responding to student needs in grammar
TRANSCRIPT
8/13/2019 Responding to Student Needs in Grammar
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Jill Cappa and Cara Gutzmer
Jefferson
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Initial Thoughts Take a few minutes to reflect on your opinions about
teaching grammar.
1.) What have you done and why?
2.) What concerns/questions about teaching grammar
do you have?
3.) What do you hope to get out of this session?
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Research
Research in Written Composition proclaimed thatgrammar instruction could actually be harmful tostudents because it “displaces some instruction andpractice in actual composition.”
Constance Weaver recommends to “teach
grammar in context using a minimum ofterminology ,” and to “follow up on mini-lessons with students who exhibit both the need andreadiness for a particular skill.”
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NCTE Position Statement Background
This resolution was prompted by the continuing use of repetitive grammardrills and exercises in the teaching of English in many schools. Proposerspointed out that ample evidence from 50 years of research has shown theteaching of grammar in isolation does not lead to improvement in students'speaking and writing, and that in fact, it hinders development of students' oraland written language. Be it therefore
ResolutionResolved, that the National Council of Teachers of English affirm the position
that the use of isolated grammar and usage exercises not supported by theoryand research is a deterrent to the improvement of students' speaking and writing and that, in order to improve both of these, class time at all levels mustbe devoted to opportunities for meaningful listening, speaking, reading, and writing; and that NCTE urge the discontinuance of testing practices thatencourage the teaching of grammar rather than English language artsinstruction.
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What We Did
Administered Pretest
Analyzed Results for areas of focus
Chose Skills to address Implemented Mini-lessons and had students write
applying the focused skill
Flexibly grouped students based on their
performance of skill Created Student-Selected Personal Spelling Lists
Administered Post-test
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Pretest
We looked through Common Core Standards to create apretest that would test certain grammar.
Found and used a 3rd
grade test that tested skills becauseit seemed at our students’ level.
The average student score was %.
We targeted the skills of: subject/verb agreement,pronoun usage, complete sentences, verb tense consistency,contractions and cultural usage for our weekly focus.
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Reflection After the results of the tests were revealed, students
offered their explanation for the poor scores.
They indicated that…
they need more help.
they can study .
questions were hard to understand.
they never learned some of the concepts.
teachers don’t correct them.
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Instruction Day 1
FOCUS: W hole class mini-lesson on a topic and
application of topic in their writing
AGENDA:
Warm-up (reviewed last skill)
Direct Instruction on new skill
Correct an incorrect paragraph
Write using the new skill
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Instruction Day 2FOCUS: Re-teaching of the skill from Day One
AGENDA: Reviewed skill from previous day
Practiced the skill further (sometimes using WS)
Conferenced/Corrected incorrect writing fromthe day before
Wrote again using the taught skill
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Spelling
Students identified problematic words based on
their writing.
Students practiced each week with these words.
Apost-test
was given.
Students showed improvement in the words theyfocused on.
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Reflection
Although some gains were made, we knew we wouldn’t seesignificant growth.
We were only teaching skills for two days, then moving on to
something else. We taught these skills in isolation, not in the context of a unit
on writing.
We didn’t revisit past concepts enzough to make the
learning meaningful. Even though we had them write, they only wrote a few
sentences.
How do we get them to self-edit, not just do skills in isolation?
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Reflection continued…
Student attitudes were generally positive about theinstruction.
Even students in the re-teaching group were notresistant to more instruction in an area they knew theystruggled with.
Having students reflect on their errors in spelling
and grammar was effective because they are the wordsand rules they are choosing to write.
This instruction was not enough to show significantgains in their writing.
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Implications for teaching There isn’t an easy answer.
Learning is more meaningful when it is contextualized.
Every student does not need the same instruction in every grammarrule.
Conferencing with students is hard, but it is the best way to helpstudents with their writing.
Peer editing/reading can be very effective.
Flexibly grouping students targets specific needs.
The ultimate goal is for students to self-edit their own writing. Weneed to teach grammar in a way that encourages thinking about whatthey write.
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Implications for teaching
continued… In an ELA classroom, we could use these ideas,
but go into more depth.
If two groups needed more instruction, other groupscould be applying skills more in their writing (e.g.partner writing, looking at other incorrect writing).
Students need to be held to a consistent standard tohelp identify gaps in knowledge and understanding.
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Suggestions from Webinar
“Integrating Grammar into the Context
of Writing” by Jeff Anderson If you use a pattern from student work, first put up positive
examples and study why the language works that way. Then, try anexample with only ONE mistake. DOLs often contain too manymistakes for students to apply to their own shouldn’t writing.
Revision come at the end of writing, it should be throughout the writing process. Imitating model sentences is an effective strategy. Integrating grammar into context has nothing to do with length of the
text. You can use a sentence or a paragraph, just use a chunk ofmeaning.
Studying prepositions alone does not mean much to students becausethey don’t understand what it means for the whole sentence. http://elearning.ncte.org/section/default.asp?id=NA%2DNCTE%2DGR
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Resources NCTE Q & A about teaching grammar
http://www.ncte.org/positions/statements/qandaaboutgrammar
NCTE Position paper
http://www.ncte.org/positions/statements/grammarexercises
Assembly for the Teachers of English Grammar
http://ateg.org/
Lesson from Read Write Think : http://www.readwritethink.org/search/index.html?page=4&sort_
order=relevance&q=grammar&old_q=&srchgo.x=0&srchgo.y=0
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Resources Continued “To Grammar or Not to Grammar is NOT the
Question”
http://www.learner.org/workshops/middlewriting/imag
es/pdf/W8ReadGrammar.pdf
“Transforming Writers Through Grammar Study”
http://ateg.org/qf/transforming.pdf
The “Blog” of Unnecessary Quotation Marks
http://www.unnecessaryquotes.com/
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Reflection What new learning do you have about teaching Englishgrammar?
What steps can you take in the next year to makegrammar more contextualized?
What resources might help you? What do you still need?
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From:l http://www.someecards.com/2011/04/06/the-best-obnoxious-responses-to-misspellings-on-facebook
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From: http://thegrammarvandal.wordpress.com/
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