Teaching Useful English Grammar

Thanks to ideas from Noden’s Image Grammar and teaching styles I have recently observed by practicing teachers, I have less fear of teaching grammar than I did at the beginning of the semester.  For one thing, my experiences in the actual classroom have lessened my fear of making grammatical mistakes simply because I have found them in actual grammar textbooks.  I also believe that teaching grammar is palatable to students if the teacher approaches it in a positive way and with a sense of humor.  At West Perry Middle School this week, the seventh grade grammar lesson was on compound nouns.  The teacher taught the students what a compound noun was according to the text, but was up front with the students that she didn’t necessarily agree with the textbooks “rules.”  For example, the textbook taught that sleeping bag is a compound noun.  Sleeping is the present participle verb that acts as an adjective to modify bag, it is not a noun!  In the same way the text taught that dining room is a compound noun.  My co-op teacher was upfront with the students that she will not test them on some of these words, and that she didn’t agree with the text book.  But what really stood out to me about this lesson is the way in which a teacher can present grammar and make it interesting to the students by demonstrating a healthy sense of humor about the many grammar rules and various ways they can be broken, and by pointing out how a grammar textbook doesn’t always get these rules right!  We also found various parallel structure errors in the exercises designed for illustrating compound nouns.    

An English teacher does need to point out errors in student papers and correct grammar, but I feel that a teacher should not view themselves as the grammar police that needs to correct everything.  After considering “The English Teacher’s Red Pen” and the positions of Gallagher, I no longer think that I have to circle every error and correct them for the student.  The experience with Dr. Mortimore-Smith’s wifys writer confirmed this for me.  The in-class exercise of rewriting a small portion of that paper was an eye-opener for me.  I found it extremely difficult to attempt to improve or “fix” the errors of an unknown student.  This reinforced the value and importance of conferencing with students.  I will make every effort to do this with high school students, because I have seen it work really effectively at the college level, and I have seen my tenth grade co-op teacher make it work even under time constraints.  Verbal conferencing has value because it allows more feedback in a short amount of time than writing all over a paper and in a verbal conference the student must respond in some manner to the teacher, I believe an added bonus is that it makes the student more accountable to the teacher.

Noden’s text and our classroom lessons derived from it have been an enjoyable way to look at grammar.  No one in their right mind could call our method’s class grammar lessons boringJ.  Tuesday was worth it just for all the humorous takes on action verbs.  On a serious note, I am looking forward to trying some of Noden’s ideas in my own classroom.  In light of finding errors in grammar textbooks, I found it really interesting in Noden’s chapter six, how accomplished authors have used special effects in punctuation and structure that “break” grammar rules.  Before I get too strict with student grammar I may do well to remember that many of them—that is my future students—will potentially far surpass me in writing skills.

   

 

Thoughts on Teaching Grammar

When reading Smagorinsky’s discussion about the difficulties of teaching grammar, I immediately thought of my niece.  Last Thursday, she called me requesting help with homework.  When I arrived, there she was with a grammar worksheet working on commas.  I gave the best advice I could, but I was uncertain if I was correct on all of the sentences.   After reading Smagorinsky’s discussion on the difficulty of teaching grammar and his examples about how the MLA and the Harvard comma rule differ, I couldn’t help but think that this is precisely why I was uncertain and have anxiety about teaching grammar.  Our texts this week cause me to be further sympathetic to my niece, because she has the misfortune of being in an English class with a 35 year veteran teacher who definitely has some “old school” ideas and is clearly teaching grammar in isolation and exclusively from worksheets.  I probably shouldn’t voice this opinion, but I hope the teacher retires soon.  On a more positive note, when discussing the problems of grammar with my cooperating teacher, he reassured me that he tries to apply grammar lessons when he sees problems, in much the way that Smagorinsky recommends.  Hearing that was a relief to me.  I know I can teach grammar, but the question of “whose standard is it?” makes it so difficult.  I keep imagining a student’s English teacher parent or grandparent coming in and telling me I’m teaching their child incorrect grammar!

            Smagorinsky’s idea of teaching grammar as a tool is spot on.  That analogy is wonderful, because the challenge will be to get students to see grammar as something useful that can be used to increase their writing ability rather than a “subject” in which they are going to do poorly.  Further, it’s really interesting that Smagorinsky quotes a man named Pooley from 1954—often considered dated by today’s standards.  However, the points outlined by Pooley are clear and to the point for improving grammar instruction, and it demonstrates how slowly change takes place in academia and grammar instruction.  In the spirit of Smagorinsky’s points, if I should get stumped on a grammar convention, I hope I can model for my students—or model strategy skills—that demonstrate how to go about correcting grammar errors.

