Today our lesson centered on agreements: pronoun-antecedent and subject-verb. We worked our way through the RULES, covering indefinite pronouns, compound subjects and the extra tricky, OR and NOR. Students asked thoughtful clarifying questions, and then tackled a couple of skill based worksheets. Voila! It turns out, eighth graders are masterful agreement negotiators. Then I thought, why stop with pronouns and verbs? Why not expand the lesson into an Agreement Unit.
Divisiveness surrounds us. Disagreements abound. Maybe what we need are more rules of agreement. Teach students the policies that lead to cooperation and harmony.
Ideas for subsequent lessons include:
- international agreements,
- generational agreements,
- policy agreements
- workplace agreements
- sibling agreements,
- political party agreements
- financial agreements
Give my eighth graders anchor charts outlining rules for agreement, teach them how to handle the special cases and exceptions with examples, and I am confident they will produce some impressive social issue agreements (Well, for at least 10 problems anyway, more than 10 and they’ll lose interest and integrity.)
The Way I See It 
Maybe you could call it “Life Grammar.” I really like the idea! When my parents were young, elementary school was called grammar school. I wonder if there is something to that word. Let us know how it goes!
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I love how you use grammar as a springboard for life lessons! Let’s just say, I totally agree!!
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In my opinon, your 2nd lesson is so much more purposeful!! However, I’m glad they got the 1st lesson, too. It will serve them well as they take their state test! I guess agreement is important in so many ways.
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Great way to connect content to real world! On another note those grammar agreements are my ELs worst nightmare.
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