Education World-"Not Your Mother's Grammar Lessons"

The article I found was from the website Education World. It discussed important grammar related topics with an author. It pointed out that the issue most people outside of the education world believe to be debated is whether or not to teach grammar in schools. But the real controversy is over how to teach it. So many adults who grew up frustrated with how grammar was taught are now drawing more interest to the topic. Diagramming sentences should be things of the past, according to this author. She also beleives that not over using one particular technique could also help solve some of the frustration and hatred of grammar by so many students. I think that this is a key point. Not every student learns the same anyways. By trying several approaches, it may help promote all types of learners.

Image Grammar...

I really liked how Noden approached how to teach the art of image grammar through the five brish strokes. 1) the participle, 2)the absolute, 3) the appositive, 4) adjectives shifted out of order, and 5) action verbs. Before reading this, I had never heard of the brush strokes. The first example of adding a few ing words, participles, to the beginning of the sentence made the sentence more aciton packed and complex. I have, in my own writing, used this but I didn't know what it was called. I think that these techniques also help explain why and what these parts of speach are.

Rough Outline of Indy Teach...

Main Ideas/Title: (Fires in the Bathroom)
This book is co-authored by students in an attempt to give advice to their high school teachers. In my lesson, we will examine ways that teachers can make school relate to each one of their students to promote success.

Overview:
Special attention will be given to how to get to know your students well, classroom behavior, and creating a culture of success. We will also be putting ourselves in the positions of the students because thinking back to our own experiences can help us, as teachers, identify with what the students may be going through. Throughout the lesson, we will be looking at quotes from the co-authors of the book to get an understanding of the mentality of a high school student.

Essential Questions:

What signals can I send as a teacher to get them to know that I expect them to do well?

Is it better to be liked or respected?

How do we make high school something done by kids instead of something done to kids?

Activities:
At the beginning of the lesson, each person in class is going to fill out a questionaire suggested by the text, simulating the first day of a class, and then examine what is good or bad about it, and what a teacher could benefit from doing this activity with a class. After the discussion on creating a culture of success, each person in class will fill out another form describing a situation where they did not understand something. They will go through different questions about the situation, and then we will discuss how this will help us better understand and help our students. At the end of the lesson, we will talk about any disagreements from the book and problems that could arise from taking advice from our students. (all forms in lesson plan)

I hate red pens!

I can really relate to the vivid description of how it feels to get a paper back and you can no longer even see the ink on it any more. Instead, there are circles with lines extending from them to criticisms that are not even readable. ES. 395-say no more. It really does not help students, but instead is an over kill on the feedback. I also think it is funny that english teachers constantly complain about all of the homework and papers that need correcting, when they actually need to be cutting back on the time they spend releasing the fury of the red pen. Feedback on papers can be very helpful, as long as it is less intensive and not pointing out only the errors that have been made. Writing positive remarks on students' papers can do them just as much good as a correction could.

Resource Links...

I found a link to the website "Web English Teacher." Because my group teach is multi-genre, I found a lot of information on good projects to incorporate multi-genre writing in the classroom. This website also then gives you links to other ideas that stem from a multi-genre perspective.

Web English Teacher

I am From...

I am from tall cornfields, bonfires,
and home cooked meals.
I am from a town with friendly faces, farms,
and is traveled to in pick up trucks down dirt roads.

I am from large backyards with ponds, barbeques, and bug spray.
I am from fishing with my sister,
and the smell of the pig farm across the street.

I am from BP slushies and gas station pizza,
I am from chicken hanies, Knapps' burgers, and late night Taco Bell runs.
I am from kegs of beer that never end, and even the annual beer tent.

I am from Television parents.
Salute your Shorts, Wild and Crazy Kids, Hey Dude.
I am from Stick Stickly,
P.O. Box 163, New York City, New York State, 10108.

I can still hear "Don't knock it til you try it" and
Kenny Chesney blaring from trucks in the school parking lot.
I am from puking rally, and closed shops during football games.
I am from this place, movie quotes, sports, MIP's, family, friends, and great food,
Where everyone thinks we are better than you.

Starting to Write 2

The passage that I chose to write from discussed free writing or the "discovery draft."

"Often I don't know what has been written in my head so I write a discovery draft....In writing a discovery draft, I type as fast as I can, sometimes with the computer screen turned off. The important thing is to hear the flow of text."

This is just a few ideas from the passage, but it stood out to me because this phase, what the writer refers to as the discovery draft, is my favorite part of writing something. I am a big believer in the process rather than the product so I usually repeat the same steps for each paper I write. Doing the first draft gets any ideas I have down on paper and lets me write without having to worry about he grammatical aspect of the paper. I hand write rather than type and it really gives me a feeling of confidence once I see how much I actually had to write. After completing this phase, there are times when I may even change the entire original thesis because of one sentence that I jotted down that seemed enough to pursue.

Chapters 1

Daniels and Bizar:

My understanding of the Best Practice Teacing is implementing a structure, as a teacher, within the school that produces students who have a sense of critical thinking, decision making, independance, and a clear concept of the material that was taught. In short, Best Practice Teaching is the definition of what most people would say a "good" teacher is. This method consists of seven building blocks including reading as thinking, representing to learn, small group activities, classroom workshop, authentic experiences, reflective assignments, and intregrative units. These can be used some of this time, most of the time, overlapping, etc. Best Practice Teaching is truly based on a student centered classroom. It is not lecturing, sitting, listening, rewarding for silence, "busy work," or emphasizing standardized testing. This method could be easily incorporated into an English class or any other subject really. I would use this by doing several group activities. Bringing the class to gether to brain storm for paper topics or having a class act out a scence from a book they read could create a sense of community among the students.

Murray:

To be a write can mean a list of things to many different people. I think that after reading this chapter, to be a writer means to expand the experiences in your life. A writer gets to analyze the things that they are doing or life experiences that have occured. Sometimes things happen so nonchalantly that by writing about them or being inspired by them gives the writer a chance to reflect on what has actually really happened. A quote that stuck out to me was, "I started to write because of a terrible feeling of powerlessness: I felt I was drifting obscure, and I rebelled against that." This stood out to me because throughout day to day living I sometimes feel the attitude of people not caring encircling me. I realize that just as I don't care about others personal struggles at times, they also don't care but about me, which makes me feel like I could be invisible to most. When I write, I get so tangled in what is being written and my own thoughts that it is a nice feeling of empowerment.