. Her system focuses on experimentation with language and application with authentic texts. We are happy to be joined by author Patty McGee. So welcome, thanks for jumping in.
Patty McGee: I’m so happy to be here. Thanks, for having me.
MR: Cheers. We are excited and so Patty McGee is a traveling teacher, aka a literacy consultant in the United States focused on delightful, practical, and instructional practices. She is also a new native gardener who strives to cultivate autochthonous plants. Look it up. Welcome. We’re happy you’re here.
PM: Thank you.
LW: What are you drinking today?
PM: Today, I’m drinking Verd which is a Vermont IPA from Vermont Beer Makers. It is something where it uses three different hop representatives and varieties in a generous way.
MR: How does it smell, how does it look? Give us some sensory information here.
PM: It smells like beer. I’m not a beer person, so it smells like a beer, and its bitter.
LW: Yeah.
MR: Them IPAs will get ya.
PM: Yeah. Especially with three different types of hops.
MR: And so, we actually got started when you reached out to us to invite us to learn a little bit more about grammar instruction in schools, so for those of us in the audience that are not in this everyday, tell us a little bit about the type of work you do related to literacy and grammar.
PM: Absolutely, I’ve been an educator for over thirty years. Right from the start, grammar instruction was a problem of practice. I’ve basically spent the last thirty years tinkering with lots of different alternatives to the traditional approach to grammar. I met my coauthor, Tim Donohue, who knows about grammar than I’ll ever know, and that is just one area that I have really looked at and developed practices around that are much more accessible and effective. Those are the sorts of things that I bring into school districts and conferences and different publications.
MR: Very good. When I was reading your paper, which was really a brief, accessible, practitioner focused piece, you started with some of the same words you said just now regarding grammar instruction and the traditional approach. I come from a high school science teaching background, so that is something I’m not so familiar with. I would love to get a little bit more detail about what is grammar instruction and how that fits into the broader reading and writing learning process.
PM: Well first, just to define traditional grammar, that is the worksheet, workbook, diagramming sentences and the expectation that once you identify something on the workbook page, you can immediately and forever use it in writing, whereas there is no other subject area where that expectation lies. I believe that is part of what makes traditional grammar instruction so tricky. What it means to literacy in general is so much. It is a keystone in literacy instruction. Let us say in writing, the better we can think about grammar as a tool for clarity, meaning, and connection, we are also becoming better readers. We are learning syntax and semantics, which means sentence structure and the meaning within sentences, and that contributes to stronger reading. Being biologists, if you write in the same genera that biologists write in, you are going to be able to access those texts that you would read with much more ease.
MR: Even though there have been several pushes, in the fifties and sixties in particular, to try to move grammar away from a top-down, teacher driven approach to teaching rules, I’m thinking syntax, I’m thinking conventional structure, some of the common ways of measuring, like “How many comma splices do you have?” Very formal language expectations. All of those efforts have been pretty unsuccessful. What is the barrier to moving that forward in the last 100 years or so.
PM: Grammar has gotten attention at different times throughout education. It has been a point of contention for quite a long time. I want to say there is an underlying shame around grammar. Students, adults, and especially teachers, if we don’t know grammar, we are almost keeping that to ourselves. That kind of shame has been perpetuated. The main form of teaching grammar that has been handed down from generation to generation is what has been described earlier, and also is correction. The only response to learning grammar is to tell you what is wrong. That builds lots of discomfort and shame around it. We have grown-ups walking around with “I’m silently correcting your grammar” t-shirts, and grammar police mugs, and it is ever present, and something we don’t even quite notice unless we really think about it. It creates this haves-and-have nots in society, which I have a personal problem with. There is all sorts of grammar. I think of grammar in three buckets. Spoken grammar, which goes community by community or family by family. We still use some grammatical formations that come from when my kids were little. When my now 26 year old was three years old, I needed him to get out of the house so I could plan his three year old party. When he got back with my dad, he said, “I here! I here!” We still use that as grown ups in my house. To us, that is conversational grammar, that bucket. Then we have, and the article mentioned this a little bit, the one you were referring to, we have book grammar, is what I call it, where authors are using or mis-using grammar to be clear, to convey meaning, and to convey connection with whoever the reader is. Then the third bucket would be standard grammar. That is the point where most of the contention lies. Which methodology is really going to work here? There have been lots of studies. There have been lots of products. There have been lots of waves over the last hundred years. What is interesting is that this bucket of standard grammar, which can either be the grammar standards in every state or country, or it could be the style guides that people are following, like APA, MLA, Chicago style. Those actually are revised every few years. Here we are trying to teach grammar, while grammar is changing. It is also something I think, between the shame, between the change, and between the practices we wouldn’t use in other subjects.
