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Once again it is DigiLit Sunday. I hope you will link up your digital literacy wisdom post and read and comment on others. This is how we build an active online community.
Over the last few years, much has been said about teaching grammar in isolation. Basically, it doesn’t work. Skill and drill is out. These days grammar lessons are embedded into writing instruction. Having such small groups of students, I have the luxury of conferencing individually with a student about grammar using his/her own writing. I also give mini-lessons when a question comes up that everyone can benefit from.
This year I plan to add a new web-based grammar practice. My supervisor in gifted shared this site with us at our recent inservice. She said her high school students told her that many of the skills they practiced were on the ACT. The site is https://www.noredink.com/ It is free to an extent, but there is a premium version we are considering purchasing if my supervisor gets enough interest. I signed my students up and created 3 weeks of assignments in about 15 minutes. The site uses students’ pop culture interests to generate practice sentences. If a student misses a question, an instructional page pops up. My hope is this site will be motivating and individualized and take little effort on my part. I am looking forward to giving it a try.
The other plan I have for grammar is to design mini-lessons from the students’ posts on kidblogs. This gives me easy access to their writing. This week when they wrote their Slice of Life entries, I noticed problems with punctuation of compound sentences. I also noticed that one of my fourth graders used capitalization correctly. I will highlight the correct grammar (celebrate this) and ask for input on the comma problems.
I believe that grammar is important, but I do not want to focus so much on it that our creative writing suffers. By incorporating web-based practice and mini-lessons from student writing, I will encourage good grammar skills and celebrate writing.
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Reflections on the Teche 
We do grammar lessons as the need arises for individual students, Margaret. I hope this new link will be helpful to your students. I’ve found through my teaching years that different students are ready for more complex rules of punctuation at different times. It’s a challenge to get them to be aware of how they’re handling the punctuation as they compose. I never wanted it to stop their creating, but with older students, they should be well on their way to doing much automatically. Thanks for sharing what you’re going to be doing!
I agree the best way to teach grammar is when problems arise with writing. Some students just don’t really pay attention to it. I point out to them how grammar helps the reader. The book Eats, Shoots, Leaves is fun to share. I have the kid version.
Ooh – thank you so much for sharing this site! Grammar is so hard to make interesting and relevant! BTW, I love Eats, Shoots, and Leaves – both versions! Sorry for not linking up today. I start with students tomorrow, so I am busy, busy. Will try to contribute in the next couple weeks!
I love the idea of using KidBlog entries as grammar lesson springboards. I plan to have my kids use KidBlog this year as a way for them to create digital portfolios that showcase learning. If I use those entries, they will be able to show improvement right there. Thanks for the idea So glad I joined this linky today!
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