My High School Teaching Experience

About a week ago I had the opportunity to plan and teach students in a high school for two days. I just want to share the experience and what we did with them. I co-taught with another student in my class and we together came up with a great writing assignment that follows best practice.


For this two days of teaching we had students write a script for a commercial of a toy that they chose out of a bag. This required them to be creative especially since some of the "toys" in the bag weren't actually toys. The students were allowed to make up what they toy did so this also allowed the students to be very creative with this assignment. To get the students ready for this assignment we had them watch a commercial for a Barbie house and then we had a discussion about what they noticed in the commercial so that they could get some idea about what to do. Then we went over what the script should look like. We gave them an example of a writing script for a commercial and told them this is what theirs needed to look like.

Since research as soon that teaching grammar through context is the way to go and the best way for students to learn grammar. So we decided to have students focus on punctuation such as the colon, comma, ellipsis, and more. It was better to have the students focus on one grammar concept than overwhelming them with more. 

So for the second day of our teaching we had them work some more on their script and then we had them peer review each others work. During the peer review we wanted students to focus on the punctuation since that was the main idea for this project. After the peer review and some practice we had students present what they had. Another huge thing that we did to prepare students was giving them a model of a script that we created and we acted it out for them and that was something really helpful. The students did a fantastic job and this project is something that I would consider using in the future and something I wanted to share so that other teachers have the opportunity to use this or try it.

Here is a great website that gives ideas for different genres that students can write in to learn grammar and to be creative. 

Boy Writers

Well all know that boys and girls are interested in different topics and I think its important to think about that when assigning a writing assignment. As teachers we need to be flexible about topic choice because otherwise boys will be uninterested at writing at all. Yes, its true that boys like to write about violence and that they like to be funny. I think teachers need to give boys a little more leniency to what they can and cannot write about. Ralph Fletcher agrees and his book Boy Writers talks about ways to get boys interested in writing and how to relate to them as writers. 

Overall I think the book was great and had a lot of great ideas to help all teachers but its good to note that a lot of this book assumes things about boys. It assumes that boys like to write about violence and it assumes that boys want to be humorous in their writing. So its always good to remember ,as always, that not all boys are the same and this book fails to incorporate that message. It is a great book with a lot of great ideas but just keep in mind that not all boys are the same.

It some good ideas it had that you can incorporate into your classroom. One great assignment that I think that would work really well is having kids is having them draw a place that they remember from childhood like their neighborhood, a park, or anything similar to that. Then after they draw, the students write and describe that area and go into depth about where they spent a lot of time and where they weren't allowed or etc. I think this is good way to help students imagine something so that they can use that creativity to write.

Here is a website that gives some great journal topics to consider which could speak to boys and girls in your classroom. Maybe they will inspire them to want to write.

  

Writer's Notebook, Place Where Students Can Play with Writing

Students need a safe place to write and play with new techniques of writing and that is where Jeff Anderson came up with the idea for the Writer's notebook. He has the students break the notebook into many sections that will be useful and also a reference for them for their writing

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One section that he talks about that I thought was something that was interesting was a the "Beginning with Writing" section where students are just expected to write without stopping for ten minutes. Its a good way to get students to blurt out whats going on and to react to something they are reading in class. Anderson has them write after he reads paragraphs from books out loud as well which I think is a great idea where he asks them to pick up phrases that stick out. I think that is a great way to get students to notice what they like and things that they might want to use in their writing

.I also really enjoyed Anderson's idea of the Author's word and phrase palette where as students are reading they can write down words and phrases that they really liked and what they might want to use in their writing.He wants them to look for things like action verbs, cool words, or phrases that they like. By writing this in their notebook they can go back to it later to add it into their own writing to enhance their writing.

Another great idea that Anderson talks about in his book is the idea of "the Writer's Eye" where students can write experiences they have had and things they have observed with their own eyes. I think this is a great way to give students ideas of what they can write about. It gives them a place to write down the places, things, people, etc. that they know really well. 

Ralph Fletcher also has a book about the writer's notebook which has ideas that are a little different than Anderson but they have some similar ideas as well. It could be another great source to add even more to the writer's notebook.

How to Teach Grammar Effectively According to Jeff Anderson

Mechanically Inclined the novel by Jeff Anderson brings up some good points about teaching grammar to students based on his experiences in the classroom. One thing that he talks about that I really liked was the idea of teaching with models from literature. He talked about using authors such as Gary Paulson and other texts that could relate to students and something that interests them. Research shows that relating grammar to students in this way is better than doing worksheets on grammar or doing grammar when its not related to anything. When teachers just give students a worksheet, students have a harder time transferring those ideas into their writing. 

