Grammar-to-go

By Sandra Mikalsen
 

For this assignment, I will write a report on how it went when we applied the method “Grammar-to-go”, by Hæge Hestnes (2011), to our teaching scheme for an English class. I will give a description of the teaching scheme and the text we chose, including on what level the pupils are in English and a bit about the frame factors for this class. Afterwards I will give my own evaluation and reflection of the scheme and the method “Grammar-to-go”. 

In this practice period my group and I were placed with 6^th graders. The class consisted of 19 pupils, where their English skills varied a lot and two of the pupils was diagnosed with dyslexia. Fortunately for us most of the pupils seemed motivated for English and liked it. We decided to use the “Grammar-to-go” method during a visit from our University teacher, and therefore we found it best to conduct all of our chosen steps in this method in just one session of English.

The “Grammar-to-go” method consists of eight steps in total, but we chose only three of them. We had 90 minutes available and decided to divide the session into three parts – one part for each of us students and each of the steps we had chosen. For this method we also had to find us a poem, song or lyric to use the method with. So we ended up with a poem called Brother by Mary Ann Hoberman, from the book Poetry Speaks to Children (Paschen, 2005).

The first step we had chosen from “Grammar-to-go” was called “Speaking, writing, spelling”, and was about making the pupils familiar with the poem. This part of the teaching scheme was assigned to me, so the first thing I did was to present the poem on the smartboard by reading it out loud to the pupils so that they would get the right sound and rhythm of it. Afterwards, we read the poem out loud together a few times and talked about the form and content of the poem.  Next, I divided the class into four groups and assigned each group one stanza from the poem to be copied down so that they would get some practice in writing and spelling. Then each of the groups would get together to make a performance out of their assigned stanza. They could decide whether to recite the poem using different intonation, pitch, pace and empathy.

The second step was called “Adverbials of time” and focused on grammar, but without the pupils actually knowing they were working with grammar. For this part each pupil got a copy of a worksheet that we had edited in advance. This contained the original poem, a picture, and another edited version of the poem where all the subjects, pronouns and possessive determinatives were removed.

Thus the pupils task was to replace these with other pronouns and possessive determinatives. Before they got started on the task, the student in charge of this part repeated with the pupils what pronouns were, and gave them an example on how to do the task. 

The third and last step was called “Writing own poems, finding rhyming words”. In this part we wanted the pupils to write a five-line poem about anything they would like to write about. The student in charge started off with asking the pupils what they knew about five-line poems, and then showed them an example of a five-liner, including a recipe on how to make one. She also repeated with them what nouns and adjectives were. The class was already familiar with this kind of poem, but some of them needed a reminder and some inspiration anyway. 

In my overall opinion, the teaching scheme went well and we got positive feedback from the pupils. We also consider the pupils with dyslexia during the planning and adapted the scheme according to their needs. By doing so we also made it more manageable for the pupils who struggle with English. Most of the pupils were active and participated during the entire session, which made it easier for us to interact with them and get through most of our items in our scheme. The only unforeseen problem that we encountered was the amount of time required for each of the parts in the scheme. The first part of the session took much longer than anticipated because there was a need for explaining and writing down the translation of certain words. To improve the scheme, I think I would give each part more time and also maybe make it more diverse considering the pupils who needs more challenge. 

 

When it comes to my opinion about the “Grammar-to-go” as a method, I think it lacks the most important thing about the whole method – instructions on how to teach grammar! We had a lot of difficulties on finding a grammar-related task for the scheme, especially when the method contained only one step specific for grammar. Apart from these flaws I found the method easy to understand and apply. It also contained some good suggestions on how to implicate both oral, writing, spelling and creativity skills in working with poetry.

References:

- Hestnes, H. (2011) Grammar-to-go. I Guldal, T.M. og Otnes, H. (red.) Grammatikkundervisning. Språkheftet 4. Idéhefte for lærere. Tapir akademisk forlag
- Paschen, E. (red.). (2005) Poetry Speaks to Children. Naperville, Illinoise: Sourcebooks, Inc.