Treasure Chest of Thoughts

The grammar debate is still on-going.  Should we drill, drill, drill…because those teachers that had these students before us simply cannot be teaching grammar?!  Or should we do as the research suggests and teach using anchor/mentor pieces and mini-lessons?

Well, I have a theory…as I expressed today during one of these very discussions with other teachers…good teachers at the APSI

We should drill, and we should model…using mentor texts and student examples.  Yes, student examples.

The combo method is the best.

I am convinced that teachers teach grammar, but the step we do not get to is requiring students to implement whatever grammatical skill that was just covered within their own writings…and covered extremely well, mind you!  Just ask any English teacher!

Why do we not get to this step?  When you already have several sets of essays to grade, who wants another pile of paragraphs to read!

I have a theory about that also…for I do not want another set of papers to grade! Let the students check…self-checks, peer checks. 

Mechanically Inclined is a great book.  Author Jeff Anderson offers some stimulating tips that support a shift in my teaching style:

If our struggling readers need to see a word forty times to learn it (Beers 2002), then I’ll make a leap and say students need to see grammar and mechanics rules highlighted in different contexts at least that many times to own them.

How many of us can say we do that…model forty times?  Twenty?  Ten?  Five?  Do we just give up?

Vicki Spandel (2005) gave a name to something I had been doing for the last few years:  “sentence stalking.”  I am a self-professed sentence stalker.  I am always on the lookout for great mentor texts:  sentences, paragraphs, essays, articles, advertisements, and novels.  I also constantly look for well-written student sentences, paragraphs, and essays…Kids love seeing what other kids can do.

I have just spent several hours attempting to re-organize myself…my hard drive crashed during the middle of the school year (with no back-up) and I have had to re-create/re-type much of my supporting materials.  Now, though, I am ready to begin placing mentor texts within my units.

Got to.  Need to.  Have to. 

For school starts in only month.