Blog Post 4: Meaningful and Applicable Language & Grammar Instruction in ELA

 Hello All!

I hope everyone is doing well and enjoying the cold weather we’re finally getting. I love it and can’t wait for the upcoming snow and holidays!

 

How do language and grammar enliven our writing, and help us appreciate and evaluate the texts we read? How will I design ELA instruction that helps my students achieve these goals?

Today I am considering how I can integrate language and grammar instruction in my ELA classroom in meaningful and effective ways. Teaching language and grammar can be challenging, and I have found that students often dread it and try to get through it as quickly as possible without fully engaging. I want to include language and grammar instruction and practice in my classroom in ways that are engaging and meaningful to students. This makes them much more likely to learn and to use grammar and language to enhance their own writing.

 

My Experiences

 

When I was in school, I honestly do not think that I ever received any truly meaningful grammar instruction. Most, if not all, of my language and grammar lessons were very traditional and included vocabulary and spelling tests as well as repeated editing and correcting of random, out of context sentences. This was not very effective in my opinion and it seemed that my peers and I retained very little knowledge from these activities. I remember frequently trying to remember grammar rules and sentence types while writing and being completely unable to despite having done exercises with them before.

 

In my current placement, my mentor teacher and I have found a few ways of implementing grammar and language instruction in effective and engaging ways, and we have noticed students using knowledge from these activities in later writing assignments. For example, when we were reading Antigone, my mentor teacher found an excerpt of the play that used lots of em dashes. She printed out copies of the excerpt and created a short mini lesson over em dashes to go along with the text. She read the excerpt with students and had them notice what effect the em dashes had on the excerpt. Students thought about this and noticed that they found em dashes more interesting to read than commas and that they thought it was “cool” how they were used in the text. After this, my mentor teacher had them do a short writing activity of their own where they practiced using em dashes, and the students were very engaged and successfully included em dashes in their own writing. This unit was several weeks ago at this point, and since then, I have seen a handful of students use em dashes successfully in other pieces of writing. This showed me that having them study grammar in context allowed them to understand and retain the information much better and made it easier for them to use them in their own writing. Rather than just seeing the em dashes in short sample sentences, students saw how they could be meaningfully and effectively applied in a classic piece of literature to enhance it, and this made them want to try it to enhance their own writing.

 

In Context, Always! Make it Meaningful and Applicable!

In this unit, my mentor teacher showed how em dashes could be used to create more interesting “brushstrokes” in students’ writing (Noden 7). Harry R. Noden’s Image Grammar: Teaching Grammar as Part of the Writing Process, he refers to specific grammar and language choices that enhance writing as “brushstrokes.” Noden talks about writing in terms of “painting,” and discusses how certain types of punctuation, word choice, and sentence types allow writers to “paint” their sentences (Noden 7). According to Noden, grammar and language can be used in stylistic, creative ways to really enhance writing and make it better or more interesting.

 

When my students saw how a certain grammatical choice, using an em dash, enhanced a text they were familiar with and impressed by, they saw in context how grammar and language serve practical and interesting purposes in writing. I believe this activity was more effective and engaging for my students because they were able to study grammar in context, observe its effects on how the text is read, and practice using em dashes meaningfully in their own writing.

 

Overall, I think that effective language and grammar instruction relies on showing students that grammar and language truly enhance and add to their writing. When students see how language and grammar decisions make other texts more interesting, get to practice it in their own writing, and see how their writing becomes more interesting, they learn that grammar and language and important in writing and that they have meaning beyond the random exercises and sentence editing worksheets they’ve completed in the past.

 

In my future classroom, I think I will integrate effective grammar and language instruction into my ELA curriculum by showing students how important grammar and language are to writing, showing them mentor texts with interesting “brushstrokes,” giving them chances to practice “painting” with new grammar and language strategies, and focusing on how grammar and language can be genuinely meaningful and applicable in enhancing their writing (Noden, 7).

 

References

Noden, H.R. (2011).  Image Grammar: Teaching Grammar as Part of the Writing Process. 2nd ed.  Heinemann.