Words, Grammar, and Vocabulary Quizzes

First off—here’s my resource link for the week: http://www.myfavoriteword.com/. This is a great place to share your favorite word and to look through what other people have submitted. What I really like about this site is that all entries are reviewed before they’re added to the list, so it’s not like a hundred people can write in with the same favorite word, and then all the formatting is the same so it’s more user-friendly. Also, submitters write a little bit about what they like and what it means, which is more interesting than just reading cool-sounding words. It would be great to share with this students—if nothing else, it reflects the teacher’s passion and enthusiasm for language (and shows that a bunch of other people have the same passion), which can’t hurt.

Secondly, wow—the Dornan chapter “Grammar, Correctness, and Style,” is about to overflow. As I was reading, I felt like every sentence was important and potentially useful, which is, admittedly, something I don’t often feel when reading. I think the authors have captured the importance of grammar in a really convincing way. I’ve always been a supporter of teaching about grammar, mostly because I enjoyed it when I was going through school myself, but I also do believe that knowing conventions actually can improve writing. A couple of big points stuck out to me in this particular reading:

Point #1: We’ve heard it a hundred times, but teachers need to constantly expose students to well-written literature and varied writing styles. According to this chapter, oral language is more complicated than written language only until 7^th grade, at which point the written language actually becomes more complex. I’ve never really thought about that explicitly, but it’s true—how often do I speak in complex sentences? Take a look at the second sentence of this entry, for example: “As I was reading, I felt like every sentence was important and potentially useful, which is, admittedly, something I don’t often feel when reading.” I feel like that’s my voice, but I don’t think I’d speak that thought aloud in the same way—it’d probably be something more like “When I was reading, it just felt like every sentence was important and useful and that’s not something I feel a lot when I read.” I used to think that a good tip for writing was to just write how you would speak. Maybe that’s a starting point, but now I’m convinced that writing isn’t just oral language written down. The point is, written language needs to be experienced and practiced and modeled if we expect student writing to improve. The other huge component, I think, is that teachers are explicit about what makes the well-written examples well-written. How does the use of commas help us read the sentence more fluidly? If students can identify what makes for strong writing, they’ll be able to practice translating those techniques into their own writing.

Point #2: “Good” English is appropriate English: for both the writer and the reader (p. 85). One of my biggest pet peeves in grammar lessons is when teachers say, “well, think about it—what sounds right?” It’s frustrating, because that works in some cases, but it’s completely useless to anyone who doesn’t speak Standard English all the time. When I teach grammar, I want to be clear to students that I’m teaching Standard English conventions, and there’s a time and a place to use them, depending on the audience and the content of your writing. Also, I think both this text and the Culham chapters did a nice job of reminding us that just because a technique works well for one kind of writing, that doesn’t mean it’s always beneficial. Yes, we like to push students to find unique, colorful adjectives, but that won’t always be the best way to dress up a sentence. We all know that, but the trick is to remember that we know that when we teach adjectives. I don’t think we have to worry about confusing students with “sometimes this is a good way to go, sometimes it isn’t”—that kind of ambiguity applies to so many other things in life that I think if we’re upfront about it, there will only be benefits.

I also really liked the “what should we teach and why” section of this chapter. I took advanced grammar in high school and liked it, but it really was pretty useless to learn and identify appositives, participial phrases, object of the gerund, etc. And diagramming sentences has always been beyond me… what do all those lines mean?? I guess it doesn’t hurt to learn things like that, but realistically, why bother spending time in the classroom on something that half the students will never retain, and the other half will never conquer in the first place? I really liked the lists they came up with about what’s important to teach—granted, I have no real experience in the classroom, but it seems like they got the essential pieces pretty much right on.

One final unrelated piece: In the “word choice” chapter, Culham went out of her way to tell us not to teach words or vocabulary by assigning a list or having students use a set of words in a paragraph. While my first instinct was to nod along and agree that those tasks never really did much for me as a student, I quickly remembered that during my student teaching I’ll be responsible for introducing a set of vocabulary words each Monday and testing them on Friday. So, um… what should I do??

Would this blog entry be better if it were written in a 5-paragraph essay?

