View Content #26348

From https://somewheretoshare.com

Carrie Toth writes, "When I taught from the textbook, I taught grammar level by level. What I mean is that I taught present tense verbs, some commands, stem changers, and present progressive in level 1 then abandoned those verbs for reflexives, pretérito and imperfecto in level 2 and on and on…. when we finished chapter 2 and had memorized every conjugation of every reflexive verb in the Spanish language (that may be an exaggeration), we moved on and never talked about them again. There just wasn’t time! it was like I was at one of those hotdog eating contests and I was cramming everything in as fast as I could… most kids weren’t pro eaters and couldn’t keep up!"

Now, Ms. Toth organizes grammatical knowledge around communicative needs in a lesson. In the case of her blog post, learning is centered around a song, and students learn the grammar necessary to understand the song and complete meaningful activities, with the understanding that these same structures will be revisited again in the future, when once again they are needed for communication. 

Ms. Toth concludes, "Don’t feel like grammar in a song, a book, an article, or an authentic resource means you have to stop everything and teach a grammar unit! It isn’t a hotdog eating contest…take little nibbles over and over and they’ll eventually end up digesting the whole concept… and everyone will be able to do it in their own time!"

Read the full blog post at https://somewheretoshare.com/2019/01/08/grammar-its-not-a-1-and-done/