Teaching Grammar a Sample

Grammar Lessons:

Overall Rationale- It is important in the context of understanding language that

a student have a concept of the structure of our language. It is through an
understanding of this structure that they can modify their language when
speaking or writing to conform to conventionally held biases in our society.
According to Dunn and Lindblom in chapter 16, student writing is read for
correctness rather than content/expression. This activity helps low literate
students learn how to generally create a sentence that is not a fragment, but
more importantly teaches them to determine key details from what they have
read and put it into a concise statement that can reflect their understanding or
view of what they read. This is pretty much the gist of chapter 16, that writing
should not just be about grammar.

Materials:

Level A- writing sheet

In this event ______________ _____________ _____________ . Then, __________

WHO WHAT WHERE WHO

________________ _____________. Finally, ____________ ____________

WHAT WHERE WHO WHAT

because _______________________.
WHY

Level B- Writing sheet

In this event ______________ _____________ _____________ . Then, __________

NOUN VERB NOUN NOUN

________________ _____________. Finally, ____________ ____________

VERB NOUN NOUN VERB

because _______________________.
WHY
Teaching Grammar a Sample

(Rationale: please note this lesson is for low literacy students in High School who are
expected to take content level classes and read high school level textbooks. While it
could be adapted for elementary, my focus is on teaching students to get the basic
concepts of a subject while not putting a burden on them as far as the reading aspect.
Grammar is not the key to my instruction although after reading these past chapters, I
feel I am doing them a disservice in not introducing them to the key concepts of
grammar. Therefore, I am adapting a current sentence frame I use to incorporate
grammar. For some of my students, in some students in general, they will be able to
make the connection of the grammatical structure, others are not ready for this skill
yet.)

Procedure:

Students will read a selection and then write a summary about that selection
using a sentence frame (A). The sentence frames are basically giving students
the structure and then they need to decide on what word fits the sentence
structure need. The basic structure given, are simple sentences, (Who, What,
Where, and for some Why). Student have access to the text to aid them in
deciding the answers to these simple questions words. I usually give students a
simple question sheet with Who, What, Where on it for them to pull out ideas and
then transfer these ideas into a sentence.

Next, students frames (B) are changed to Who(Noun), What (Verb), Where
(Noun)- Why gets into prepositions and direct objects.

(Rationale: My students are all level 1s with little to no literacy. This activity will help
students begin to understand the structure of a language which can improve fluency
and comprehension of the new language.)

Afterwards I would have students work in small groups to read their sentences to
get feedback from their peers. This feedback could be grammatical or content
based, such as The who you used, is not the main part of this paragraph, you
should have used this who, or that is not where the story took place it took
place here.

(Rationale: This would be my modified version of a grammar rant, many of my students

do not have the confidence level to take extreme criticisms such as evidenced in the
grammar rants. Additionally, they do not have the skills yet to critique another. This
would be the segway into such an activity after they have gained more skills and
confidence. Please note these are 14-20-year-old boys, mostly, who developmentally
need a ton of support to perform and to feel successful.)