Diagramming Sentences

And is a conjunction.

The beauty of sentence diagramming is that they are constantly reviewing all parts of speech and not just focusing on their current grammar topic.  I think Winston grammar just has them label each part of speech, instead of diagramming it out.  I would think something like that would be just as beneficial.

Grammar is one area I struggle with too!  I took Honors English classes all through school, yet my knowledge of grammar is terrible!  I’m attempting to learn alongside my DC.

I would recommend Michael Clay Thompson’s Grammar.  My children ages 10 & 11, just turned were barely able to find the nouns and verbs after 3 years of grammar with other curriculums and frankly, it isn’t my strongest subject either. I love CM style things because it works so well with my kids. They love stories and discussions and none of the grammar things do that. It is so mundane and abstract and boring. However, not so with MCT’s Grammar. He has somehow taken Montessori’s color coding and CC’s repetition, and CM’s gentle story/discussion and mushed them all together. It is pure genius in my book!! Anyway, I start out with the level below my kid’s so that it would give them a foundation and would be easy and I hoped we could go faster then I could get their actual level for next year. His grammar by the way says it should be completed in 6-11 weeks and then for the rest of the year, your children do one sentence a day. CRAZY! I know, but here is how it has gone. We are finished with the grammar book after 1 month, but again it was an easier level. My kids can now identify or label all eight parts of speech, parts of a sentence including direct object, indirect object, and subject complement that is enough to wow me, but they also can spot prepositional phrases and know about clauses! Talk about a miracle. This was done without grumbling, but us cuddled up together reading the book (I just bought teacher’s manual) and we laughed, people! We laughed and had fun during grammar. It became a game and was fun. My son uses one of the sentence maker pages and is writing a story ON HIS OWN because he WANTS too! It may not work for everyone. It may appear babyish or too simple, but it is a perfect fit for us and I can’t understand how this isn’t more well known. I want to send it to every elementary english teacher I know. Anyway, now that we have finished the book, they do a daily sentence so that they do not loose their new skills. It takes about 3-5 minutes and they are done because they do a 4 part analysis of the sentence. They label each word with a part of speech, then they go back and label which noun/pronoun is the subject and they then define the verb as a action predicate or linking and then of course if any direct object, indirect object, or subject complement. Next they show any phrases and finally they define the clause/s as simple or complex and then declarative etc…  This keeps them from forgetting and then we move on to the next book, which teaches them how to write a proper sentence, paragraph, essay, etc.

Side benefit is the poetry and vocab books. We are enjoying them as well and the way he ties them all together is genius. My kids are writing poetry! (not really there yet, but I am looking at the effort; HA!) The vocab is sticking too because every time I read a word with one of our new stems, they point it out. This is their own connection but now is a game between them. Anyway, my point is that he also shows diagramming, but in a different way than I have seen, but it makes so much sense, but as yet the kids haven’t had to diagram, just shows it visually for them.

Oh and previous poster is correct, and is a conjunction which joins two or more things that are alike such as  Mike and Amber (nouns) or green and tall (adjectives) or The birds chirped and the sun shone. (clauses/sentences)

Hope this helps you, but if you wish to stick with traditional diagramming, I had found this site, Grammar Revolution that I was considering before I went with MCT’s grammar. It might help you find ones that are tricky.