Blueprint’s Power Verbs

• explain
• justify
• demonstrate
• compare
• contrast
• describe
• gather
• solve
• count
• add
• multiply
• subtract
• divide
• calculate
• change
• examine
• show
• clarify
• point out
• present
• observe
• interpret
• analyze
• summarize
• conclude
• limit
• measure
• list
• draw
• inform
• construct
• report
• formulate
• identify
• generalize
• represent
• collect
• explore
• design

Great Grammar (TE 804 Reading – Anderson)

While waiting for this article to load, I was taken back to last fall semester, when I took a class on English Grammar as part of the TESOL program.  While I found the information in the class to be fascinating and useful, all I remember is how BORED I was sitting in the class as the professor lectured–despite her having professed how important it was to make English fun for second language learners.  And this is often students’ experience with grammar.  It’s boring.  How do we change this perception?  Hopefully Jeff Anderson has some good suggestions for me:

“Zooming In and Zooming Out: Putting Grammar in Context into Context” by Jeff Andersen

• What does it mean to teach grammar in context?
  • Grammar doesn’t need to be taught in the context of a whole text.
  • One purpose of teaching grammar is to give students “time to notice what effect the author’s crafting had on the reader–to play around with whatifs, imitation, permutation–they began using those skills in the context of their writing to shape meaning.  So we teach grammar to equip our students’ with tools to be effective authors…
  • I agree–students don’t necessarily need to know the labels for grammatical elements as long as they learn how to effectively manipulate them in their writing.
  • Zoom in and then back out to teach grammatical concepts–part of scaffolding
  • Teach grammar in the context of teaching students to be writers
  • Teach grammar so students take a writers’ stance, not a right or wrong stance.
• Lesson:
  • Ground in one grammatical context.
  • Connect with mentor text to find examples
  • Play with mentor text to discover how the grammar rule can be manipulated–and how to decide what is most effective.
  • Students’ play with another text to examine the rule–like linguists…
  • Students play with their writing using the rule and determine how to manipulate it best in their own writing.

This makes me think that it would be helpful to highlight four or five grammatical features in a unit of study, to integrate them in studying the text and contant writing, and then to focus on that in any extended writing assignments…