Responses are due on Monday, October 20th
This article tells the story of how a writing teacher faced with the knowledge that the common way of teaching grammar is boring and ineffective, found a new way to teach the fundamentals of grammar without the students even realizing it.
Deborah Dean never looked forward to teaching the district required grammar section of her class. The students were always lulled to sleep by all of the technical jargon that comes with correct sentence structure, dangling participles and prepositional phrases. She tried to make the lesson interesting by using cartoons and more student friendly approaches, only to be scolded by angry letters from parents claiming that she was just wasting time.
When the state dropped the mandate for teaching the grammar section of the class, she stopped teaching it for a few years. Over time she found that when the students needed help with the grammar within their writing, they had no common language to address the problems, so she had to rethink the problem and come up with a new approach.
She started to bring interesting sentences to class for the students to mimic. She would write long complicated sentences that expresses multiple ideas on the board, and ask the students to recreate the sentences using their own words. There was no pressure for the students at all because she always told them it was just for practice. After a while she realized that the students were following the structures with amazing accuracy without even knowing the names of them. This was a way for them to work with language, consider different ways to express an idea, and realize that they had the ability to work to find better ones.
Here is an example of one of the excercises:
"The alley ended at an empty, padlocked garage."
She would then have them write small sentences representing all of the different kinds of ideas in the sentence
"The alley ended."
"It ended in a garage."
"The garage was empty."
"The garage was padlocked."
The students saw this as a game and competed with one another to see who could bring in to the classroom the sentence that had the most ideas within it.
She found a way to teach grammar without having to use the boring terminology that would have put them to sleep. She also found that this excercise gave an opportunity to talk about how we innatly know how to embed in certain ways, so much that we don't even realize we are doing it. The students don't know the names for all of the things that they are doing in their writing, but they are finding new ways to combine their own ideas because they see how it is done in other complicated sentences that they like.
What do you think about teaching grammar without the terminology, and what kinds of ways would you make teaching grammar to students less boring?
The link for this article can be found here.
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14 comments:
I like the way this teacher presented the materials, but I think that she should have used the correct terminology. When these students have to take a higher level writing course and the teacher starts using grammar terminology, the students will not understand what she is talking about. I think that when you learn something, you need to learn what it is called and the meaning of it. I think the students would have enjoyed her exercise just as much if she would have explained the terminology. I have actually seen a teacher do this exercise, and it works very well!! :)
I agree with Sarah. I like the activity that the teacher used, but I do not think that it should stop there. It is important for students to become familiar with the terminology and how it relates to the sentence structure. This activity would be helpful to begin with and build upon. I would start with this and make a game out of it, but I would also incorporate meaning in the game. Also, if the teacher is enthusiastic about the subject matter, it is easier for the students to become excited as well.
It's really interesting how this teacher took a concept like grammar, which is usually dreaded by students, and she made it unique. I would love to be able to teach like that! A lot of the time students get caught up in learning the terminology that they forget what they are meant to learn. If anyone can take a concept, like grammar, and take a different spin on the subject, students will want to learn...but they won't realize they're doing it :)
Sarah makes a very good point about knowing the correct terminology. Without this the students may not know how to explain it to others later. Instead of being able to name it, they will say, "It's some thing I learned in class..." without giving it credibility with a proper title.
I would like to try implementing this approach in my own classroom.
Personally, I don't think teaching the terminology is very important at all. The only time the terminology is discussed in class at a higher level is to talk about what you must do to write successfully. If you already know how to do that, people really don't need to know the definition of present participle. I may need to know it, because I am going to teach English, but the majority of students will never be required to have learned such a thing. A majority of the students would forget all of the terminology anyway. Teaching them in this method was creative, and was much better than not teaching them anything at all.
I think teaching grammar without the terminology would be kind of tricky. If I were a teacher, instead of terminating the terminology completely I would just use different methods of explaining it to my students. For example, I would use acronyms so that it would stick would the students. I would also use different methods of word play to help students understand more specific grammar terminology. This would be fun and help students think critically!
I think the methods that teacher used to teacher grammar was very good. I would have to say I would try and use that same type of method if I have to teach grammar to my students. I remember having small grammar lessons in high school before we had to write a paper. My teachers seemed just as excited as we were when she was teaching it to us. She actually was able to really help us use our own writing to explain different grammar mistakes we would make. Making those connections with children is a good way of teaching them the basics.
As long as this teacher had the students' attention, why didn't she go ahead and teach the terminology? If she has successfully captured the students' desire to learn something that is considered uninteresting, then she should follow through and teach the terminology before they lose interest.
I definitely like her style. Getting students interested in grammar isn't something incredibly easy, and she managed to figure out a way to do it. The fact that she didn't use the terminology might have made it more interesting, but I think at some point closer to the end of the class or something she probably should have taught the actual word for it. I can't remember if the ACT actually would give you a sentence and make you tell what part of speech the word was or anything like that, but if the student ever encounters a test with a question like that... I think it would be better if she would have at least discussed correct terminology a little, just enough that her students would have the knowledge for later.
The way that this teacher presented grammar was really creative. However, probably like most of us, I do think that she should have included the proper terminology. If I was the teacher I would have let them create their sentences and then explain to them what they did and the proper terms. I have never enjoyed grammar lessons, so I really enjoy this technique. I plan on teaching lower elementary grades, so I probably wouldn't be able to do the same thing, but I do hope to make it interesting. How to make it interesting: I am not quite sure yet, but I would like to put more research into it.
It certainly seems correct to me that we should try to find new ways to keep students interested in grammar. However, it is also important that they know the basic terminology associated with grammar so they can have conversations with each other and future teacher and have a common, shared knowledge base. Instead of taking the grammar out of grammar units, maybe we should concentrate on making the lessons more enjoyable. No, the current, standard method of teaching grammar from workbooks is not ideal, but repetition and practice are important tools for helping the students remember those grammatical rules for later in life when they are not enrolled in grammar classes.
This is a different, but smart technique to use. Students tend to learn more when they don't even know they are "supposed" to be learning. Although it is still important for the students to know the terminology of grammar, it is something they can learn after they practice what they already know. Sometimes a student may know the correct way to write a sentence, but not know the word or term for what they know. This would be interesting to try in my own classroom as well.
I really like that the students thought the assignment was a competition. I would probably do the same thing this teacher did only actually have it as a competition. I would love for my students to get more excited about learning grammar.
I like the activity that was given, however, I feel that after it was over the teacher should have gone back and explained it using the correct terminology. I say this because the students learned the subject matter one way and should then be able to understand it using the correct terminology as they will have to in future classes.
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