Grammartime

Grammar's hard.

But by that I mean, teaching grammar is hard. And it's not because it's actually hard, it's really just because no one cares to learn it. "It doesn't matter" whether I use the adjective or adverb form of the word, even though I sound like a fool saying I "did good." It doesn't matter what a preposition is or even which preposition I use. No one cares. It doesn't matter that my verb tense doesn't match my subject. That won't be confusing. You know what I'm trying to say. It doesn't matter if I know what an adjectival clause is. I can clearly point out what it's modifying (and therefore understand the gist of the sentence) without knowing what an adjectival clause is.

The biggest problem with teaching grammar is that no one cares, but everyone should care. Everyone should care that the second "I did good" comes out, anyone listening should be judging their intelligence. Everyone should care that using the wrong preposition makes the sentence confusing for the reader (or the translator). Everyone should care that the world is a place of credibility and reliability, and words reflect those things. Words mean things. Wrong words mean even more things. (See?)

So how do we get students to care? How do we teach them grammar and make it stick? Judging from discussions with Cumberland Valley's English Department Supervisor, they've got it right: teach traditional grammar in elementary school when students still care what their teachers think, what their parents think, and what their peers think. Allow them to learn and to make mistakes at a time in their lives when they're quick to forget mistakes and not be so self-conscious that they refuse to participate because they're afraid to get the answer wrong. Teach them while they want to learn. Enrich and review when they no longer actually care, but still remember the foundations that were laid.

Should we teach grammar in secondary schools? No. Not really, anyway. Grammar should have already been learned. Students should know nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, and maybe prepositions. If they still need to learn appositives and absolutes and relative clauses, fine. We shouldn't be teaching basic skills in high school. If we're teaching what a noun is or what a verb is, we're wasting our time and every teacher before us has neglected to do his job.

Image Grammar is a book that has good ideas. It's a book that has useful practice activities. And it's a book that has fundamental flaws. How does one know what an absolute is if the book never tells what an absolute is? One or two sentences do not suffice. Showing examples of absolutes without addressing which part is the absolute in each sentence does not suffice. Most of all, expecting people who don't already know what those grammatical pieces are to understand them based on those exercises is a pipe dream. Does it teach aspects of grammar in context of writing? Sort of. Does it make students better writers? Probably. Does it actually teach what those grammatical constructions really are? No. Are there far too many rhetorical questions in this post? Probably. Will I add one more? Why not.

So, my teaching of grammar will probably look a lot like the traditional teaching does. There are plenty of opportunities throughout the year for "high interest" material. But I'm not a TV show, or a movie, or a video game. I'm not a rock star, I'm not a circus performer, I'm not an NHL player. My job is not to entertain. My job is to teach. Sure, there will be games and activities, but there will probably be some worksheets and lectures, too. And you know... if students don't care to learn it, I can always manage this. And they can always manage this.

Post title?

I'm not gonna lie: I'm more than a little concerned about having to teach writing. First of all, I don't follow the "writing process" that we've always been taught to follow.  Second, it's very difficult in a school setting to help people revise/edit their papers without doing their paper for them. I sat down with my roommate last night and had an extremely productive revision session with him, and he did about 80% of the work. It was a great model of how revision should work. That said, we took about a half hour to work on what ended up being around eight sentences.

While we haven't had enough hands-on instruction when it comes to teaching writing, a lot of the things we've been reading have helped with ideas and practices. It's hard to tell exactly how these activities will work in practice, or how effective they'll be at teaching writing (as opposed to simply being things to write), but they should be helpful. In no particular order:

• Providing students with models of assignments 

This one comes in many forms: writing along with students, using good and bad student papers from prior years, or giving examples of different genres of writing (movie review, comparison/contrast, etc.) are all effective ways of helping students understand what is expected of them.

• FCAs for rough drafts

 Giving students three specific areas to focus on in a rough draft will lessen the burden on them while also helping to scaffold towards finished products.

• Revising rough drafts in groups (twice)

 A guided revision activity in what is essentially a mini-workshop setting is helpful for a number of reasons. Students get to read each others' papers and therefore see what others' strengths and weaknesses are, they get to work on their own revision skills and strategies, and they practice both giving and receiving criticism. Even better, they have an opportunity to fix their papers more than once. I'd rather give students multiple opportunities to revise after receiving input from peers than give them a grade and allow them to fix it: by the time the paper is graded, it should be done well.

• Reader-response journals

Reader-response journals are a nice alternative to reading quizzes. Not only do they demonstrate that students have read, but they also allow students to make the connections and ask the questions that are important to them.

• One-pagers for SSR choices

 I'd love to be able to do SSR, but I'd need to be sure students are actually reading. I think these are a good solution.

• Comics as summaries

Making comics/graphic novels/storyboards lets students engage in a fun activity that also reinforces plot and characterization.

• Free-writes

Free-writes are great for short writing activities, as well as brainstorming topics and questions.

• Correcting relevant writing mistakes after assignments are completed

 Seeing students' errors and using mini-lessons to work on those errors should be more immediately effective than just teaching concepts because they are concepts.

• Asking questions

As Smagorinsky suggests (88), having students prepare questions and lead discussions engages students with the text and enhances their critical thinking about the text.

• Personal journals

Like free-writes, journal prompts are great ways to get students to write about things that interest them. Additionally, good prompts will allow the kids both to practice writing and to learn things about themselves.

