Once again, I love Anderson! This reading selection was extra phenomenol because for the first time I am being educated about actual practices, legitimate lessons- and they are GREAT lessons!
"If students are going to stare at writing and talk about it, they must see powerful writing models."
I 100% agree with this. We have talked in class about DORs and looking at incorrect sentences and correcting them, analyzing what is wrong about them. Couldn't that be damaging to our students. Isn't it possible that all of those negative text examples will be engraved in their minds and used in their writing, even if they don't realize it. I think it could be damaging. Mentor texts are a much more positive way of demonstrating good sentences. If students spend a large amount of time analyzing and breaking down good, intelligent sentences, they will be more likely to write similar sentences. Mentor texts > DORs
I spent a lot of time reading and thinking about Anderson's "Fragment Lesson". It really made me think about how we sometimes edit and correct students' writing without really taking into account what it is they may be trying to say. We don't take the time to flesh out the purpose in their mistakes. Could it be that what looks like a bad sentence to us, could have been the student's experimentation with grammar. Perhaps they were trying out using a participle phrase in a sentence, but they misplaced it so it all sounds wrong. If we take the red pen to it, we might as well tell the student, "you fail". Instead, we should be taking the time to look for what I call, "almost there sentences". As future teachers we should get into the habit of looking at incorrect sentences and asking the student what they wished to accomplish, what they were trying to apply, and then helping them correct it. That is beneficial...red penning the sentence is not. It is our job to give them the tools to correctly be creative.
On page 65, Anderson writes, what I think is, the most brilliant realization in the word of teaching grammar.
"I emphasize that the point of grammar is to help us write. Though we need not no every definition, we should know a few. Competent, confident writers know that an underlying structure holds some thoughts together and separates others. So, students need to be able to break down a sentence. This knowledge is the foundation for taking writing from choppy to flowing, from run-on to controlled."
Exactly! This passage epitomizes how I feel about grammar. I do not think knowing all the grammar definitions is necessary-far from it. But I do think knowing a feel of the basics is important and beneficial. If I know how to use fragments appropriately in a paper that I am writing, my words will flow more smoothly and I will be viewed as a creative writer. If I don't understand the difference between a fragment and a simple sentence, my writing will seem immature and choppy. It makes the difference. Learning the basics is the foundation of creative writing. You have to understand the fundamentals before you take on the complexities.
In the intorduction to Part II, Anderson gives an example of how is lessons are organized in the book. I appreciate that Anderson is using an incorect sentence example AND a correct mentor text to demonstrate the issue. Not only that, but he introduces grammar as the solution to the problem. I love the fact that Anderson is not just giving a worksheet defining fragments and handing out an exercise where the student identifies if a sentence is simple or a fragment. Instead, the teacher describes the error, both in layman's terms and in technical terms so that students can make that association, and then gives positive and negative examples before finally, initiating a solution.....grammar.
One of the processes that I noticed Anderson used multiple times was that of students closing their eyes and visualizing a sentence. This is a great idea-one that I am sure I will use. There is such a huge difference between viewing and seeing. Writing an independent sentence on a board and adding a dependent phrase to spruce it up is about a half a step up from a worksheet. Rather than doing it themselves, the students are watching you do the exercise. When the teacher has the students close their eyes, reads the sentence aloud, and asks them to visualize the sentence in their mind..they give students the ability to really see the sentence. Next, the teacher asks how the students visualize the same sentence when a dependent phrase is added. The students are able to visualize the difference between a plain old, dependent sentence and one that is creative, detailed. That is so amazing and empowering. The students are experiencing the change in the sentence within their own minds.
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Let them Learn.
I'm going to focus on the reading from Anderson. I found the opening story in Chapter 3 to be intriguing. Hollis is discouraged because, rather than asking him why he chose the picture that he did, the teacher tells him what he did incorrectly and declares him wrong. I wonder how much teachers would discover about students if they were to ask instead of tell. Perhaps we would discover that students do understand the concept or assignment, just not in the way you wanted or expected. But does that make them wrong?
