Rick and I were just talking about the many directions we are currently being pulled and it honestly is becoming increasingly difficult to even care about the three classes we are in right now.
I'm a little confused as to how this semester was set up for a variety of reasons, but mainly because now that I have been to my teaching school, met my teachers and seen my classroom(s) - all I want to do is focus on my student teaching.
So, here is the dilemma - do I plow through this weeks readings like last week - hoping to retain a shred of the information? Or do I simply skip all of it so that I can read what I will be teaching and keep on trying to create a bomb curriculum?
Well, lets give it a go.
Grammar? Oh man! Zzzzz.....
Nothing fires me up like "The Developmental Nature of Syntactic Complexity"! Okay, I will ease up. I'm sure that all I written thus far is riddled with grammatical errors because I simply am not a pro. This reading is a good "review" for me, being that I am basically at square one on grammar.
I'm Done With My Rant:
I am thankful for the line: "it may be neither desirable nor possible to hasten syntactic growth, which is more often a matter of maturation and writing experience than something that can be induced artificially through writing exercises" (84). Like so many things, I believe, we cannot just jam words and grammar into students' minds. It takes experience, maturity and practice.
I want badly to scribe poetry akin to Blake, Frost and Shakespeare - but my ability to even begin that goal starts with reading and analyzing their work.
OKAY - so this chapter is SUPER helpful - albeit, very dry for my tastes. That is the thing, you simply can't (in my opinion) spice up grammar. These are the rules (FIGURE 4.2, etc.) and regulations of writing - which I must teach to my students! However, light bulbs in my head really only light up when I see something breaking form.
I will need to re-visit this chapter - thoroughly - when I am teaching writing, because it has so many good examples of what to do and what not to do.
I like the peer editing diamond as well as the blunt reasoning. YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS BECAUSE: [fill in awesome reason I can give to my students here].
I may try and return with something more profound to say, for this Sunday night however, I'm saying "ciao."
Posts
Why you gotta be hatin' on grammar? No, actually I get it, most of us (like our students) have been given grammar instruction that has been so out of context and mind-numbing that we have become a generation of haters. I agree that the chapter is super helpful but really dry--kind of like grammar instruction perhaps? I think the key is to make our reasoning for teaching grammar explicit for students. Like you said--YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS BECAUSE.... In any case (not that you need any more reading), I think you'd really like my group's book, Mechanically Inclined. We're presenting this week, and I think it gives some great strategies for making grammar suck a whole lot less for students.
ReplyDeleteI am right there with you in regard to the rant that began your posting. I feel like I have more to do than I have hours in the day, so I need to prioritize, which means that certain things may end up skimmed or ignored. Like you, I am also questioning the setup of this semester, it seems that the program is pulling us in conflicting directions. Oh well, student teaching is coming faster than we would like to admit, and the times they are a'changin.
Rebecca
Everybody, although it doesn't feel like it now, I guarantee that student teaching is going to feel like a vacation. Think about it, you might toast out a weekend here and there, but other than planning ahead, staying on top of responding to student work, and staying on top of your texts, what else is there? Although it will be stressful, it will be a different kind of stress. A new, refreshing change. Not reading about critical literacies for the billionth time. We are going to rock out, and each and everyone one of us are going to be awesome. We're not going to be teachers of the year, and we shouldn't be. This is our first time doing this! Teaching takes a life time of practice to get "good" at, and we all just need to try our best. Whether we like it or not, we will all be pretty mediocre teachers at first. That's just how it works! Then you try your best, fail, keep trying your best, start to succeed, and everything starts to come together.
ReplyDelete----------
But on to Joe's posting about grammar... Although I don't have my book with me to cite the exact quotation, Dornan et. al. make the point that some "errors" shouldn't really be considered "errors" as they actually reflect natural development via experimenting and risk taking in the language learning process. In other words, students need to take risks, break forms as Joe discusses, and otherwise learn at least part of their language acquisition process through natural "trial and error" as Dornan et. al. call it vs. direct instruction.
This concept of "developmental errors" blows my mind when I consider the cultural value and power afforded by "standard English." Although I agree with this idea 110%, this would be an extremely hard sell for a lot of teachers. "So we are supposed to let some errors slip because it means that they are actually learning?" Although I understand that the logic is a bit confusing, this makes intuitive sense to me. Furthermore, who in the hell ever said that no grammar errors does equal learning? After all, I have seen many students with perfect grammar/mechanics that are so unclear in their actual meanings that it is absolutely insane.
Overall, as soon to be teachers, I really think that we need to consider this idea of "development errors." Although it is our responsibility to teach our students the mechanics of language, we need to at least keep this idea in mind when evaluating their progress and what we believe that they have learned. Now I'm not saying that we should let every error slip through in the name of natural development, I don't think that we should catch and point out every little thing either. After all, what kind of message is that sending to the students? That we are the cultural experts and they don't know a damn thing as in the context of Friere's "Banking Concept" of education?
However, this is indeed a slippery slope and some very important questions pop up when consider "developmental grammar errors:"
-How much do we let "slide"?
-How can we actually tell if an error is part of the natural developmental language acquisition process, or if it is a true misconception that needs to be "fixed"?
Peace.
Wow, I don't know where to start...! I stopped by Joe's blog to make sure he wasn't being unfairly missed for our recent awards ceremony, and instead I've stumbled upon an intense conversation regarding our graduate curriculum and the general grammar curriculum found in today's high schools.
ReplyDeleteFirst, I absolutely agree with everything that is being said about our classes right now. I just want to lock myself in my basement (which conveniently has a great open bar) to read texts, write lesson plans, and generate assessments for student teaching. The rest of this feels like giant hoops that are becoming increasingly harder to justify.
As for grammar, two notes. First, I think that you are all correct- without context these rules seem very dry. I believe teaching vocab and grammar must follow along the same parallel: we have to make it contextual, meaningful, and important to the students in order to gain a following. Secondly, I think that these rules are broken by great writers to highlight a part of the writing or the humor associated with that passage ("I Talk Pretty One Day" comes to mind here). In order to understand the importance of breaking the rules, you need to first know the rules! We can generate a great level of meaning for our students if we approach grammar and vocab in these ways.
I think "knowing the rules in order to break the rules" directly goes back the 5 paragraph essay debate which means my team officially won. Thanks for the "game, set, match" Jen.
ReplyDelete