Anderson says that using a mentor text is a great way to show students how commas or any grammar topic are working. Students can look at the mentor text and then try to replicate the way they are using the grammar concept in their papers and that is something that makes the idea transferable. Looking at many authors can give students ideas for their own writing and we want them to begin to read as a writer and see and appreciate what each author is doing with grammar. Anderson also talks about putting student examples up in the room because doing this will encourage other students to write like them or put in a good effort to get there work up there. 


Another idea that Anderson discusses in his book is the idea of reading aloud which I found very interesting. He said teachers should read aloud no matter the students age. Hearing the words out loud can help students see what they like about a text. He made the interesting point saying that what we hear and see will end up in our writing now or at some point later on. I agree with that because I know that sometimes I hear phrases from my parents or just from other people on the street and it just comes into my head when I am writing and then I use it in my writing. 

I found a great website to check out that includes tips and ways to teach grammar without using a worksheet or drill and kill kinds of exercises. It discusses ideas similar to Anderson.

Teaching Grammar During Writing

Many people in the world still think that doing the "drill and kill" methods of grammar is the way that students learn grammar best. I know from my own person experience that this is not the case. Growing up I had many teachers who implemented this method and I remember working in the work on the problems having to do with past participles, verbs, and nouns. I don't remember anything I learned in those types of classes. I still make mistakes with grammar in my papers and those "drill and kill" methods never helped me correct my writing. 

Reading "Teaching Grammar in the Context of Writing" by Constance Weaver showed that teaching grammar when it is relevant to writing serves a more practical use than then reading a text book and working on sentences in the book that need their grammar corrected. I want to implement this kind of teaching in my future classroom because it will be relevant to my students and it is the best way they will learn the most grammar the can. I do think that I may have to deal with a lot of parents who disagree with this methods, but I think we need to educate them to the reality of how well it really works. 

There is an article in The Atlantic that talks more about the idea that teaching students grammar in "drill and kill" methods can actually hinder their ability to learn grammar. So I think all teachers and district should move away from these methods but it is hard to determine if they really will. There are many books written to help teachers implement the new ways of teaching grammar that will help guide them through it. Hopefully educators will begin to see the benefits of teaching grammar through writing and it will take the place of these "drill and kill" methods.

Not One Grammar, but Many Types of Grammar

Before reading this article (The Grammar of Context: Breakfast, Bumper Stickers, and Beyond), I hadn't thought about there being many different types of grammar because growing up my teachers had just drilled grammar into me. It wasn't fun and no one liked to learn about. Although I think now there are many effective ways to teach grammar in the classroom where students will be engaged. I found a great article that talks about great advice to correct grammar in a middle school classroom. It makes a lot of good points about exposing students to good examples of grammar and also how being a grammar police will ruin it. 


As a teacher we can silently correct the grammar but we don't want to overwhelm students with mistakes on their papers. Grammar is more than misspelled words and punctuation and that's why there isn't only one type of grammar. In each situation that your student is writing in their is a different type of grammar that is associated. The article talks about many different examples of activities or examples that you can look at to give students examples of these different types of grammar.

 For example they talk about the back of cereal box which was very interesting and something that I hadn't thought of before. From the back you can look at the audience intended and punctuation that was chosen and even the types of sentences used. Most of these things depend upon the audience that the author is trying to reach. I think it is hard for parents to see this as teaching grammar because for them grammar wasn't taught that way but teaching it this way is more beneficial and teaching grammar in isolation doesn't help students with using it in their writing. The connection of having these examples and having students practice these will have way more meaning than having separate grammar lessons.

The Importance of Using Professional Writing In Classrooms

I think that writing in classrooms can be a lot of fun but sometimes it can be hard to see when students will use that in the real world. I think it is important to spark creativity in writing as well but I think as a teacher its important to give students examples of where they will use writing in the real world.


It may be hard to think of professional writing situations but there are many that everyone has experienced. One example that the reading by Bush and Zuidema addresses is the idea of sub plans. We know the audience of sub plans is the teacher that is substituting but the students are also the audience because they will do experiencing or doing what was written in those sub plans. As teachers we need to make sure that those sub plans are clear so that the teacher will understand what they need to do with the students so that the time they are there is productive

There are of course many other examples of professional writing that after student's graduate from college will be using. In every profession that students are going into some type of writing will be required of them. As a teacher I think that it is important that we prepare students for these types of writing assignments that will be asked of them in the future. Teachers need to be aware of this type of professional writing especially since it will also be asked of them in their profession. We write directions, worksheets for students and we also write emails between colleague. It is everywhere we go. It can give students a purpose in their writing if they know its for an audience other than the teacher. Many students will want to know why we are doing an assignment and connecting these assignments to professional writing well show the relevance for them. I think students will be more engaged if they know its something that they need for their future. Also there is a great book for teachers that shows the different ways in which this professional writing could work in a classroom. It talks about using real world writing and doing that through mentoring and modeling.