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.
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