Austin Simpson

Unit Topic and Rationale

My unit for the Teacher Work Sample will cover the grammatical element of
parallelism. Parallelism is a major concept in the English language and mastery of it can
dramatically improve sentence fluency. The CDE standards for 10th grade state that
students need to be able to demonstrate command of standard English grammar and
usage when writing and speaking; and first among the grammatical elements that 10th
graders should focus on is parallelism (standards 3.3.a. and 3.3.a.i.).
Not only is parallelism a key focus in the 10th grade ELA standards, but in the
month that I have been at TVHS, it is clear that there is a need for further parallel
structure instruction. Student writing is riddled with verb tense switches and,
predominantly, with lists that are not parallel (e.g. trains and a bus are public
transportation rather than trains and buses are public transportation). Parallelism is an
easy grammatical element to lose track of, especially when trying to construct longer,
more complex sentences.
This unit will be taught the week immediately after they write the first draft of
their Into the Wild papers so we can look at their own writing and fix their own lapses in
parallel structure. Hopefully, after a week of working with their own writing in addition
to other instruction, they will have a good idea of when they are breaking parallel
structure and will be able to fix it without too much issue.
The importance of parallelism in their writing will never go away, and can really
detract from their writing if they do not have a firm mastery over it. For instance, I had a
close acquaintance send me a self-reflection for her job for me to edit just last week that
would impact her annual reflection that is coming up in April. The content in her
reflection was great, but that many of her sentences became muddled and confused
because her lists were not parallel with the verb that was attached to the beginning of
them. I plan on sharing that self-reflection that she gave me to edit with my students so
that they may see more clearly the importance of parallelism in the real world.