• Article of the Week

AOWs are fantastic ideas, mostly because of how little some people actually know about the world around them. Providing students with meaningful texts, especially when they connect to works from class, should be really helpful.

All of these activities/strategies are ones I'd like to use with my students. Looking at the list seems so daunting, though. It seems impossible to have time to do all of these things. I can only hope that I work in a school with 50-minute periods instead of 40-minute ones, or I'll have a hard time doing anything I want to on a regular basis.

I can haz tekst?

http://prezi.com/jdpae4kw_k1_/tuck-everlasting-text-satellite/?auth_key=9b9d013c84d2bf24ce56f135d5a64e083be506ff **fixed

My text satellite is based off of the novel Tuck Everlasting and its themes of duty, greed, mortality vs. immortality, change vs. stagnation, and the natural order of things.

Speaking of the natural order, I chose simply to organize the works by their types.While many of the works I chose specifically deal with death, most deal with at least two of the themes. For example, "A White Heron" relates to greed because the hunter wants to kill the white heron, while the girl's sense of duty compels her to lie to the hunter despite being enamored by him.

One of the most difficult things for me about assessing students is that I tend to want to create only the assessments that would like to do as a student. In other words, I don't want to make students create drawings, posters, or anything else too artsy, because I always hated those projects. I always felt that if I wasn't in at class, I shouldn't be forced to do art projects. That said, there will be a number of students in classes that do enjoy those types of assessments, so I need to be able to create them as second or third options.

The difficulty in using an art-related project is making it equivalent to a traditional essay/assessment. A five-page paper is not the same as a poster. The time involved might be the same (for a student like me, who has no art skills whatsoever), but the level of thought is entirely different. So, what steps can be taken to make them equivalent? Adding a short write-up to the art assignment would be fair, but I still don't think that gets the student to the same level of depth with the work. That is one of the biggest problems I'm having right now, because I know there are students who do like the non-traditional assignments. Between the task and the grading, though, I'm not quite sure at this point how to create them effectively.

On the other hand, I feel pretty comfortable making the traditional assessments. My feeling is that reading quizzes should be based on the topics I want students to take away from the reading, but at the same time--if I'm truly checking to see whether students read--I need to be conscious of what's on Sparknotes. That is what makes it hard to make a "fair" reading quiz, or one that's not just based on details that are hard to pick out. In that case, I'd rather lean towards a "prove to me that you read the chapter" quiz. It would be open-ended, and students would be required to prove more than that they read Sparknotes to get full credit. It's difficult, but it's also higher-level thinking using the text. The different responses and their scores would probably need to be modeled for the students.

Rubrics for essays and other assignments are relatively easy. Make requirements for the assignment, then read down the assignment sheet and create a section for each part of the assignment. If the paper is supposed to be 2-3 pages, there should be a "length" section on the rubric. Makes sense.

Exams and assessments for middle-schoolers are also a concern, because I don't know what those are like. I know papers are capped at one or two pages, but is that a good thing? Should we actually be pushing them to write two or three pages instead? Part of the problem is the education the students have received up to middle school and high school, because many teachers have not properly equipped the students with the appropriate skills for their age. That means topics and will have to be retaught, or certainly enriched, before moving on to more difficult skills. How do we compensate for the failures of prior teachers?

:(

Even though I was interested in the topic, the sheer length of the first two chapters made me want to commit readicide halfway through.

Much of that feeling was due to the fact that Gallagher is preaching to the choir, at least when I'm the one reading. For the last couple years I've been planning to take the Social Studies Praxis exam when I graduate so I can be certified in both English and Social Studies. While part of that is a way to (maybe) increase my chances of finding a job, the other part is that I'm interested in history (and, to a lesser extent, the other aspects of Social Studies). That being the case, I included texts on the American Revolution and the web collective Anonymous as reading in my conceptual unit. These are real-life examples of some of the topics covered in Fahrenheit 451. I'm all about putting real-world texts in the classroom, because I know that many people lack information on many fronts. CNN.com and the front page of Yahoo aren't in everyone's "Wanna Waste Time?" bookmarks.

That being said, I love the idea of the Article of the Week, and I would love to be able to require SSR on Fridays (though the classes at the end of the day might need that moved to Mondays...or I could just move it there for everyone).  I know that there will be some push against that idea, but one of my high school teachers used to play a class game of Taboo with us on Fridays; as an administrator, I'd be much more apt to think, "But that's a game," than, "Why are they reading?" (I'm not saying Taboo has no merit. It does.) Something else I'm trying to do is work off the Khan Academy model and move all of my parts-of-speech instruction outside of the classroom and work on practice inside it--maybe using the AoW as a basis for the sentences we'll break down.

The idea about using Amazon to build a classroom library is a great idea, too. No one wants to be "that guy" and push and push for things in department meetings and planning centers, which is likely a large part of the reason that schools are lacking in positive change. The Amazon library avoids that issue totally. I actually ask for people to buy my birthday and Christmas presents (I feel awkward mentioning my own "birthday and Christmas presents" at 22-years-old. Huh.) used on Amazon. Why? Well I'll be honest--I can get more of them that way. Do I want Patton Oswalt's Zombie Spaceship Wasteland for $18 or for $6? Duh.

So basically, I'm all in. I just wish there had been a SparkNotes version of the first two chapters, because I really didn't need to be convinced.