Students do me proud.
Sometimes when you walk into a classroom you can feel the tension in the air. The students are nervous, unsure of their abilities, and hesitant to even try. This is my world in a Pre College Writing class. But . . .
As with just about everything I do, I get creative and try my best to have fun. I truly believe that if you have fun your students will too. Hence, grammar lessons are mandatory in my class, but no one ever said I had to teach them in the traditional manner. So no overheads for this grammar diva. Instead, we are using a May edition of the Richmond Sunday paper to hunt for what we need. Essentially, I've got them hunting for usages of grammar each class, in a new section of the paper, and then they have to tell me how that part of speech or punctuation is used. Oh, and don't forget, they have to find and label these things on the their papers too. Seriously, on the day papers are due we go through some grammar lessons and hunt and peck before turning in. Good times, I say.
Now, what is the point of all of this? Heh. To hear the group I have giggle, murmur, and laugh at hunting for punctuation and speech markers, and when they tell me that they enjoy this type of grammar lesson, understand it more, and **cough cough** start to diagram a sentence on their own . . . priceless.
The best days are the ones where we have worked our brains to the point of exhaustion. I love it when my students do me proud.
As with just about everything I do, I get creative and try my best to have fun. I truly believe that if you have fun your students will too. Hence, grammar lessons are mandatory in my class, but no one ever said I had to teach them in the traditional manner. So no overheads for this grammar diva. Instead, we are using a May edition of the Richmond Sunday paper to hunt for what we need. Essentially, I've got them hunting for usages of grammar each class, in a new section of the paper, and then they have to tell me how that part of speech or punctuation is used. Oh, and don't forget, they have to find and label these things on the their papers too. Seriously, on the day papers are due we go through some grammar lessons and hunt and peck before turning in. Good times, I say.
Now, what is the point of all of this? Heh. To hear the group I have giggle, murmur, and laugh at hunting for punctuation and speech markers, and when they tell me that they enjoy this type of grammar lesson, understand it more, and **cough cough** start to diagram a sentence on their own . . . priceless.
The best days are the ones where we have worked our brains to the point of exhaustion. I love it when my students do me proud.
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