Grammar Instruction

This week at Beacon, I was able to help a student named Zach with a writing project. Zach is a senior and is required to write an autobiography for one of his graduation requirements. At Mrs. Walsh's suggestion, he agreed to let me read what he had written so far. "She can help you with your grammar!" Mrs. Walsh insisted.

I found out, a little to my surprise, that Zach was actually a very good writer. After reading through the paper once, I tried to ask him questions about the sentences that needed some further attention. His most consistent grammar issue was combining two independent clauses with a comma and no coordinating conjunction. When I asked him if he knew what a coordinating conjunction was, he said no. So I took him to the Purdue Online Writing Lab and showed him how to search for specific grammar or writing questions. Zach was pretty convinced that his way of using commas was just his way of using his "voice" in his papers. I tried to explain that there were times when conventional grammar rules could be broken for "effect" within writing - like the intentional use of fragments - but that combining two sentences with a comma was not one of them. Or, at least, that was what I was going to maintain.

I found that most of the time, I did not need to specifcally point out Zach's mistakes. I simply had to point to a sentence and ask him what he thought it needed. He explained to me that while he didn't know all of the names for grammatical components within sentences, he knew how to use them. And that was very obvious to me, as well. Zach had told me earlier that he read quite a bit and that when he found a book he really liked, he would almost always read it in only one or two sittings. I asked him if he thought that was one way he learned how to write well, and he seemed to agree that was a possibility.

This made me re-think my ideas about teaching grammar. I thought back to my years of homeschooling, when my mom would have me and my siblings write a one-page essay every day. While I did not know all of the rules of grammar, I was applying their conventions within my writing. It seems like that is the same thing that was happening with Zach. Though he didn't know phrases like "independent clauses" and "coordinating conjunctions," he knew how to recognize them within his writing.

We talked about teaching grammar in class a few weeks ago, and I was introduced then to an idea about teaching grammar through unconventional means - like having students copy the form of a certain type of sentence, rather than labeling the grammatical components that made up the sentence. I think after working one-on-one with Zach, I can see that kind of method being a lot more effective than simply teaching grammar rules.

Mrs. Walsh told me after class how helpful it was to have me sit down and work one-on-one with Zach. I assured her that I really enjoyed it and told her some of my thoughts about teaching grammar through writing rather than through memorization of a set of rules. She explained some of ideas about teaching in a way that makes the information relevant to the students. When a student is being taught about grammar based on something he or she has written, they are much more likely to embrace and remember the instruction.

I really enjoy the opportunities to work with students one-on-one at Beacon. There are certainly some things about the charter school setting that I still question, but I can also see many advantages to giving individual instruction rather than class-wide instruction. And it is also a lot of fun to get to know the students as I work with them individually!