I believe that it is extremely important for students to know know standard grammar, but I don't know that I will incorporate grammar into my curriculum in an entirely obvious way. I don't think I will do sentence diagramming exercises or anything like that. What I will do, however, is have my students read...a lot, every day. I never really learned grammar on a word-by-word level, but I think I'm pretty good at it and I can thank reading for that. If students are exposed to standard grammar in text, I believe that they will pick it up. In addition, I would consider having a sentence-fixing exercise at the beginning of each class. It would be one of those "daily oral language" exercises where there is a grammatically incorrect sentence on the board and students must fix it. I found that useful in my English classroom in high school.
What I must understand, however, is that not every student will have an innate understanding of grammar like I always have, no matter how much they read. I think I will have to go on a case-by-case basis with this one. I am planning on teaching in a rural classroom, which will give me more time with each student, so I think tailoring my grammar-teaching to each student's needs is not entirely far-fetched. It will be a lot of work, to be sure, but I feel that I won't know exactly how to do it for a whole class. As a high-school student, I personally would have gained little from intensive grammar exercises, but I know that other students in my class would have benefited from it. The plan is to make kids read all of the time, and differentiate between them when it really comes down to it!
I also feel like I picked up most of my grammar and writing knowledge from reading anything and everything I could get my hands on. However, I think there are some nuances of grammar that cannot be gleaned just from reading. For example, I know I could not personally learn the proper/improper use of some punctuation marks without learning the specific rules. I think a balance must be reached. I like your idea of tailoring to each student. I wish we could all have that privilege in our classrooms.
ReplyDeleteIf I were to think of this issue in a more urban context (more kids per classroom) tailoring specifically to each student seems impractical. I may indeed end up teaching in a city for some time and then I would have to think about what you are saying more deeply. Upon further consideration, I do think I would have to do some explicit, full-class lessons on certain aspects of "grammar," such as proper punctuation as you mentioned. I think I'm going to have to play this one by ear. I just need a better personal (and explicit) understanding of grammar before I can decide what is important. Guess I better get on that!
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