LW: There is this teleological purpose for communication, and that is your anecdote, “I here, I here.” That has meaning. It is resonate. It is emotional. It bonds you. You are sharing that moment, you are sharing that knowledge. It is historical, it is also referencing the present. It is doing its job. That is great. We know that language is fluid. We know that language is tribal, in that the people that you are connected to are developing language for those social interactions so different people are developing language differently. We know all that. But what happens is we go to school for Scholastic grammar, and then it becomes ontological. There is a right and a wrong, and that is the way it is. What that becomes is a cultural gatekeeping to academia. We then allow access to participate, we allow voices that know the rules of grammar to participate in academia. If you are going to a presentation, and they are speaking in broken english, you are less likely to believe they know what they are talking about. That is a bias. That is a linguistic bias this grammar is at the center of. So when we ask how important is grammar, because that is how our academic culture works, it is important for people to have access to grammar so they can code switch into academia so they can share their ideas. It is also important for us to be aware of what these rules are so we know when it is ok to let those rules go to let those people participate in this academic exchange. Demystifying grammar, to make it accessible, because language is thought, is inviting people to think with you. To invite them to do thinking together, and that means it is kind of important.
PM: Thinking also about, historically speaking, if I can insert this here too, this is interesting about academia. Really where the correction approach became prevalent, or the go-to approach was back during the industrial age, where middle class people had enough money to attend Ivy-league schools. The group that went to Harvard, the people at Harvard were absolutely gob-smacked by their misuse of language. They called it linguistic barbarisms. They were all put into the same class. It was 600 students and 11 professors that were meant to purge linguistic barbarisms from their writing. The main area that really gets anyone, I know I wrote this for teachers to use with students anywhere from seven all the way up though high school, but I really wrote it for everyone because we all need to experience grammar in a different way in order to feel like we have some command of it. It starts with curiosity. Lets say we are going to be studying. Studying in school means memorization, but studying in life means you get curious, you hypothesize, you seek out feedback and explicit instruction. You play, experiment, and reflect on what you’ve done. That is the natural learning state we put ourselves in. By simulating that, maybe it is not even simulating, actually creating that, the first moment we look at a concept like simple and compound sentences, we just get curious. What are the differences, and let’s talk about it. They are already labeled, because we are not starting with identification. That used to be the gatekeeper of all learning. If you could identify you could use. That is just not true. Identification comes within this experience of first getting curious, and hypothesizing. What is it that is the same and different about these two different types of sentences? What surprises me? For a few minutes. Another experience is where anyone is explicitly taught how to take two simple sentences and turn them into a compound sentence in a step-by-step way, and then lots of practice and play. This might be my favorite, using manipulatives that are most often used in math and I would say in science as well, but having concrete, moveable conversational, playful experiences with grammatical concepts is really where the rubber starts to meet the road. It is scaffolded enough where it is accessible to students and they don’t need to take the cognitive load of creating their own writing on the page yet. They are using, let’s say, one manipulative are Sentences from a Sentence. We might have a couple of sentences. We’ve typed them up on a word doc. We’ve enlarged the font. We can cut out each word and each punctuation. Then students create students create sentences out-loud with a partner. I suggest this for all adults as well. I know it feels like more for younger people, but when I do this with adults, they are like, “Woah. Now I get it.” They have the chance to play and move things around. Can I change this word? No I cant. That must mean that if I did have this word I can make this sentence, but without it I can do this instead. We can challenge them to create compound sentences with that. That dialogue of play and creation is where concepts start to stick. We are able to isolate without jumping straight from explicit instruction into expectation and writing. Even more, John Dewey said we don’t learn from experience, we learn from reflecting on experience. My way of saying that is reflection is the stickiest glue for the brain. We have time to reflect. What do we know now that we did not know before this about simple and compound sentences? What am I still curious about?
LW: One of the things that it reminded me of while I was reading was some parallels between this and an instructional processing science called POGILs, Processes oriented guided inquiry learning, are you familiar with these?
