Pour some grammar on me

After going over the Williams reading, I was delighted to find a topic by Williams that I actually agreed with. The difference between grammar and usage is something that brings up a lot of issues, both inside and outside of the classroom. The essential questions I enjoyed Williams addressing were "What role does grammar really play in in writing performance? How does one teach grammar effectively? and Who establishes these grammar/usage standards?" I think these are all important questions that Williams does a terrific job analyzing, although I did get a grammar hangover from all of his examples. Nevertheless, I was unaware of the fact that grammar lessons in the classroom do not improve student's writing or speaking. As an English teacher I am constantly nervous about making grammar and usage mistakes in the classroom and among peers. Often, when I do make a mistake I hear comments from my friends suggesting "Oh come on Mr. Teacher, don't you know that rule?" or something of that nature. It's also likely that a student will correct my grammar and usage at some point in my career. One thing that keeps me from making these mistakes is to know when I don't know, look up the particular grammar or usage topic, or escape the "affect/effect" use (for example) and use another word or sentence completly. Thank God for a stellar vocabulary! Also, see my link as it will direct you to "The Grammar Lady." She is Mrs. Action (not that kind of action) and has been teaching grammar and usage for 29 years. She has a great websit of grammar and usage info, FAQ's, and has a place to ask her any grammar questions free of charge. Cheers!
http://aacton.gladbrook.iowapages.org/id3.html

Spandel Calls Me Out

I was very happy to read Spandel's comments regarding student's writing straying from the promt topic. In the scenario I read, I thought the students who strayed from the topic did more work than the promt asked. I was shocked to find that many teachers deducted points for these students when they went above and beyond what was asked of them. "Wander from my topic and you will pay" is somthing I was exposed to in school and something I see now in my student teaching and work at Tuttle. Ofter, teachers are rigidly bound to grading on what the directions suggest that the writing quality is overlooked.
Where Spandel called me out was on her idea that students should be offerred writing examples for the work we aske of students. I found myself asking students to do a writing assingment in my lesson plan, and had no samples to show them about what I was looking for on a particular assignment. Granted I had a few published writing examples to show them from Tim O'Brian's "The Things They Carried" but I had no specific samples regarding the assigments I was going to give them. This made me rethink my lesson plans, such that if I expected to have students do these assingments, I should do them too and show them to my students.

Is it feasible, I wanna know now? (Bob Marley)

I was listening to Bob Marley's "Waiting in Vain" while doing the readings by Barron and Harper and enjoyed the way they gave real examples and information regarding revision. The one gripe i had was that all the students were writing about real-life experiences that they had lived. But would these exercises work with creative, non-fiction, or poetry writing? I think students are more hesitant to share creative writings as openly as they do writing non-fiction. Also, Barron didn't mention the valuable class time it takes to allocate time to students for typing and for individual teacher-student conferences for revision. For these reasons, I wanted to ask "Is it feasible?"

Mr. Morano (Hey, you said it!)

After finishing Romano's book, I found a lot of similarities between his idea of multigenre papers and the class I facilitated during Crosswinds Intersession. Without really realizing it, the lesson Joe, Eugene, and I drew up incorporated bringing in and listening to music, drawing, and writing a poem/story about the two to make one conglomerate final product. Not that I am an expert in multigenre, but I think the way Romano lays it out seems to suggest that multigenre paper needs to have a ton of different elements to be considered a multigenre paper. For us, we found that three elements to be fitting for our middle schoolers and the limited time we had to facilitate the lesson.
Other than that, I found Romano to have many great writing idea's for the Creative Writing class I will be teaching at South. In particular, the photograph poem idea rocks, and his suggestion regarding prose fiction was what I needed to hear. That whole chapter gave me a lot of direction because my cooperating teacher told me "Okay, I'll take poetry, you can do whatever else you want with the Creative Writing class." This was cool and everything, but overwhelming. Romano grounded me a bit and gave me some great ideas. All in all, Mr. Romano was worth reading (and buying).

My post for this week is an open invitation to my "Your Musical Image" lesson plan we did during Crosswinds Intersession. Just respond to my blog and I'll e-mail you our multigenre lesson plan like that! I think we should all be sharing our lesson plans to build up our lesson plan arsenal. See you in class. Holla back!

Expository vs. Narration: Clash of the writing titans

Upon reading Williams chapter 9, I found a confusing contraction within his argument. On one hand Williams suggests that "writing assignments in the high school rarely call for the kind of writing students are expected to produce in college" (280). On the other, one of his sample writing assignments #6 suggests "describe an even in which you did something that made you feel ashamed" (291). Can't there be a happy medium of both in high school? I personally feel that we as high school educators aren't simply preparing students for college, but for life in general regardless of whether or not our students go on to college. It seems to me that both expository writing and personal narrative are both important for students to express themselves in writing about topics both inside and outside of themselves. Essentially, I see value in both and feel they both serve important purposes for student writing, critical thinking, analysis, and self-expression.

Here is a neat site to English lesson plan ideas. Enjoy!

http://english.unitechnology.ac.nz/

Williams Response

Please read the following quotes from Chapters 3 and 4 from Williams "Preparing to Teach Writing" and see if you don't agree that Candance Doerr was modeling/showcasing these ideas throughout our first class last week. The text suggests that...

-"the goal is to use the small work groups to get students talking, thinking, and writing" (104)
-"the teacher might direct students to brainstorm in their groups for a period of 10 minutes; at the end of this period, each group would report its results, thereby producing a whole class discussion" (105)
-"Teacher as coach" philosophy (105)
-using writing prompts to facilitate Freewriting activities and class Discussion
-regarding classroom as Workshop, in which the students "write and receive meaningful feedback on work in progress" and "having each writer read his or her draft to the group" (140-1).

All of the following were more or less modeled by Candance. It's refreshing to see a professor practice what she or he preaches. Often in this program, we've seen professors explain the importance of student-centered approaches and engagement, while lecturing to the class, using powerpoint, while we sit in traditional rows. For the sake of not being a suck up to the teacher, I just got the impression that Candance Doerr was actually practicing the material she expected us to learn. Is anyone else feeling that? Check out the link below and Holla Back!

Available on JSTOR
* Principles and Practices of Secondary School Teaching by Herbert J. Klausmeier

Review author[s]: Charles B. Mendenhall
The School Review, Vol. 62, No. 3 (Mar., 1954), pp. 184-185