New Lenox School District 122 :: Form and Function

Mrs. Gagan

8th Grade Language Arts - Liberty Jr. High
tgagan@nlsd122.org

Why Grammar?

By 8th grade, students are expected to recognize and understand the basic parts of speech which include prepositions, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, interjections, conjunctions, and verbs. We do spend time reviewing these parts of speech in the form of anticipatory activities called D.O.L.s or daily oral language exercises.

My ultimate goal for the year is to teach students how to better understand the function of the parts of speech in order to become better writers. Once students understand how intricately the parts of speech all work together in a sentence, they can begin to craft and manipulate language in a way which is both clever and authentic.

All words have both a form and a function:

"Form" simply means "part of speech." "Function" refers to the job a form does in any particular sentence. Sometimes forms of words only have one job or function. Other forms, such as nouns, can perform several different functions in a sentence. The chart below is my grammar textbook! Students will use this chart for their D.O.L.s all year. The Form/Function chart is truly the the key to understanding grammar.

Form

Noun

Function

Subject – Beginning of clause or phrase

Direct Object – comes after action verbs

Indirect Object – comes after action verbs but before the direct object

Object of Preposition – comes after prepositions.

Predicate Noun – comes after linking verbs

Pronoun

Same jobs as nouns (subject / object pronouns only – see above)

Adjective (possessive pronouns only)

Adjective

Adjective

Articles (a, an, the)

Predicate Adjective – comes after linking verbs

Verb

(Action, Linking, Helping)

Predicate

Adverb

Adverb

Conjunction

(coordinating, subordinating, correlative)

Conjunction

Interjection

Interjection

Preposition

Preposition

Emergency Notification