Throughout our course, there have been ongoing grammar sessions led by Dr Lise Fontaine. The grammar sessions focused on how understanding grammar helps us to understand communication easier. She outlined that very early on in our lives, we learn to categorise and categorising words can help to improve our understanding.
As with any categorisation however, here are always exceptions. We were taught that grammar should not be taught discreetly, but instead it must be tied in with current topics and units. I found the session on the difference between spoken and written language particularly useful, with spoken language low on content words (nouns, verbs and adjectives) and high on pronouns.
Furthermore, Lise taught us the difference between external and internal connectives – with internal connectives helping to signal change to the reader, something we rarely use when speaking. We were also taught about the difference between passive and active voice and this is something I am keen to take forward.
Continuing on from the grammar sessions, we were shown a new way to assess pupils, using the R2L assessment grids. This ties in with the new national curriculum expectations, allowing teachers to assess whether a child is meeting expectations for their year group, or exceeding. This assessment is more focused on content, than punctuation and grammar making for a refreshing change.
Following on from WRITE course training I have been keen to teach grammar connected to the current Literacy units we are focusing on. I believe that this has helped children to perceive the relevance of grammar.
Namely, when writing narrative poems, we were looking at tenses (see appendix 18). In order to enable children to relate this to text type, I showed them a fiction text, using past tense and then compared it to a report text, using present tense. I asked children to identify the words which helped to reveal the tense, and although the children initially struggled they were later able to highlight these words, prompting discussion about the fact these were all verbs. After this, children were then asked to suggest why the report text might be written in present tense (Appendix 19). We followed a similar method when studying biography texts, identifying the verbs used and then suggesting why present tense had been used to discuss the life of Benjamin Zephaniah.
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In addition, I taught a lesson helping children to sort between ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ vocabulary. Whilst the formal vocabulary contained ‘Yours sincerely’, the informal equivalent was ‘Bye’ (see appendix 20). Initially we did not give children categories, but instead asked them to sort them. Whilst some came up with categories based on where you might find these phrases in a letter, others sorted them according to which words were synonyms and one group sorted them as ‘spoken language’ and ‘written language’. I found this particularly interesting, as all these categories were relevant. It again reflected Lise’s thoughts on the importance of categorisation for children. Although only one group categorised using formal and informal language, all children were fully confident when asked to sort the words into groups and actually all of their ideas were very telling and interesting. In particular, it sparked a discussion about how informal language is often linked to ‘spoken language’ and when writing, we must be aware of audience. After this activity, we discussed what sort of texts use formal vocabulary, and which might include informal vocabulary. I will definitely be using this kind of sorting activity again, as I found it revealing as well as insightful.
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Moving onto R2L assessment grids, I have found this new method of assessment very interesting. Although it is time consuming and therefore cannot be used to assess all pupils in the class, I feel it would be a good method for assessing borderline pupils. I particularly like its focus on content, over punctuation and handwriting. After starting to assess the pupil’s writing, I began to notice things I had never focused on before. In particular, after highlighting content words in one boy’s writing, I recognised that his work was often low in content words, and he instead used de-lexical word choices such as ‘have’ and ‘got’, instead of ‘purchased’ and ‘bought’. I started to recognise that even some of my more able writers had a tendency to write as they would speak and therefore there was a need to focus on this.