            “The English Teacher’s Red Pen:  History of an Obsession” is a thought-provoking article.  Considering the historical reasons of why English teachers are obsessed with error correction is worthwhile and brings up an important point.  The authors note that in spoken language we don’t systematically and constantly correct incorrect grammar and yet young people learn to speak correctly over time is well taken and they are right that too much emphasis placed on error correction causes students to not care.  However, this puts even more emphasis on the problem of making writing relevant.  Student’s overlook many errors often because they don’t care.  (I need to be careful here, because I have turned in papers that I care about very much and then have been embarrassed at how many grammatical and structural errors I miss!)  But, the larger issue is to get student’s to see the relevance of writing.

 Zemelman and Daniels discuss a “paradigm shift” in which good writing is process writing.  I agree with them and certainly think that with increased means of communication and the internet, the need for clear, coherent writing is more important than ever.  I think they are correct that it is unnecessary to “bleed” all over a paper, but for English teachers the difficult part is restraining the impulse to "mark" every mistake.  Maybe I am out on a limb, but it seems to me that English teachers excessively mark a paper because that is the easy part.  Over time an English teacher becomes exceptionally skilled at spotting grammar mistakes and they are easily and quickly marked.  The slow part of the process is marking the paper for content and quality.  It is a challenge to respond to a student’s writing in clear language that gives them opportunity to learn from your comments.  Students that care definitely read these comments and it is essential that a teacher takes care to evaluate fairly and respond in a manner that provides guidance and therefore a learning opportunity.  Maybe I am demonstrating my lack of knowledge and that I haven’t yet learned the skill of accurately assessing and responding well without it taking hours of time.

Overall, I agree with Zemelman and Daniels article.   It is essential that we evaluate fairly and accurately without penalizing a student with excessive attention on minute grammar infractions.  Doing this well does and will require different ways of evaluating.  At this point, for me, the best way of doing this is to go back to the rubric.  There is great value in giving students a rubric before or with an assessment so that it is clear to them exactly what is going to be graded and how we are going to factor in the components of quality writing.

Text Satellite
http://prezi.com/wl2b2gnkugvm/copy-of-age-of-anxiety/

Hello everyone!

I hope the above link works.  Before I explain the thought processes behind my text satellite, I want to give a big thank you to the ladies in the Fishbowl for their tutorials!  Many thanks.  Once I understood the process I could have fun with it!  It was fun to consider texts in a different way than it is traditionally approached.  I began thinking about literature from the early Modern period.  I read Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome in high school and think it is less widely known, but has important themes in it.  It is definitely represents concepts of determinism and conflict on many levels--first of all internal conflict, then romantic conflict, as well as the overarching concept of man vs. nature.  I considered other texts, but kept coming back to this one.  I also think Barbara Kingsolver's texts should be taught in schools, so I chose The Bean Trees as a text that follows many of the themes that are addressed in the early part of the Modern period, but by choosing Kingsolver, I wanted a text that felt more recent and thus more applicable to students.  In addition, this text addresses themes such as migration and treatment of the earth, which I believe all connect with trends that started in the early part of the century.  For this reason, I also chose an excerpt from Rachel Carson's famous work as a way of making a connection with scientific discovery and writing which also influenced fiction writing.  For news articles, I was pleased to find an article from the September 24th issue of "The Guardian" which discussed the fiftieth anniversary Carson's The Silent Spring.  An additional benefit is that this article could work as an article of the week.  One failure, I must note is that I couldn't get that particular article to link correctly with my text satellite. (The image is a representation of the article I found.

In choosing short stories, drama, and poetry, I went with the traditional with "The Open Boat," which is a story important to teaching for the early modern period, as well as the poetry of Robert Frost.  I particularly chose the Frost poems to offer a contrast in styles between blank verse ("Birches") and the rhyme scheme of "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening."  In keeping with the style of the time period, I chose the humorous drama of Anton Chekhov.  This play offers social commentary in a humorous way that is also in keeping with the dominant themes of the unit.

For additional material I chose the music of U2 and a 1993 film version of Ethan Frome that was directed by John madden.  I also chose graphic novels by Joe Sacco which are based on modern day Israel and the Gaza Strip.  Some might argue that these novels are very dark, but I thought they might offer a stark look at the themes of determinism and conflict that are central to the unit.  Overall, I had fun with the text satellite, and definitely think it is a medium that causes one to think about texts in a new way.  I hope everyone enjoys it.

Thoughts on Assessment

       

            With its focus on assessment, last week’s class and assignment was a real eye opener to the realities of making an objective test.  I personally have never made a multiple choice test before this assignment, and now I clearly understand the difficulty involved in making a good one.  Last year in my Ed Psych course there was a segment on assessment and some students made up very poorly written multiple choice tests.  I say that because I have always believed a test is unfair when given choices that hinge on one word.  After spending hours trying to come up with good, solid, fair questions; I understand why the students simply used very similar choices.  However, this is beside the point of the larger issue.  Is an objective test fair?  I believe they can be and sometimes they are necessary to check student reading.  I have always believed that a reading quiz should be easy for a student who has read the material.  Since experiencing the time involved in making a good objective test, I do think that time would be better spent on planning assessments that are not based on “shallow” learning and simply memorizing soon-to-be-forgotten facts.

