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.