The Tale of Mr. Morton: Schoolhouse Rock Teaches Grammar

How many of you remember your grammar lessons from elementary through high school?  (me, waving my hand proudly)  I truly feel for children these days, as there are so many concepts and skills that they will NOT learn in their public school settings.  I've been in the public school system for almost ten years, and I have only met two teachers that were brave enough to teach grammar despite school administrators protests (S/O my rebel teacher friend! and to my mentor teacher!)  This year, grammar and sentence diagramming are directly apart of the curriculum.  We started yesterday with subject and predicate, the basis of sentence writing.  We used "The Tale of Mr. Morton", a relic of the '70s and '80s (the last time we actually cared to provide the semblance of education.)  In our class, we played the video and song, and students completed a CLOZE reading activity in which they had a copy of the lyrics with missing words.  They had to fill-in-the-blanks as they listened.  An example is below.

This is the tale of Mister Morton
Mister Morton is who?
He is the ____________ of our tale
And the ____________ tells what Mister
Morton must do

Mister Morton walked down the street
Mister Morton ____________
Mister Morton talked to his cat
Mister Morton ____________
(Hello, cat, you look good)
Mister Morton was lonely
Mister Morton was 

Mister Morton is the ____________ of the sentence
And what the ____________ says, he does

Mister Morton knew just one girl
Mister Morton ____________
Mister Morton grew flowers for Pearl
Mister Morton ____________
Mister Morton was very shy
Mister Morton ____________

Mister Morton is the subject of the sentence
And what the predicate says, he does

The subject is a ____________
That's a person, place or thing
It's who or what the sentence is about
And the predicate is the ____________
That's the action word
That gets the subject up and out

Mister Morton wrote Pearl a poem
Mister Morton ____________
Pearl replied in the afternoon
Pearl replied by a note
Mister Morton was very nervous
Mister Morton ____________

Mister Morton is the subject of the sentence
And what the predicate says, he does

The ____________ stretched
The ____________ beat down
A ____________ chased his kid
(Come here, kid - come on!)
Each sentence is completed when
You know what the ____________ did

Mister Morton knocked on her door
Mister Morton ____________
Mister Morton sat on her porch
Yes, he just sat there and rocked
Mister Morton was a nervous man
When she opened up the door he ____________

Mister Morton climbed up his stairs
Mister Morton ____________
Mister Morton rhymed pretty words
Mister Morton ____________
Mister Morton was lonely
Mister Morton ____________
Until Pearl showed up with a single rose
Who says women can't propose?
Now Mister Morton is happy
And Pearl and the cat are too

They're the ____________ of the sentence
And what the ____________ says, they do

Click link for Lyrics

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This is a great example of engaging multiple modalities of learning.  You can differentiate this activity by changing up the blanks to be filled (you can add more or take away some depending on student's ability).  You could also indicate in the margins whether the word being filled in would be a subject or predicate of the sentence (or have your more advanced students do this!!). 

A great follow up activity would be for students to identify simple subjects and predicates in sentences.  First, provide them with sentences, then ask them to write their own, and have their classmates identify subject and predicate. 

Eventually, your students will be able to diagram sentences!  I used to love this, and I can tell how it has enhanced both my reading and writing.  Look out for my blogs on diagramming (coming soon).