Thoughts on Teaching Grammar

I can not remember having formal grammar lessons since I was in the 9th grade, when we would do a couple sentences a day at the beginning of each class. I think grammar is the thing that makes me most nervous about teaching, but I see it as something I will brush up on as I go along and something I will become better at with time. I have to say, I think I’m still developing my ‘most compelling reason for teaching grammar.’ I do think that correctness matters, and for students to prosper in academic/professional settings, it is something they will need to learn. I also think it is extremely important that students know that there is a difference between the formal grammar in writing versus the everyday speech they use. As an undergraduate, I took Linguistics and Language & Society, and from those classes, I developed an adoration for the spoken word. I became aware of the fact that all dialects are unique, beautiful, and worthwhile. I think Nancy Patterson has it right when she says, “Grammar becomes a highly compelling subject for students when they can use their language and play with it, recast it in other modes for other audiences than their immediate peers and family. This is true for all students, regardless of dialect.” Students need grammar, like all school subjects, to be made relevant to them. Grammar should never be taught as a “deficit.” I think the separated, stimulated, and integrated way of instruction that Jeff Anderson talks about is a good way to think about teaching grammar. We need to Zoom In and Zoom Out in a contextual way that will be full of meaning making.

I think teachers will need to work with grammar issues as they come. Pretests and daily activities will be a good gauge for how students are doing in their work and show teachers how much they already know. Teachers will also find grammar “mistakes” in students writing. This is something that happened in a 7th grade class that I work with at Dalton. The teacher was just reading the students’ papers and noticed that many of the students were writing could of instead of could’ve. When students write this Nonstandard form of could’ve, they do not even know they are doing so. They are writing what they hear themselves say. I am sure that these 7th graders are unaware of what they are doing. The teacher of this class is going to make a worksheet to go over this writing error with the entire class as to not single anyone out. (She told me that this error is a big one on the SOLs.) She will be able to use students’ writing to illustrate her point and make kids aware of something they do subconsciously.

A Book Trailer

The past few weeks I have been very stressed out about working on and completing our book trailer project. I am very much an amateur at technology, and I was apprehensive about having to do something like this all on my own. I will admit that I was not looking forward to the project at all. The project really took me a long time, and I would have been lost if it was not for google images. The project probably took me longer than most to complete, but I feel like I got an understanding for a teaching tool that I had not previously had before. I ended up writing a script for my book trailer and having a friend narrate it with a bit of an accent (sort of Reading Rainbow-ish),and that got me thinking about collaboration and doing something like this in my classroom one day. I think, for middle schoolers, a book trailer might be just the thing to get them excited about reading. They can read their book and then do a book trailer for it instead of a typical book talk or report. Yet, a teacher will be able to tell if they read the book based on what is included in the trailer. Student could also work in pairs and create book trailers for a book that the class has read as a whole, just pick and choose different scenes/chapters. I ended up showing my book trailer to the reading specialist at my school, and she is going to use it this coming week after she has the kids write about what they think might happen in the book. I am interested to see how the students respond to the trailer. One thing I would do differently for next time is I would try to figure out how to incorporate my own video footage (maybe) or at least my own pictures. I really enjoyed finding the music for the end credits, and I think students will enjoy that as well. I think one important thing to do with students when they are working on the book trailers is to make sure that they are given a specific amount of time to complete it – otherwise I could see them taking an excess amount of time.

Required Listening

I think it is a great idea to incorporate iPods into the classroom. Taking a device, such as an iPod, something that kids see as enjoyable and on trend, and bringing that into an educational setting, can definitely make learning more meaningful to students. I never thought about how helpful an iPod could be for a student struggling with the English language. Having students learn songs that are popular in English can definitely help them with learning words that are commonly used in our society today. It can also help with pronunciation, and teachers can move from the words of the songs to the written lyrics, and students can work on their spelling as well. I do think it is important to make sure that the students are actually learning the material and not just memorizing words. The words/lyrics need to be explained and understood for the language barrier to be truly broken. Overall, I think putting learning to music is a fabulous idea because, in general, it is typically very easy to memorize songs/tunes and they stick with you much longer than simply memorizing a list of facts.

I was also thinking that it may not be the best idea for iPods to be a requirement for the classroom. Students should have access to them at school, but I know, in my school for example, there are some families that could just not afford it and they would not benefit from having one. Schools need to offer them to rent, but I would just want to make sure that students were not feeling like they are being singled out when they have to ask to borrow one. I get really sad when I see the ‘haves’ and have-nots’ in school, and I want to try to keep that reality to a minimum as much as I can in my classroom.

Assessment, Curriculum, etc.

The article on assessment is something I really found interesting and helpful. I wish more of my teachers in middle and high school had given me rubrics before I was to hand in a project. I think a rubric will help hold a student accountable. They can not say they did not know something was to be included in their project or assignment if they were given the rubric ahead of time. A rubric needs to be specific, and if it is detailed enough, it will assist in saving a teacher time in grading because they too can just follow the rubric. I also think rubrics help teachers be less bias in their grading. I think “self-assessments” are very useful tools for the classroom for both students and teachers. A teacher can know where their students are and if they understand what it is they are supposed to comprehend. I also think it is a way for students to reflect on what they are doing and be honest with themselves about their progress/success.

In the article on curriculum, I found myself underlining the announcement to “anticipate obstacles.” As I have learned from working in Radford these past few weeks, there is never going to be that perfect day where all of your plans go exactly as you have them written out. We are all human, and a teacher needs to be flexible to problems and extenuating circumstances. A teacher must remind him/herself that there are going to be times when plans will have to change and resources will not always be available. I also think it is extremely important that instructors periodically remind students of what they are trying to accomplish in the ‘long run.’ (Recursive teaching, where the instructor circles back around to make sure students understand and are achieving the objectives. 262) Index cards for reflection/questions at the end of a class are also a very useful tool to understanding how a student is doing/what they’ve done for the day. I agree that when we plan, “we must include time to dream and time to master, time to study and time to learn.”

In the M&M reading, I found myself again thinking about group work and its effectiveness in the classroom. I found the five important features that a teacher must consider when making groups/group work to be very helpful. Those five components being: size, stability, selection, roles, and self-consciousness (37). For me, roles are very crucial to a group’s success because there is always going to be a student that does not want to do anything. Roles make sure all group members are responsible for something, and that without their contribution, the group would not be as successful. Learning is very much a social experience, yet it can also be an individual activity. I liked working on individual projects because it gave me more freedom to express myself. Individual projects also gave me the liberty of working at my own pace and going about a project the way I wanted to. I liked the idea Nancy Johnson suggested on page 41 about silent dialogue, sketch to stretch, and also the Quaker read. I want to use all three in my teaching. I really like students responding to other students in a very non-threatening, yet meaningful and stimulating, way.