PM: I am familiar with each of the words that you just said, but not this particular process, but I am very curious.
LW: Ultimately, it is the presentation of a model that is communicating either a scientific idea, a scientific process, or some kind of a relationship, without explicitly.. It is a depiction, so it is not explicitly telling the students what is happening. We give the students the model, then ask them, “Puzzle some of these things out. What do you think is being depicted in this model?” They work together. They come to a proposal. We give them feedback, then they go back and revise their proposal. When you were talking about the mentor texts, here is something to consider. What are the rules in these sentences. What is working here? Why is it working here? What other sentences would follow these kinds of rules? That extraction. Instead of saying, “This is the grammar.” Instead, “Here is the passage. What is the grammar?” I think that is a nice way for them to have to coalesce what is happening in that text.
PM: I can’t tell you how much I have thought about how teachers of the sciences, chemistry, biology, environmental science, it is all experimental. It is all starting with some type of phenomenon. It is all going through a learning processes authentically.
MR: One of the things I noticed, you cited a meta-analysis midway through your paper. That was a good meta analysis. That was really interesting. I spent a fair amount of time reading that paper too. The gist of that study was looking pretty broadly, even compared to other meta analyses it was a pretty large scope meta analysis, looking at the impact of writing and reading instruction. One of the things that was in there was the really, really substantial, significant impact of writing instruction and grammar instruction in particular. You pointed out in your paper several of the other elements of instruction that I assume are in your curriculum, but even grammar instruction by name had a significant and pretty considerable impact size, which really stands in contrast with some of the earlier studies, and when I say earlier, I mean the 30’s, the 50s, the 60s, over the last hundred years. You cited some of the more seminal studies that said grammar instruction is not working, in the 80s and the 60s, and now we have this meta analysis that says it is one of the higher impact practices amongst the handful that they studied.
PM: That meta analysis explicitly stated that grammar instruction where there is sentence construction, and sentence combining and, I spoke at Steve Graham myself, at a workshop, and he also believes, I don’t think it was specified but it was implied, that sentence combining, those three, centered as grammar instruction, has a great impact on writing. In former models, it wasn’t about construction, it was about correction. For example, you may remember when you were young, Daily Oral Language, where the teacher would put up a passage with lots of mistakes and we would correct those mistakes. Instead, the approach that is more effective is creating, and experimenting, and learning how to construct, expand, and combine sentences. Time better spent on that is what came out of that meta analysis.
LW: There is a big push, at least in my district, and I don’t think my district is a pioneer in this. Back to basics literacy is kind of having a moment right now, where as we’ve got caught being distracted by screens, and this faddism about getting computers in every hand and all of these kind of things, and make sure your instruction is video accessible, and textbooks have been vilified. There is less and less and less reading, and less and less and less formal long form writing that is occurring as a regular part of the curriculum as other things take that place with excitement, there is sort of a pendulum swing right now to go back and get those books in their hand, lets do a lot more reading, lets do a lot more analytical writing. There are two schools. This is all anecdotal. This is me just talking to teachers in my building. There are two energies about this. There are people that are really excited to get back to pen and paper and books. They are like, “Let’s go!” We are going to get rid of all the screens and I would probably lean myself into that camp if I had to commit. There is another that says, “They can’t do it.” They expectations that we are setting forth for them, right now, are not feasible, not possible, with the kids we have right now. Our job, philosophically, is not to sort which ones can and can’t, it is to say, “If they can’t, if we are right and they can’t, if that is the case, then how do we get them there?” How do we do that? There are going to be people that want to know how to help their kids write, and they are going to have to discuss grammar structures at some point in that process. Reminding us it doesn’t have to be the “here is the information kids, I hope you know it now” approach for any content. It doesn’t have to be that. It can be an exploratory process. You can even say, “what are the bullet point ideas you want to say about this literary passage that we read? Now let’s construct some sentences that communicate those ideas and compare those sentences with each other. You can create this environment that is socially constructive about how to communicate these important literary ideas as we push ourselves back into that space.