Sometimes I think that when we edit papers we edit content as well as form. We take away their words and thoughts and replace them with our own. Along with that, I think that English professionals have preconceived notions about what is good writing. A story about the mechanics of baseball is not interesting or artistic in our minds so we don't give it a chance. What we should be doing is talking with the student and teaching them ways to improve upon and spruce up that story. That's where teaching grammar comes it- use the toolbox to build the masterpiece.
I LOVED Anderson's view on Writer's notebooks for the same reason that I think free writing is ingenious. I journal myself, and for the first time in 10 years I'm considering the fact that all of those entries are a "gold mine". Each page holds my thoughts, feelings, ideas...and they're all at my disposal. Not only that, but I can use my own work as a personal mentor text. I can stalk my own sentences. If I find one that I like or think is well written, I can examine it and figure out why it's a good sentence. Then I can take that knowledge and apply it to the rest of my writing. Kappoww! This reading caused me to realize, for the first time, that mentore texts aren't just something a teacher can find and use, but that a student can also find and use. Not only can they be used to teach good writing, but they raise a students self esteem. "I did it, I wrote a good sentence!"
Sometimes I think that when we edit papers we edit content as well as form. We take away their words and thoughts and replace them with our own. Along with that, I think that English professionals have preconceived notions about what is good writing. A story about the mechanics of baseball is not interesting or artistic in our minds so we don't give it a chance. What we should be doing is talking with the student and teaching them ways to improve upon and spruce up that story. That's where teaching grammar comes it- use the toolbox to build the masterpiece.
I LOVED Anderson's view on Writer's notebooks for the same reason that I think free writing is ingenious. I journal myself, and for the first time in 10 years I'm considering the fact that all of those entries are a "gold mine". Each page holds my thoughts, feelings, ideas...and they're all at my disposal. Not only that, but I can use my own work as a personal mentor text. I can stalk my own sentences. If I find one that I like or think is well written, I can examine it and figure out why it's a good sentence. Then I can take that knowledge and apply it to the rest of my writing. Kappoww! This reading caused me to realize, for the first time, that mentore texts aren't just something a teacher can find and use, but that a student can also find and use. Not only can they be used to teach good writing, but they raise a students self esteem. "I did it, I wrote a good sentence!"
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Don't just Show, Tell.
I'm going to focus on the reading from Mechanically Inclined simply because those concepts are really sticking with me.
As a middle school student, even as a high school student, I certainly remember grammar workbooks. In fact, my sophomore year of high school I had a thick vocabulary/grammar workbook that I lugged around every day. Every night my assignment was to complete 1 section, or about 15 pages, of grammar/vocab practice. Exhausting, right? The book "taught" us prefixes, suffixes, blah blah blah. Surprisingly enough, I could not tell you one thing that I remember learning from that book. Sure, I learned a number of those concepts, but I learned them through application and usage...not from repeated workbook exercises. As future teachers it is extremely important for us to find innovative, creative, and successful ways to teach grammar and mechanics.
"Pseudo-concepts"...wow! I had never heard the term before reading it last night. The example that was used dealt with the usage of its/it's...the pseudo concept is a "budding theory based on initial impressions". Students know that if they were to write The dog's collar was bright blue they would use an apostrophe in dog's to show possession. Therefore, in the sentence Its collar was bright blue they also want to insert an apostrophe even though that is incorrect. This is amazing to me for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, I make this mistake all of the time...occassionally I catch myself, but often times I don't. I could be wrong, but I'm almost positive that if I had been taught what a "pseudo-concept" was and why I was missuing it's/its...I would have understood my error and stopped! Really, it seems so easy to me now that I've had it explained in such a different context. I also like this concept because I think it opens the door to teachers understanding the minds of students. Students learn based off of what they already know. Even as a college student I often rely on prior knowledge to gain and understand new information. Prior learning almost acts as a type of scaffold to future learning.
