X-Post: How to teach the concept of a sentence?

[Random]

My 15 year-old son cannot seem to tell the difference between a fragment, a complete sentence, and a run on sentence.  He seems to have zero understanding of the concept of a complete sentence.  His essays are thoughtful and well organized, but the punctuation is almost always 100% incorrect.

Is there a tool that can help me teach him the differences?  How to know when to stop a sentence?  What makes a sentence complete? A run on?

A little bit about him: he was dx'd as dyslexic last fall.  Home school for K-7,  public school for 8th, home for 9th this year.  He's had numerous English teachers (public school & online & co-op) besides me, and we've all worked with him on this using different programs: First Language Lessons, Rod & Staff, Christian Light Education regular and remedial programs, MCT, whatever they used in public school, Veritas Press's Composition, and maybe some more I'm forgetting.  He attends a remediation class daily at the high school that is a big fat waste of time.

I'm wondering if anyone has any different ideas for me?  Something simple and basic and with a ton of repetition that will help him?

[Kanin]

I'm using The Writing Revolution with my students, and it's really helping. The first lesson is about fragments - you start off with giving them a partial sentence (orally), like "Before school." The student has to turn that into a complete sentence. There aren't any worksheets, etc. in this book, so it does take effort on the teacher's part, but so far my students are fascinated! I was trying to get them to understand the concept of a paragraph, and it was a huge disaster, so we backed down to sentences and it's been just the right fit. 

You can get the printed book, or check out this PDF (not the latest version): http://tapconyc.weebly.com/uploads/1/9/1/5/191529/the_hochman_method_09-15-2016-062048.pdf

I find the checklists REALLY helpful!

p.s. I didn't scan the document, someone else did 🙂 

[PeterPan]

Haha, I just replied over on Gen! I like Mainer's suggestion to look at Writing Revolution too. It really depends on what's going on and how extensive this is. That's what I'm unclear about from the original post, so I pasted some things in to help you elaborate about when specifically it's occurring, etc.

   6 hours ago,  Random said: 

He's a mix of contradictions.  He seems to understand many grammar rules and their benefits to readers and writers, but for whatever reason can't/doesn't apply them to his own writing process.  For instance, he wouldn't be able to easily understand someone else's sentence that was missing its punctuation.   But he doesn't use it in his own.

Is this what you meant?

   9 hours ago,  Random said: 

My 15 year-old son cannot seem to tell the difference between a fragment, a complete sentence, and a run on sentence.  He seems to have zero understanding of the concept of a complete sentence.  His essays are thoughtful and well organized, but the punctuation is almost always 100% incorrect.

Is the issue occurring in oral narration, in everyday speech, in oral discussions (compare/contrast, forming an argument, defending a position), or only when he goes to type his work? 

It's important to sort out what problem you're actually dealing with here, whether it's a language problem or a getting it onto screen while holding all your thoughts problem or something else. If he uses dictation software (readily available for any device now), do the fragments correct?

If you suspect a language issue, then your best bet would be to get testing from an SLP who specializes in dyslexia and literacy (yes, this is a thing). It sounds like he could use testing anyway to explain why his reading continues to lag despite intervention. Is his reading comprehension affected or his decoding or both? Again, thorough testing by an SLP specializing in literacy could sort this out. They have some tests like the TNL, the SPELT (which he is out of age for but which would be warranted if he seems to have significant expressive language issues, the TILLS, etc. etc. 

Depending on what's going on, you'd have some options for evidence-based and SLP-developed interventions that might be more appropriate than general education curriculum. For instance Shape Coding is pretty commonly used for kids in this scenario. But really, you could use some testing to figure out what's going on. What language testing did they do when they diagnosed his dyslexia? The CELF? Anything else? I'm not a fan of the CELF as it has sensitivity issues and frequently under-identifies kids with language disability issues. The dyslexia itself is a language disability, so you're trying to figure out how extensive it is and what's going on. It's why diagramming alone, or working on the skill from only one angle, might not remediate the problem. He's probably going to need more explicit intervention and going to need to do the same concept several ways to get it to click, much like his decoding instruction needed to be multi-sensory.