2020 Workshop Talk | 53:56 | 7-12, Rhetoric & Composition
Summary
It’s all in the philosophy. When we isolate grammar, we pull it from its natural context, its relationship to the words a student writes. By fastening grammar instruction to writing and immediate need, Constance Weaver’s Teaching Grammar in Context (1996) broke ground by smashing the routine use of stand-alone grammar exercises. She advocated short bites, immediate application, and no books. At two to three times a week, this strategy is effective and flexible for any subject at almost any grade level that requires writing. Teachers can adapt grammar review and new material by noting patterns with the first writing assignment of the year. Are many missing how to use possessives or homonyms? Are commas everywhere but where they need to be? The teacher’s evolving review list is based on each class’s needs. Mini-lessons are taught with board examples, pictures, a paper copy of a rule from a grammar text, or my favorite, student examples from graded writing. Join me as we discuss the many delightful ways we can practice grammar instruction and help our students consistently apply it in their own writing whatever the subject.
Speaker
With a MA in Humanities from Faulkner University’s Great Books program, Christine Norvell has taught high school English in public, classical, and homeschool worlds for sixteen years, most recently for Regent Preparatory for the last eleven. She now joins Kepler Education, an online classical education community, to teach world
and American literature courses beginning in August 2020 . Christine is a senior contributor at The Imaginative Conservative and author of Till We Have Faces: A Reading Companion (2017). She also writes regularly for literary and classical websites and is wife to John and mother to three boys and the family cat Pippin in Tulsa, Oklahoma .
Additional Materials
See OutlineThe Association of Classical & Christian Schools presents Repairing the Ruins, the ACCS annual conference, copyright ACCS. You may make additional copies of this recording for use by your school but please do not sell any copies of the recording, or post it on the internet.
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