It is no secret that grammar is a "shudderwhenyouhearit" kinda word. That applies to learning it...and it also applies to teaching it. It is obvious that over the past few years the attitude toward teaching grammar is fairly negative. Does that mean that as future teachers we should just ignore the problem and get that area of the curriculum done as soon as possible? No, as future teachers it is our responsibility to be the leaders of change. We need to start "creating" not "correcting". What we have always done in regards to teaching grammar is no longer efficient, so it is time to start figuring what would be effective. There are several aspects of teaching that I think are extremely important. Scaffolding, application, and context. Anderson explains the following strategy:
A teacher uses one sentence from a short text or passage the students have already read or will read. The teacher should read the sentence aloud, then ask the class what "sticks with them" or what they like about it. This is excellent for starting an open discussion and really getting to the heart of your students' minds. When you udnerstand how they see a sentence and its parts, you can better teach them to understand the grammar and mechanics of those parts. In other words, perhaps teachers can use the learning strategies that students already have to teach them new concepts. If I see that Susie really likes that a sentence is longer and has several parts, I can then begin to explain to her the idea of a complex sentence as well as how to form one. Now Susie knows how the concept that she already likes, works. This may not work for everything, but if it works for something, then it is useful.
As a middle school student, even as a high school student, I certainly remember grammar workbooks. In fact, my sophomore year of high school I had a thick vocabulary/grammar workbook that I lugged around every day. Every night my assignment was to complete 1 section, or about 15 pages, of grammar/vocab practice. Exhausting, right? The book "taught" us prefixes, suffixes, blah blah blah. Surprisingly enough, I could not tell you one thing that I remember learning from that book. Sure, I learned a number of those concepts, but I learned them through application and usage...not from repeated workbook exercises. As future teachers it is extremely important for us to find innovative, creative, and successful ways to teach grammar and mechanics.
"Pseudo-concepts"...wow! I had never heard the term before reading it last night. The example that was used dealt with the usage of its/it's...the pseudo concept is a "budding theory based on initial impressions". Students know that if they were to write The dog's collar was bright blue they would use an apostrophe in dog's to show possession. Therefore, in the sentence Its collar was bright blue they also want to insert an apostrophe even though that is incorrect. This is amazing to me for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, I make this mistake all of the time...occassionally I catch myself, but often times I don't. I could be wrong, but I'm almost positive that if I had been taught what a "pseudo-concept" was and why I was missuing it's/its...I would have understood my error and stopped! Really, it seems so easy to me now that I've had it explained in such a different context. I also like this concept because I think it opens the door to teachers understanding the minds of students. Students learn based off of what they already know. Even as a college student I often rely on prior knowledge to gain and understand new information. Prior learning almost acts as a type of scaffold to future learning.
It is no secret that grammar is a "shudderwhenyouhearit" kinda word. That applies to learning it...and it also applies to teaching it. It is obvious that over the past few years the attitude toward teaching grammar is fairly negative. Does that mean that as future teachers we should just ignore the problem and get that area of the curriculum done as soon as possible? No, as future teachers it is our responsibility to be the leaders of change. We need to start "creating" not "correcting". What we have always done in regards to teaching grammar is no longer efficient, so it is time to start figuring what would be effective. There are several aspects of teaching that I think are extremely important. Scaffolding, application, and context. Anderson explains the following strategy:
A teacher uses one sentence from a short text or passage the students have already read or will read. The teacher should read the sentence aloud, then ask the class what "sticks with them" or what they like about it. This is excellent for starting an open discussion and really getting to the heart of your students' minds. When you udnerstand how they see a sentence and its parts, you can better teach them to understand the grammar and mechanics of those parts. In other words, perhaps teachers can use the learning strategies that students already have to teach them new concepts. If I see that Susie really likes that a sentence is longer and has several parts, I can then begin to explain to her the idea of a complex sentence as well as how to form one. Now Susie knows how the concept that she already likes, works. This may not work for everything, but if it works for something, then it is useful.
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