            This brings me to authentic assessment.  On hindsight, I think I went about it all wrong.  I drew up a persuasive essay assignment based on student’s interpretations of Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” first.  Then I did the rubric.  It was drawing up the rubric that forced me to go back to the essay assignment and clarify my directions.   At least I hope I was clarifying, by that point, I was starting to feel like everything was a muddle.  Finishing the rubric was a satisfying feeling because if I would choose to use the same assignment, I can return to it.  But much more importantly, it can be used to give to students ahead of the test.   In that way they know exactly what they are going to be graded on.   

            Overall, I think Smagorinsky hits the nail on the head when he writes about “extended definition” (78).  I like his focus on learning as a process that develops and how focusing on a theme allows for students to learn through writing both reflectively and through various genres.  This is where the rubric becomes very important for providing the format for clarity and what we expect of the students and then how we teach it.  Learning complex and abstract concepts happens as a process and I think we as teachers need to be clear in a rubric in what our expectations are and clearly demonstrate to the students how we plan to get there.  Writing a rubric feels painful, but is really useful for bringing out weaknesses in directions for an assessment and/or when expectations aren’t clear to the students.  And finally, I think well thought out assessment practices provide the means to have a class that does not focus on grades, and that ultimately is the basis of a good class where true learning can take place.

           

Remain Optimistic Despite Readicide!

Kelly Gallagher’s book is thought provoking.  Skimming quickly through the first chapter,   I had the initial thought “wow, this guy is fairly pessimistic.”  However, on looking more closely at the text, I re-read and went to his introduction to the book.  In his introduction Gallagher changed my initial impression.  His focus is for educators to take a hard look at what lies behind students’ lack of reading.  Rather than focus on the usual factors of things such as poverty, T.V., and lack of parental-involvement to address why he teaches.  He writes, “Why have I remained optimistic?  Because school is where I have the opportunity to discuss books with my students.  At school, students are given both time and a place to read interesting books” (4).  Gallagher’s use of the word opportunity and school really jumped out to me as an important connection.  School is an opportunity for students, and I think that is too often forgotten.  Gallagher exposes many of the pitfalls of NCLB and the negative consequences of high-stakes testing, which I think has caused more disillusionment and pessimism toward formal education.  In turn, I am more interested than ever in seeing what does happen in 2014.  As more and more schools do not meet proficiency, what will be the political consequence?  As pre-service teachers familiar with current best-practices, will we see dynamic changes in teaching approaches?  What will happen in government spending for school districts?   There is no doubt that it is an exciting time to be in the field of education and that it challenges me to remain optimistic and look for the good in the current educational (and political) environment.

            At the end of chapter one, Gallagher noted a study of schools by Judith Langer.  He writes that “Langer found that schools exhibit three distinct instructional approaches, patterns she named (1) separated, (2) simulated, and (3) integrated” (25).  Without doing a fine-toothed recap of all Gallagher’s points, I thought it significant that he found Langer’s research significant that the schools that vary instruction the most perform the best.  This is significant to me because if reinforces the importance of varying instruction.  Instruction that falls in a steady routine and focuses too narrowly on teaching to a test and “shallow” learning not only deadens the both students and teachers, but also fails more students.  No one student learns the same, and to ensure student success it is vitally important they read as much as possible and are given the most opportunity to read.

            Gallagher’s “Endangered Minds” brings out more important challenges for teachers.  His important points about the classrooms challenge a teacher to learn to know both the students as well as to find some understanding of their prior knowledge.  Given the increased number of ELLs students and diverse students, it is really important to become knowledgeable about students’ prior knowledge.  For me, the most important takeaway from Gallagher’s second chapter are his points about becoming an advocate or “discussion director” for your school.  I like this because it is a proactive approach that other teachers and administrators will know what is important to you as an English teacher.  I also really like his ideas for “article of the day” and his points about a book flood and fighting against summer reading loss.  These points all challenge a new teacher to work toward becoming involved, knowing our students, and promoting reading.  Gallagher’s points about reading across the subject areas are challenging because it emphasizes how little reading is done in a school day and the work that is cut out for us as English teachers.

            As far as final thoughts go, I think if we accept Gallagher’s challenge to make “expert readers” of our students, we will become expert teachers because it will require that we do our utmost to work against knowledge loss and reading loss that Gallagher emphasizes.  Also, I can say that during my level I observations I was in two different schools that have SSR classes.  I distinctly remember how impressed I was by the way the students engaged in their reading.  There still is reason to be optimistic.