In the 2 readings we were assigned, a blog post written by Patricia Dunn titled "Does Bad 'Grammar' Instruction Make Writing Worse?" and the article "Teaching Grammar in the Context of Writing" written by Constance Weaver both authors discuss their views on teaching grammar and some ideas of how teachers should go about teaching grammar.
In the article written by Constance Weaver I found it interesting how there is so much research and information on the affects of grammar instruction. I really liked how there were so many examples on what not to do with your students because it gave me a better understanding and better ideas to have for when I'm a teacher. For example, letting your students make mistakes in their writing so that they aren't afriad to try new things & branch out from their normal writing. There were many things the article explained NOT to do, for exmaple; teaching traditional grammar (those annoying worksheets you used to be handed everyday in english class) and not using difficult grammatical terminology.
In the blog post written by Patricia Dunn, she discusses that we should encourage our students to be engaged in their writing. Dunn believes that grammar drills can interfere with the students ability to actively engage in their writing, meaning that having gramma worksheets for the students to do is not helping your students but making them hate learning about grammar.
Something that I really liked about Weavers article were the 3 teachers who told their stories on teaching grammar and the things that worked & didn't work for them. I like Sarah's idea of making mini-lessons in a writer's workshop to teach her students grammar but by making it enjoyable. Each student wrote a five senses poem and then a couple weeks later had her students write another senses poem & it showed that her students poems were much better the second time around because of her mini-lessons.
Monday in class we got the opportunity to do a read-around of our "I Am From" Poem. I really enjoyed getting the chance to think back to my childhood and all the memories I have of my family & childhood home. The poem that we wrote is from an exercise in a book written by Linda Christensen (hint: it's the title of this blog post) and the read-around is also an exercise Christensen implements in her own classroom.
After finishing Christensen's book Reading, Writing, and Rising Up, I have really gotten a grasp on the different approaches and exercises that I can use as a teacher. Each chapter was a different topic and then exercises to use in the classroom. For example; Chapter 1 is called "Building Community Out of Chaos" and some of the exercises explained are to say everyone's name to begin the first day of class, the read-around to develop new writers, the where I'm from poems, sweet learning and lastly childhood narratives.
What I found to be really interesting is the concept that Christensen has on reaching every student with different ethnicities and diversity. The exercises she uses in her classroom are pretty universal so that every student is able to use things like the childhood narratives or the where I'm from poems to reach back into their childhood where they may or may not have sensitive subjects. I mentioned in class last week that I didn't think that making your students write about really personal life experiences was the most effective thing to do. Yes, talking about your past and sensitive topics is good but when things like death and maybe something along the lines of drugs/alcoholism are in the family, it might make some of your students shut down in the classroom.
There are so many situations that can/will happen when I'm a teacher and nothing can never prepare me for those moments but it's helpful to have things like this book to help with activities and exercises to use in my own classroom one day.
