Title: Adjectives Out of Order (Noden’s Brushstrokes)

Unit: The Five Brushstrokes Content Areas: English Grade Level: 11

Overview
In a question and answer thread on the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) website, it states,
“People associate grammar with errors and correctness. But knowing about grammar also helps us
understand what makes sentences and paragraphs clear and interesting and precise.” Knowledge of
grammar enhances writing making written communication increasingly effective. Using Harry Noden’s
Image Grammar and Katherine McKnight’s Hands on Grammar, this lesson provides students with a way to
think about grammar in context. Instead of correcting sentences or identifying parts of a sentence on a
worksheet, contextual grammar lessons require students to analyze how they use grammar concepts in
their own writing. The five lessons based on Noden’s concepts of brushstrokes, or painting a vivid image in
the reader’s mind, students will compose sentences and paragraphs to demonstrate an understanding of
descriptive writing techniques. The unit is used in preparation for a narrative writing assignment that
requires students to compose a fictional story based around an image provided by the instructor. The
narrative piece will demonstrate the students’ knowledge of grammar concepts and literary devices such as
setting, plot structure, conflict, and characterization.

Prior Knowledge: Students have completed lessons on participles, absolutes, and appositives. All notes
and practice sentences are in a separate section of the daybook.
Virginia 2017 Standards of Learning (SOL)
(11.1a) Select and effectively use multimodal tools to design and develop presentation content.
(11.1i) Evaluate effectiveness of multimodal presentations.
(11.6a) Apply components of a recursive writing process for multiple purposes to create a focused,
organized, and coherent piece of writing to address a specific audience and purpose.
(11.6d) Adapt evidence, vocabulary, voice, and tone to audience, purpose, and situation.
(11.6g) Revise writing for clarity of content, accuracy and depth of information.
(11.7a) Use complex sentence structure to infuse sentence variety in writing.
Lesson Objectives
 Students will be able to engage in informal writing assignments (i.e. reader response, freewriting, focused
freewriting, prediction, response journals, dialectical notebook entries, and other pieces of reflective writing).
 Students will be able to evaluate their own writing according to established criteria and rubrics.
 Students will be able to engage in revision in the following areas:
o language, information, style, voice and structure appropriate to the purpose and selected audience
o incorporation of sentence variety (simple, compound, complex)
o incorporation of varied sentence beginnings (introductory prepositional phrases, participial phrases,
adverbial clauses, adjectival phrases)
o addition of details and support
 Students will be able to engage critically and constructively in oral exchanges of ideas (i.e. class discussions,
peer group assignments, panel discussions).
 Students will be able to effectively utilize digital resources to meet the above objectives
Materials and Resources

 PPT Brushstroke #4
 Daybooks
 Notes from previous Brushstrokes lessons
 Laptop(s) and projector
 PearDeck account (optional)

1
Resources:
McKnight, K.S. (2011). Hands on grammar: Multimodal grammar and language mini lessons, grades 5-12.
CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.
Noden, H.R. (1999). Image grammar: Using grammatical structures to teaching writing. New Hampshire:
Heinemann.
NCTE. (2002). Some questions and answers about grammar. Retrieved from http://www2.ncte.org/
statement/qandaaboutgrammar/

Procedure:
Lesson Procedures (70 minutes)
1. Hook (5 min) Describe your favorite childhood memory. Provide as many who, what, when, where,
why, and how details as possible.
2. Think-Pair-Share (5 min) Share your response with a partner and/or volunteer to read your
response to the class.
3. Guided Instruction (40 min) Inform students that we are continuing our lessons on descriptive and
detailed writing. Open the PowerPoint presentation and instruct students to prepare for notes on the
next Brushstroke lesson. All notes from The Five Brushstrokes unit should be located in a section at the
back of the students’ daybooks. Begin by reviewing the three previous lessons on participles,
absolutes, and appositives before introducing the new concept. Introduce “adjectives out of order” by
reviewing the purpose of adjectives and brainstorm examples using images in the presentation.
Students will practice various writing process by brainstorming, composing, revising, and editing their
own sentences
4. Individual Practice (15 min) After completing the guided practice activities where students are
writing individual, isolated sentences, continue to the next practice activity that requires students to
compose a paragraph based on a movie clip. Using the railroad scene from October Sky, students will
compose a descriptive paragraph about the scene from the perspective of Homer Hickham (substitute
movie with a text studied in your class). Next, students will revise the paragraph to add examples of the
four brushstrokes: participles, absolutes, appositives, and adjectives out of order. The final step
requires students to identify their examples by circling, highlighting, underlining, and placing brackets
around the examples of the four brushstrokes.
5. Closure (5 min) Address any questions or concerns. Students will complete an exit ticket activity.

Assessment Method

Evidence of participation in The Five Brushstrokes unit should be included in the process work for the
Narrative Writing essay assignment.

Accommodations / Differentiation
Using a think-pair-share model, allow students to collaborate with a partner to compose descriptive
paragraphs.
Provide copies of various images and place students in small groups to compose descriptive sentences
and/or paragraphs.
Special education teacher or instructional aide will monitor and assist students with disabilities as needed.

*Multimodal Option: Create a PearDeck presentation. Students will need school-issued laptops and
the presentation’s room code to complete this activity. Instruct students to go to JoinPD.com and
enter the room code posted on the projector screen. As you move through the presentation,
students will have the option to type responses on their laptop and the instructor can immediately
review sentences before continuing to the next slide. Please view PearDeck’s YouTube
instructional videos for more information on using this website.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evoJy4WcReM

2
3