The Parlor
Face to Face Encounter
Well, in this case, I stepped into the “parlor” before I even had a clear research question. It was a gift of the HVWP.
During the summer session, we had the good fortune of participating in a workshop with another teacher group that included more experienced teachers. Much of the workshop centered around discussion in small table groups, where I was lucky to be sitting with two older and wiser elementary school teachers. When the topic of teaching grammar came up, one teacher enthusiastically recommended a book called Patterns of Power by the teaching-grammar-in-context guru Jeff Anderson. Since I (a) trusted the advice of these wise teachers, (b) my co-teacher and I had been struggling with a way to introduce grammar in the classroom, and (c) our former English department chair had mentioned the work of Jeff Anderson before and the seed of curiosity had already been planted, I quickly purchased a used copy of Patterns of Power on Amazon.
**I think it’s important to note here that my inquiry project was sparked by a natural and authentic conversation with two experienced in-service teachers, and not by reading an academic journal article. **
The Parlor: Written Literature
Patterns of Power: Jeff Anderson’s Patterns of Power is, in short, a series of lessons based on various grammar topics. In each lesson, students notice, discuss, and apply authentic grammar usage found in real literature. Since the Patterns of Power approach generates noticing of, discussing, and practicing grammar in a meaningful context, the hope is that students will relate to grammar as a way to communicate meaning instead of as a series of rules and will therefore be more excited about practicing it.
Towards a constructivist grammar curriculum for the United States: In this thesis, author Tyler Jennings Crafts of Bank Street College of Education ups the ante and argues for the implementation of a thorough constructivist grammar curriculum in all upper elementary grades in the United States. Like Anderson, Jennings Crafts argues that grammar instruction should be authentic and grow out grammatical moves found in real literature that students are invited to discuss and apply in their own writing.
My Inquiry Question
What happens to student writing when contextualized grammar lessons are taught in a writer’s workshop setting?
Why It’s Important
Simply put, my students have major struggles with grammar. In sixth grade, many students are still struggling with grammar “basics” such as capitalization, end punctuation, fragments, run-ons, and homophone usage. Although I do not believe that grammar is the most important part of being a good writer, I do believe that poor grammar usage incurs judgment and can have a powerful negative impact on students’ life trajectories. Put more bluntly, the sad reality is that our disenfranchised students will not be taken seriously by many members of the “establishment” if they cannot write “correctly.”
The Context
The American Dream school is a bilingual Spanish-English charter middle school located in Mott Haven, one of the poorest neighborhoods in the South Bronx. My co-taught 6th grade Humanities class consists of 3 classes of 30 students each. Many students are English Language Learners, Students with Disabilities, or both. Almost all students qualify for free or reduced lunch. Another important defining feature of the student population is that more than 95% of the population is Latino, and many are children of undocumented Mexican and Central American families. Throughout the week, each class of 30 students receives three 90 minute and two two 45 minute blocks of Humanities instruction.
This year, my co-teacher and I decided to reserve Fridays, one of our 45 minute blocks, for some kind of writer’s workshop. This idea has yet to be fully fleshed out, but so far it has mostly involved free-write prompts in a dedicated writer’s notebook that lives in the classroom. Since this year we have a day dedicated specifically to trying out new writing approaches, it made sense for me to implement an authentic grammar lesson (or lessons) in one of these blocks.
My Approach
My co-teacher and I decided to start with capitalization, an issue that plagues much of our student writing. Since we have students of extremely varying levels in the same classroom (in one classroom, we have a student with a pre-K reading level and a student with a 9th grade reading level), this lesson needed to be able to target as many students as possible. In the hopes of casting a wide-enough net, I created a grammar-in-context lesson that focused on SIX instances of capitalization: people, places, languages, titles, days, and months. A copy of the worksheet (front and back) is below.
Do Now
The lesson began with a “do now” where students brainstormed examples of people, places, languages, titles, days, and months. Importantly, at this point I did not want students to know that this lesson had a grammar focus. Then, once students generated long-enough lists, I had them read the language objective for the day: “I always capitalize names of specific people, places, languages, titles, days, and months.” Once the language objective was read out loud, many students immediately noticed that the lists they had brainstormed in the do now activity lacked the appropriate capitalization. I had students go back and fix their errors.
Noticing in IR Books
All students in our school are required to read Independent Reading books. For the next step in this this lesson, I invited students to open up their independent reading books, look for examples of capitalization, and then write them down. In this way, I was inviting students to notice authentic usages of the capitalization rules we had just discussed in literature that they like. I had various students share their examples, which I put on the board. Then, students circled their examples of capitalization and above each circle wrote down the reason that each word was capitalized.
**Interestingly, some unexpected issues occurred here. For example, some graphic novels were written in all caps, so I had students go to the back of the book and read the blurb. Some graphic novels also included caps for EMPHASIS or as an acronym, which were uses I had not anticipated students finding. Still, when students brought up these examples I honored them and explained that these were other valid uses of capitalization.**
Sample Sentences
Now that students were aware of the rule and had examples of the rule from literature that they liked, I invited them to look at a sample sentence I had written that incorporated the rules and make an imitation sentence of their own. My sample sentence: “Every Sunday in April, Señor Jimenez and I read Diary of a Wimpy Kid in People’s Park.”
**In some classes, I skipped this step, as I wanted students to have more time to apply the rule in a longer form.**
Creative Writing Challenge
The final step of this project was for students to write and edit a piece in their writer’s journals. The only requirement was that the piece include at least one instance of each type of capitalization covered in the lesson. The purpose of this final challenge was for students to have more extended and meaningful practice with the grammar rule that they had just noticed in their independent reading books and briefly applied.
Extension
In the lesson the following week, we combined capitalization and plural-y spelling (another focus area taught in a similar way) into another creative writing challenge. In this creative writing challenge, students had to use at least four kinds of capitalization and at least four words in plural-y form. The classwork is pictured below.
Student Work
As there is a wide range of abilities represented in each class, the student writing samples were extremely varied in quality. Some students were able to write highly creative pieces that incorporated all (or almost all) instances of capitalization, while others wrote basic narratives that only incorporated one kind of capitalization. Below are some examples of student work.
Clearly, each of these students is at a different place in their overall writing ability. However, in each example, the student was able to produce consistently correct capitalization (with more variation in the correctness of plural-y nouns).
Discoveries
I had three major takeaways from this lesson.
1. A vast majority of students understand and can implement capitalization in their writing. However, much of our student work still has many capitalization mistakes.
2. Our students are extremely creative and funny. The examples above, in my opinion, show both amazing creativity and a sense of humor.
3. Students want to write about their own lives, their friends, and their teachers.
Next Steps
Since it’s apparent that students can apply capitalization when it is the focus of a lesson, I’d like to explore how to make capitalization more consistent across student work. One hunch is that students simply need dedicated time to go back and look over their work explicitly for capitalization and other basic grammar errors. How can my co-teacher and I create more purposeful times for students to stop and check for grammar mistakes? Put more succinctly, how can my co-teacher and I build dedicated proofreading time into an already busy schedule? Would this proofreading time have a measurable impact on student writing and would students eventually remember to proofread without being asked to?
I also wonder about whether students should be more explicitly encouraged to draw from their own lives during their writing? This seems like an obvious yes, but how can we incorporate it more purposefully throughout the year? Is there a value of doing this in and of itself even if it doesn’t necessarily lead to better writing?
ECLInstitute - HVWP 2019-2020 