Responses are due on Wednesday, March 25th, at class time
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by Heather Schultz
This article is written by Deborah Dean. When she first started teaching, grammar education was a requirement set by the school district. She tried thinking of fun ways to teach students to identify adjectives and adverbs and to diagram subjects and direct object, objectives specified by the school district. She once spent a week teaching verbals with comic books until a parent complained about her method. When the school eventually dropped the grammar requirements from the curriculum, Deborah was also happy to drop them from her syllabus. She was excited to be able to focus on the student’s writing. However, she quickly realized that her student’s writing needed help, but that they lacked a common vocabulary needed to fix the problems. She tried many different ways to get her students to understand, but none of them seemed to work.
It wasn’t until she came across a book by Edward P.J. Corbett and Robert Connors, Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student, that she found a method that worked. Even this method proved to have a rocky start. She began to teach the students by giving them an example written by George Orwell. Her example was “The gallows stood in a small yard, separate from the main grounds of the prison and overgrown with tall prickly weeds.” She asked the students to list the parts of speech: what she received was a blank stare. No one was able to even name the subject of the sentence. Then she decided to have them forget about the grammar and just focus on the sentence. She wrote a sentence imitation on the board: “The invitation lay open on the table, taunting me with its promise and frightening me with its potential.” From this she explained how the sentence was put together: the first part being an observation and the second with descriptions. She did the same with two more sentences and with each example, more students began to understand. She told them to write two of their own sentences and they quickly went to work. She knew that this was not helping with “real” writing, but she was able to introduce them to a style that they were not familiar with.
From that day, she never brought up parts of a sentence using grammatical terms. She continued her method of writing a sentence on the board and having them write two or three sentences in the same style. Students began to become more comfortable with their sentences and often read them allowed in class. If their sentences were wrong, Deborah would use their sentence as an example and the class would fix it as a group. They not only write sentences, but she required them to find sentences from the stories they were reading in class. Then they were to tell why they liked these sentences and how they stood out to them. After that they see how many single ideas come from that one sentence.
Her example of this is “The alley ended at an empty, padlocked garage.” And here is the list they made:
1. The alley ended.
2. It ended at a garage.
3. The garage was empty.
4. The garage was padlocked.
She would have her students find a sentence and make a list like this. Many students thought of it as a game and wanted to pick a sentence that would generate the longest list. Once they have their lists, they talk about how they came up with the list of their single ideas. They try to put their sentences back together: sometimes it worked, other times it didn’t. That part didn’t matter. What mattered is that her students were learning how to form sentences in a way that was new to them and she did it all without using any grammatical terms.
Her student’s writing improved tremendously throughout the year. She ends her article by saying “They know grammar- they just don’t know that they do.”
Do you think that this is an effective way to teach? Is knowing the correct terminology for writing really that important or is her way of teaching better? Would you have enjoyed learning sentence construction Deborah’s way? Or are you glad that in grade school we all must master what adverbs and direct objects are?
14 comments:
I am a believer of learning new ways to teach. Not all students learn at the same pace and not all students are interested in learning. Many times students are bored with the lessons or they simply do not understand the methos in which the instructor is teaching. Therefore, I believe that in any case where a teacher notice that her students are performing better with a new way of teaching, is a great thing. I believe that I would have liked using her method because it seemed more fun. Whenever one can incorporate learning and fun, it is the best thing ever. But, I do believe that students should also know the traditional way of learning and the correct terminology.
I really enjoyed that Mrs. Dean found a new way to teach grammar. However, I think that she should have went back at the end of teaching then the new way of writing and identified the parts of speech. These students will eventually need to know the difference in the parts of speech. I feel that she could have identified them and connected them to the lesson plan in a fun and inventive way. I do like the way that she taught the students grammar without using grammar. The students seemed to really enjoy the lesson and if they would have known they were learning grammar, they may have been reluctant. I feel that if I had learned grammar in this way that it would not have stuck with me for long. I also feel that the way I learned grammar in school did not teach me a single thing. I am sure that her way was much better and easier than my way of learning grammar. I would have enjoyed being in her classroom.
As I've previously mentioned in other blogs, I feel that learning environments should be comfortable for students to comprehend subjects being learned. Students should feel adequate to what's being asked of them rather than feeling inferior. Dean's teaching techniques are seemingly innovative, fun and successful. Although school is a vicinity to be taken with all seriousness, I feel that school should also be a fun environment. Dean's methods thoroughly dissects different parts of sentences and students take heed to this technique and furthers their understanding. Honestly, I would have liked to be taught in this manner. It engages students, an important aspect of the "Learning Cycle." On another note, especially in regards to the scholastic demands that society places on education, I feel that Dean's efforts may handicap students; thus, crippling students from taking initiative, putting forth strenuous effort or maintaining academic independence. Overall, I enjoyed perusing this article!;-)
This article provides a model of investigative learning, which has certainly helped me in my school career. Instead of using a blitz of information - that only works with sharp, motivated students - Dean helps her pupils teach themselves the skills they need for writing. She assumes that her students understand the complex sentences in books and magazines, but simply don't think to implement the same structures in their own writing. Her strategy for unlocking the mechanics behind their comprehension, flipping the steps to understanding to make steps for construction, is sound. At the start of the article, I felt a bit incredulous - would high schoolers really go for that? I think so. Her integration of popular literature must get the ball rolling, while the interactive environment forces teens to think critically. These sorts of exercises affect more than writing; investigative learning improves the brain as a whole, forcing it to solve problems from different angles.
