SYNTAX

Objective

• The purpose of these activities is to provide guidelines for the parents to scaffold children's language learning of syntax with educational apps.

• The syntax is the set of rules, principles, and processes that govern the structure of sentences in a given language, usually including word order. 

• The syntax learning activities are divided into 4 sessions according to Cope and Kalantzis' (2015) Learning by Design framework.

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Materials/Resources​

• Picture cards

• Tablet or IPad

• Educational apps such as FarFaria, Endless Alphabet, Dr. Seuss's ABC, Raz-kids, and so forth.

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Session 1 - Experiencing/Situated Practice

Duration - 30 mins (Variable)

• During the first reading, when using educational apps to teach children the sentence structure, parents can direct the children’s attention to the meanings in the images and their corresponding captions or texts represented in the narratives. 

• For instance, parents can first cover the texts, point to one image, and ask what is represented by the image and its word class. 

• Then parents could direct children’s attention to the text and ask them what the word classes are (e.g., nouns, verbs, and so on) used in the sentences and how the different word classes are combined to represent meanings in the sentences.

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Session 2 - Conceptualising/Overt Instruction

Duration - 30 mins (Variable)

• During the second reading, parents can show children how different meanings are represented in a sentence using different word combinations of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and so on,

• Parents can analyze the structure of sentences with children, and scaffold children to generalize the rules of word orders in expressing similar meanings. 

• Parents can prepare a set of cards showing different types of images representing nouns, verbs, adjectives, and so on, and use gestures to direct children to look at the pictures.

• Then, they can ask children to syntactically arrange the images in the word orders (e.g., noun, verb, noun or Subject, Verb, Object) that have been taught to them.

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Session 3 - Analysing/Critical Framing 

Duration - 30 mins (Variable)

• During the third session, to develop children's critical thinking, parents can consider asking children whether all those images can only be syntactically expressed in the same way (e.g., noun, verb, noun or Subject, Verb, Object) or the same structure of sentences.

• If children do not have the answer, parents can scaffold them by providing some alternative options. Parents can guide children to choose appropriate syntactic expressions/word combinations of the designated images.

  • For instance, they can show children that the Subject, Verb, Object order represents a declarative sentence whereas the Auxiliary Verb, Subject, Verb, Noun/Object represents an interrogative sentence.​

• They can guide children to find out the similarities and differences in both the meanings expressed and the different sentence structures formed by specific word class combinations.

​Session 4 - Applying/Transformed Practice

Duration - 30 mins (Variable)

• During the fourth session, to enable children to apply the sentence structures/word class combinations they have learned, parents can ask children to retell the story without referring to the texts.

• Alternatively, parents can ask children to tell a story that involves similar images and plots, so that they can use the sentence structures/word class combinations they have learned in the storytelling.

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Contributor: JJX