Revising Devon's Newsletter Paragraph Against a Rubric
Ms. Okafor's students are revising a paragraph for the class newsletter. Devon's draft reads:
"Each of the sixth-grade classes have chosen a theme for the hallway display. The theme should reflect something about our community, and they should be colorful and easy to see from the main entrance. Visitors will vote on Friday, the winning class will be announced at the assembly."
The rubric requires three things: correct subject-verb agreement, clear pronoun reference, and no run-on sentences. It also says revisions must preserve Devon's meaning and voice. Devon asks two questions before he edits: whether splitting his last sentence into two sentences would violate the rubric's "voice" requirement, and whether the word "they" in his second sentence is acceptable as written.
1. Identify the agreement error in the first sentence, correct it, and explain why the plural word "classes" does not make the verb plural.
Read the worked answer
Error: "Each of the sixth-grade classes have chosen" should be "Each of the sixth-grade classes has chosen."
Reasoning: The grammatical subject is each, a singular indefinite pronoun, so it takes a singular verb. The phrase of the sixth-grade classes is a prepositional phrase modifying each; nouns inside a prepositional phrase never control the verb. The writer's ear is pulled toward classes because it sits next to the verb, which is exactly why this error is common.
Test to confirm: strip the phrase - "Each ... has chosen" sounds correct, and "Each ... have chosen" does not. Applying the same strip test to "Each of the players runs" versus "runs" shows the pattern holds beyond this sentence.
2. The pronoun "they" in the second sentence is a problem. Explain what it could refer to, then write a revision that removes the ambiguity without changing Devon's meaning.
Read the worked answer
"They should be colorful and easy to see from the main entrance" could refer to themes or to displays - and those are not the same thing, since a theme is an idea and a display is a physical object. Only displays can be "easy to see from the main entrance," so the referent is probably displays, but the reader should not have to work that out.
Revision: "Each theme should reflect something about our community, and each display should be colorful and easy to see from the main entrance."
Repeating the noun is the cleanest fix here because two plural nouns compete. A pronoun such as "it" would still be ambiguous, and "which" would create a new grammatical tangle. The test of a good revision is that a reader can point to exactly one noun for every pronoun.
3. Devon's last sentence contains a comma splice. Explain why it is a run-on, then compare splitting it into two sentences with joining it using "and" - including what each choice does to emphasis.
Read the worked answer
Why it is a splice: "Visitors will vote on Friday, the winning class will be announced at the assembly" joins two independent clauses with only a comma. A comma cannot do that work alone.
Option 1 - two sentences: "Visitors will vote on Friday. The winning class will be announced at the assembly." Each event gets equal, separate weight; the announcement reads as a second, distinct fact.
Option 2 - comma plus conjunction: "Visitors will vote on Friday, and the winning class will be announced at the assembly." The "and" makes the announcement feel like the natural next step after voting.
Option 3 - semicolon: correct but more formal than a class newsletter needs.
Splitting does not damage Devon's voice - it clarifies it. Both options 1 and 2 satisfy the rubric; the choice is about whether Devon wants sequence or consequence to be the emphasis.