Responding to Student Needs in Grammar

8/13/2019 Responding to Student Needs in Grammar

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Jill Cappa and Cara Gutzmer

Jefferson



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?



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.”



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.



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



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.



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.



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



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



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.



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?



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.



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.



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.



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

OUP%2Da%2Da



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

http://webmail.champaignschools.org/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.ncte.org/positions/statements/qandaaboutgrammar

http://webmail.champaignschools.org/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.ncte.org/positions/statements/grammarexercises

http://webmail.champaignschools.org/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://ateg.org/

http://www.readwritethink.org/search/index.html?page=4&sort_order=relevance&q=grammar&old_q=&srchgo.x=0&srchgo.y=0





http://webmail.champaignschools.org/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://ateg.org/

http://webmail.champaignschools.org/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.ncte.org/positions/statements/grammarexercises

http://webmail.champaignschools.org/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.ncte.org/positions/statements/qandaaboutgrammar



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/

http://www.learner.org/workshops/middlewriting/images/pdf/W8ReadGrammar.pdf
















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?



From:l http://www.someecards.com/2011/04/06/the-best-obnoxious-responses-to-misspellings-on-facebook





From: http://thegrammarvandal.wordpress.com/



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Responding to Student Needs in Grammar