Organization is clearly an important part of good writing, but it seems like a difficult idea to teach. I think the most important aspect that the Culham chapter pointed out was that there isn’t just one kind of organization—a piece might be organized by space, time, content, perspective, etc. Looking back on my own writing assignments over the years, I feel like teachers often get stuck on the idea of organizing by time: First, this happened; next, this happened-- and so on. That’s a useful way of thinking about some pieces, but a good story doesn’t necessarily follow that kind of linear construction. I think the more teachers can use examples pulled from literature and articles and previous student work, the more we can emphasize that “organized” writing looks different in different contexts. My favorite point from the Dornan text was that everyone organizes differently. We know an organized desk when we see one, for example, but it seems like no two people organize their desk exactly the same. Students might find that analogy useful, because it reminds us that there isn’t a formula for organization—it’s just a matter of finding what works for the writer and the writing.

It was interesting to read about the different “types” of papers that teachers typically assign their students to write. The more I think about it, the more it seems so silly for teachers to focus solely on the end product and disregard the writing process. In my opinion, that’s the biggest downfall of the 5-paragraph essay-- there's no attention to process. The student doesn’t have to learn anything or do any real thinking, because there’s already a set form they know they must produce. Actually, when I wrote papers in the 5-paragraph form, I barely even thought of it as a writing assignment—it was just an assignment. The only revision I ever did was to move Point One to Point Three, or maybe change the wording of my thesis statement. I know that writing these didn’t help me at all as a writer, except for perhaps strengthening my ability to write a 5-paragraph essay about a topic I didn’t have to care about. That said, I do think that we as English teachers can’t completely throw the form out of the window. I like what Wesley suggested in her article about focusing instead on three parts: an introduction, a body, and a conclusion. Then, it’s not “okay, what three points can I mention,” but “okay, what do I want to say.” We have to make sure that students do understand the uses of a clear introduction, coherent body, and concise conclusion-- we just shouldn't mislead them into thinking that that's the only kind of writing that works.

On a different note, my favorite reading of the week was actually the article about multigenre responses to literature. I absoluately loved the idea of having students respond to literature by writing in different genres, and I’d really like to incorporate something like that into my student teaching. But I’m struggling a little about how to handle it practically—how would you fit in time for revision and make sure that everyone is making progress when everyone is writing something different? Suggestions welcome. Oh, and my resource link for the week relates to multigenre writing too: http://www.sheboyganfalls.k12.wi.us/cyberenglish9/multi_genre/genre_types.htm. One of the points made in the Gillespie article was that the teacher wishes she had given her students a more thorough understanding of what each type of genre was before they dove into writing them. This site provides a pretty good list of different genres, and the descriptions are written specifically with students in mind.

Writing!!!

I’m really interested in how to teach writing—analyzing literature is fine, but the composition component of language arts classes is what really excites me. I’ve heard a little bit about the “6 Traits” approach to teaching writing before, so it was super interesting to me to read about it in detail and get concrete examples about how to incorporate the method into the classroom and into assessment. I was a little concerned that it would be too formulaic, but Ruth Culham quickly reassured me this isn’t the case by pointing out that nothing is ever a “quick-fix” or perfect tool to use to teach writing. I appreciated the upfront honesty. Plus, I think she gave a lot of good support for why 6+1 Traits of Writing makes sense and can be really useful. Maybe my favorite thing about using this method is that it clearly names distinct elements of writing, but it doesn’t take any creativity out of the actual writing process. In fact, it actually encourages the individualized part of writing by emphasizing voice as one of its traits. There is so much going on when someone writes—I even like writing, and it’s still overwhelming when someone asks me to develop a good piece of writing. Having specific traits to focus on is a really nice way of breaking the process into more palatable steps, I think. The only thing I’m wondering about is how effective it would be if it were used in just one class for one semester. Just understanding the six different traits and becoming comfortable with what they refer to might take some getting used to for some students. I suppose ideally, this method would be put in place at the district level, so there would be consistency across grade levels and among teachers. It would be great if it could even be referred to in non-language arts classrooms too. If used in that way, I do think this could really be a way to help students’ writing improve.

Awhile ago my mom gave me a book that lists a bunch of children’s books that are good examples of each of the six different traits—she was a Title I Reading Teacher for several years, so she was using children’s books mostly anyway, but I think children’s books would be a great introduction to the traits at the secondary level too (and wouldn’t Eva be proud?). I can get the title and author of that book if anyone’s interested, but I also found a website that had the same idea: http://cfbstaff.cfbisd.edu/baarg/picture_books_for_teaching_six_t.htm. There’s quite a few books listed in each category, so I think it makes for a pretty good resource. Plus, it gets bonus points from me, because under several different categories it lists one of my favorite books of all time: “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.” (Although, in the interest of full disclosure, a big part of why that’s one of my favorite stories is because it was also made into an amazing 30-minute cartoon musical.)