MR: What gets me really excited about this approach, and I’ve never thought about it in the early developmental phases. Primarily, my experience now is teaching undergraduate early, researchers, is my situation. I really like writing. I’m a writing snob. We talk a lot about writing. My daily experience is talking about their approaches to writing research papers. “You’ve got the idea, but get the passage voice out of there. Lets get the position of the person in there. In this phrase, you have a clunky handful of sentences, lets do a little better.” But what I’m realizing in our conversation, is that this approach based on curiosity and noticing for grammar unlocks sophistication and depth that lots of us are familiar with in the general zeitgeist of society, where you plop down. I have two eight year old daughters at home. The younger of the two is an avid, voracious reader. She loves to read. She has recently started reading Romeo and Juliet. She says, “This is such an interesting story,” and like so many kids, myself included said, “I’m not really enjoying this. Why do people call this a masterpiece?” Whereas people who are deep literary experts, there is so much information here. I am not accessing it because I say, “Oh, thats weird grammar, who cares,” I move on. There is meaning. To your point, there is meaning in the way that they’ve constructed this. So my daughter, her name is Cameron said, “Hey, they put two adjectives in front of this one. They don’t usually use two adjectives on a noun. Why did they do that?” Yes. Why did they do that is the best possible question. What is the significance of that noun? Why did they take those two adjectives? What does it mean for this character development? What does it mean for the cadence of the paragraph that they said two sentences before it where they didn’t use that construction, so what does that tell you about the hierarchical importance of those sentences relative to this particular clause. It unlocks… It is like walking outside and then starting to notice that there are plants. There are so many plants outside. There is so much to learn and explore once you start noticing it. What resonates for me in this construction is inviting students in the earliest age possible to start reveling in the breadth and complexity of different mentor texts rather than demanding that they just learn them procedurally so you get this excitement that is one of your stated goals.
PM: Yes. yes. It would be those autochthonous plants you’d be seeing in many corners where you are looking, ideally. That is exactly right. I want to say, for every great.. I’ve taught at the college level, I watch the youngest learners learn, and I follow their lead. Cameron is getting curious about the way this was written by Shakespear. Why would he do that? That type of natural move for her to make, I want to replicate in other places. That is what you normally do as a student. That is going to really help my college classes. If I never ask that question, we’re leaving out so many opportunities for growth and true engagement and investment in whatever the subject is that we are teaching.
MR: It is such a reframe from, “I don’t know those rules so I don’t belong in this conversation.” to, “I don’t know those rules, what a beautiful opportunity to engage in the meaning making that is in this piece.” Polar opposite motivational experience is just so different.
PM: I was on a podcast with Whitney La Rocca and Travis Leach who do similar work as I do. They also are focused on grammar. We call,what you just described as being a contemporary grammarian, saying, “I don’t know everything, but I’m going to look at this and get curious and think about why this writer made that grammatical move.
MR: It actually makes me think, I’m sorry Laurence, you’re trying to get in, I put a link in the chat, we did an episode, this must have been five years ago, where we read a paper about somebody who used poetry as their primary reading materials in instruction. That is really what it gets down to. What we are describing is what poets do. That is the balsamic reduction. Every word is intentional. Every line break is intentional. Approaching prose the same way can bring the same joy that is more common to be gotten in poetry. That is a fun connection across time for me.
LW: What I was trying to say, is I was going to talk about poetry. Our knowledge of grammar can help us appreciate poems better because if you know the typical structure, then deviations from that structure have more meaning than just this is how they say it colloquially. The more you know about the history of cinematography, the more an interesting new movie that challenges that is making a statement and providing a different experience. I think that is the same way with poetry. The more language you understand, and the more vocabulary you have, the more contextualized history you have, then the more engaging deviations, deliberate deviations from that can be. It really enriches grammar familiarity. Being familiar with grammar patterns enriches one’s read of other literature. Not just academia, Not just art, literature for enjoyment and leisure, but also, additional access to people expressing the human experience. That is great.
MR: Thank you so much for joining us this afternoon, this has been a really enjoyable conversation. For those of our listeners who are curious to learn more about the instructional materials you’ve put together or they want to read your book perhaps, where can we find more of your thinking.
PM: The best place to find more of my thinking is on my website. I invite you to www.pattymcgee.org. Make sure you spell patty with a Y and not an I. If you spall patty with an I you are going to get a very famous skateboarder from the 1960s. A lot of my work, my book, which is a little bit, yes, curriculum, but it is mostly about instructional practice change around grammar. Super accessible, and my co-author made it so. I invite you to pick up the book and visit my website.