Originally posted by DoubleMeatWhopper+Apr 28 2005, 11:47 AM--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(DoubleMeatWhopper @ Apr 28 2005, 11:47 AM)</div><div class='quotemain'><!--QuoteBegin-steve319@Apr 28 2005, 02:31 AM
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There were several lessons that could be taught from that one essay. There is the school of thought that says to teach grammar in that fashion. That is, to take actual mistakes make in writing by the students and teach them in that manner. I am talking about material that was "covered" in previous years. Not, rules, that in the curriculum, are being presented for the first time in this particular grade level.
I helped a senior boy with his English last year. It was at the first of the year. Everything bit of the lessons assigned that day were taught at the sixth grade level. I didn't teach English that year. We went full departmentalzation. But some examples I remember that he had to do was pick out simple subjects and things like that. He did no better than the students I had in sixth grade when I taught English.
My last few years in teaching English, in the days of homeroom teacher teaching all language arts, I had the students complete every objective taught that year to every sentence even if that meant only five sentences were completed that day. Problem was that in the senior English book the same mistake was made as was in the sixth grade book. The second word of the sentence was the simple subject about 70 % of the time. So all the students learned was write the sentence and underline the second word in the sentence. That landed them a C. And they had no clue as to the assignment. So we put parts of sentence below the sentence and parts of speech above the sentence. By the time we had all eight parts of speech covered every word in the sentence was identified. I also had them diagram one sentence a day. I know some English teachers don't believe in that. As long as the students all worked the best that they could in class, I gave no homework in grammar. The A students didn't need it. The F students who needed it never did it and all it did was give them a low enough F that there was no way to pass. And if all they were going to do was underline the second word of every sentence, they were better off not completing anything. Lessons done wrong take twice as long to relearn.
Back to the original question. On skills that have previously been taught, do you prefer to reteach them in a systematic order or take each person's writing and point out the mistakes that they should have already mastered before their senior year?
Do you use red ink pens or are you in the school of thought that says the color of red for correcting is harmful to the student. One graduate course on writing I took said to never mark a student's paper. Just tell them verbally. That is their personal essay and we as teachers should not mar their work.
I know I make a lot of mistakes on here. Most are typos. I have gotten use to spell check which we don't have on this forum. When I have something important to write, I use grammar check and spell check. I print it. I let it sit a day. I reread it and correct it. Then I have someone else read and edit it. I served on writing curriculum objectives for the entire state. Mistakes were taboo. I don't see the need to go that far on this forum though.
I still help students. I helped a college freshman English student this week. He was in my sixth grade class, but at that time I only taught social studies so I had him only one academic period of the day.
Enough rambling for me today!