I think that it is great that the teacher was able and willing to find a way to teach the students how to construct sentences. It is great that she was willing to be flexible in finding a way to teach the students. However, I do believe that she should make an attempt to teach them the gammar terms and explain what the parts of speech are because the students will eventually need to know them and she is doing them a disservice if she doesn't teach them this. All in all, I do believe that the teacher did a good job in helping the students learn.
When a child is in grade school, he or she spends a large time -sometimes as much as their parents- with their grade school teacher. It is great that Deborah Dean wanted to make grammar a fun environment for her students to learn in. It seems that the best teachers always have new or different methods that convey exactly what they wish to accomplish without making it death-defying boring.
Teaching is similar to coaching. When a coach has a team that just can't attack a certain defense or stalls on offense, the coach goes to work on a game plan that will enable his or her players to better endure those game situations. In Dean's case, she saw that her students still needed help with grammar but they were not understanding the way she was first teaching her lesson. So she did what good coaches and teachers do, adapt her game plan to better fit their needs.
I have never enjoyed grammar. If one of my teachers had taught grammar in a fun, new, interesting way, perhaps I would have enjoyed it more. I believe her way of teaching was unique and if it improved the students' writing that was all that mattered. Having said that, I do think it is important for the students to understand the grammatical terms for the parts of speech. The most interesting part of this article was not her technique of teaching, but the fact the school dropped it from the curriculum.
I think that this method would be a good addition to traditional approaches, but I don’t think that it is a good idea to only teach students in this way. This method does not prepare students for other classes. Unless all teachers everywhere used this method, students in Dean’s class would fail when they were promoted to a new grade. It would be beneficial to the students if she used her method of teaching but also defined the parts of speech. I think that it is important that Dean cared enough to search out a new, fun way for students to learn. I am a paralegal major and I have asked by an attorney in an interview if I could identify certain parts of speech. I don’t think that he would have believed me if I told him that I could write correctly but I didn’t know the names for the parts of speech. I think that it is important to give students a well rounded education because it is uncertain how their education will be applied to their life.
It baffles me that Dean's school would have taken away mandates for learning grammar. While it seems to have been an effective measure for making students interested in grammar, I find it hard to teach grammar to students that don't know the parts of speech. It's like teaching someone a foreign language without first showing them how to conjugate verbs. After reading the article I am still pretty unsure what sentence imitation even is. Regardless, it's something I would like to develop a better understanding of, because as the Magic School Bus taught us, there's nothing better than a child learning and not even knowing that they're learning, since they're at least slightly enjoying it.
I feel that a student must feel comfortable in a learning environment to learn what is being taught in the class. Grammar is one of those subjects that if you do not fully understand, you feel inferior when you are wrong about something. If a subject is taught in a way that makes it a little bit more fun to the students they will want to learn more about it.
I found this way of teaching very interesting and probably would have appreciated it if I was a student of hers. I think it is true that teachers focus too much of the style of writing and a student will lose touch with the grammar that goes into it. You might lose some of the grammatical ruling, but I think in the long run if a student knows how to identify the different parts of a sentence and write it efficiently they will gain the most knowledge in the end.
I think her idea was wonderful. I would try any teaching method to make my students understand the lesson hidden beneath it. I block out terminology and I always have, so I can relate to those students. When I teach lessons I always try to make them fun and include a game with prizes so the students are interested. I think if the students think the lesson is fun they are more likely to remember it. Personally, I am a hand-on-learner, so I can relate to other students who are too. Her last sentence about the students knowing grammar without knowing they know it was inventive and funny.
I am somewhat taken aback by the attitude that Mrs. Dean had towards teaching in general. When you know that something is important and imperative for children to learn, you must do your best to provide them with that information. I am happy, however,that she found a smarter way to teach it, and place it back into her mainstream curriculum. The only way she figured out that grammar was important is when she tried to teach the kids proper writing. Any English teacher should know that grammar is the foundation to everything that is English!
I think this is a very effective way to teach, especially for younger students. By making grammar into something fun, students will be eager to participate in grammar lessons. Not all students learn the same way or at the same rate. By giving students a diverse way to learn, the chances of the student connecting with the material increases. I would have benefited greatly from the learning method, especially in elementary school. However, it is very important to know the basics of grammar, I think including Deborah’s method is just as important.
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