Adam, I am so happy I stumbled on this series about teaching writing. I struggle so much with this even though I’m a really capable writer myself. I have vacillated with teaching grammar over the years and can’t land on a satisfactory practice between the necessity of knowing it and the pointlessness of endlessly regurgitating it. I love the rationale you lay out in this essay. How do YOU teach grammar? Would love more explanation and direction. Thank you!
Thank you so much for the kind words! Grammar is such a tricky subject, and certainly worthy of its own post. For what it's worth, I wrestle through these thoughts on a weekly basis, so I hope I can distill something helpful.
To start, as teachers we're assessed on taxonomy, or whether students can name grammatical structures. And I see the utility here. Michael Clay Thompson provides a useful framework here through his Magic Lens series, visualizing grammar through four levels (of abstraction). I've used his framework for years and it works better than sentence diagramming for understanding *how* grammar connects.
Since grading taxonomy takes time, over the past few years I've started using Canvas for automated grammar assignments. I adapted Thompson's system but stole sentences from the first Percy Jackson book. Thus, students have automated grammar assignments where they get the best of three attempts and feedback for wrong answers.
That said, while it sounds nice on paper, I've never been satisfied with it. Despite numerous attempts at ID'ing words, the taxonomy doesn't quite stick. I believe even the best of grammar assignments suffers from predictable problems--namely, that students do not understand how words function *as groups*. (Grammar asks to move upwards from specific words to general categories, but never to identify words as groups.)
In a perfect world I would teach a freestyle mix of activities--ID'ing aspects of grammar mixed with sentence diagramming with a lot of time spent on sentence addition and sentence combining. (James Moffett wrote a lot about the latter activities.)
I know at some point I'll devote a lengthy post to the subject. Would you mind if I saved your comment and used it for such a post later?
Adam, Such a thoughtful and thorough resposne and recoutning of your practices! I tried Michael Clay Thompson in 4th grade but no one really taught me how to use it and my students dreaded it. But his work is consistently suggested to me, so I'm curious and maybe I just need more explicit training. Are you teaching grammar daily and then asking students to apply it in context in writing assignments? I love that you've used literary passages from a Percy Jackson. I'm sure students connect with that although it does seem that the transfer of grammatical skill to writing is inconsistent. I'll look forward to your post on grammar in the future and am happy for you to save the comment and also go into more detail about my misgivings and fails. All the best to you and what I'm assuming is likely a return after winter break this week. Tricia
Adam, I am so happy I stumbled on this series about teaching writing. I struggle so much with this even though I’m a really capable writer myself. I have vacillated with teaching grammar over the years and can’t land on a satisfactory practice between the necessity of knowing it and the pointlessness of endlessly regurgitating it. I love the rationale you lay out in this essay. How do YOU teach grammar? Would love more explanation and direction. Thank you!
Tricia,
Thank you so much for the kind words! Grammar is such a tricky subject, and certainly worthy of its own post. For what it's worth, I wrestle through these thoughts on a weekly basis, so I hope I can distill something helpful.
To start, as teachers we're assessed on taxonomy, or whether students can name grammatical structures. And I see the utility here. Michael Clay Thompson provides a useful framework here through his Magic Lens series, visualizing grammar through four levels (of abstraction). I've used his framework for years and it works better than sentence diagramming for understanding *how* grammar connects.
Since grading taxonomy takes time, over the past few years I've started using Canvas for automated grammar assignments. I adapted Thompson's system but stole sentences from the first Percy Jackson book. Thus, students have automated grammar assignments where they get the best of three attempts and feedback for wrong answers.
That said, while it sounds nice on paper, I've never been satisfied with it. Despite numerous attempts at ID'ing words, the taxonomy doesn't quite stick. I believe even the best of grammar assignments suffers from predictable problems--namely, that students do not understand how words function *as groups*. (Grammar asks to move upwards from specific words to general categories, but never to identify words as groups.)
In a perfect world I would teach a freestyle mix of activities--ID'ing aspects of grammar mixed with sentence diagramming with a lot of time spent on sentence addition and sentence combining. (James Moffett wrote a lot about the latter activities.)
I know at some point I'll devote a lengthy post to the subject. Would you mind if I saved your comment and used it for such a post later?
Best,
Adam
Adam, Such a thoughtful and thorough resposne and recoutning of your practices! I tried Michael Clay Thompson in 4th grade but no one really taught me how to use it and my students dreaded it. But his work is consistently suggested to me, so I'm curious and maybe I just need more explicit training. Are you teaching grammar daily and then asking students to apply it in context in writing assignments? I love that you've used literary passages from a Percy Jackson. I'm sure students connect with that although it does seem that the transfer of grammatical skill to writing is inconsistent. I'll look forward to your post on grammar in the future and am happy for you to save the comment and also go into more detail about my misgivings and fails. All the best to you and what I'm assuming is likely a return after winter break this week. Tricia