Blog 3

In Darren Crovitz’s article “Sudden Possibilities”, he explains Mina Shaughnessy’s concept that teachers should look at the reasons why students make mistakes rather scribbling notes on how to fix. “Proofread” shouldn’t be the advice your students receive while in class because your students (most) don’t know the correct uses of grammar yet. [Parenthesis] They are still in the trial and error process of their writing. Grammar is also taught strictly based off memorization and copying a friend and luck. [List with “ands” and no commas] They are not understanding any of the information they are learning or answering.

The way students are being taught is Daily Oral Language (DOL) and Daily Grammar Practice (DGP). Both DOL and DGP don’t have students integrate grammar into their own writing. Instead of learning the material, students do the least they can do to get points. Students memorize the material that they need for that day; students don’t know the rules so instead of learning the material they copy from a friend; the students will also guess the answer just waiting for the teacher to give them the correct answer.

One of the alternatives to the typical DOL exercise that Crovitz gave was “transform a sentence to make it appropriate to other contexts”. The students themselves will have a plain sentence that they transform into a similar sentence but worded differently. [Reflexive pronoun to show emphasis] The example Covitz uses is “You’re fired”. From there the children can change the sentence to “We regret to inform you that your professional services are no longer required”, “Sorry, Bob, but with the poor economy we have to let you go”, and “Get out now and don’t come Back!” Although all the sentences mean that he is getting fired, it allows your students to think of other ways things can be said.

This lesson can be done using magazine advertisements to show why the author used the sentence they did specifically to advertise their point. Also by using a magazine advertisement you can ask your students how by changing the sentence the advertisement can mean something different. For the advertisement “Got Milk” instead of it saying “Got Milk” it could’ve said “Do you have milk” which would be a completely different ad. Instead of advertising drinking milk to help you bones, it could be an ad for Safeway or Walgreens to go buy some milk. This will help your students see that the way words are organized and said can show different meanings.

I would also change this example so instead of having me as the teacher write down sentences my students transform, I’d have them use sentences in books they’ve read, their own papers, or sentences they came up with on the spot. This way it incorporates the students and allows them to work as well. If I just used my own sentences, it would be similar to DOL which doesn’t engage the students as much. This lesson can also be changed up. Instead of having your student sonly transform sentences short to long it can go the other way around. They also can see sentences that are used in books they are reading and transform a sentence to say something only slightly different but because of that slight difference it changes the context. This shows your students the importance of their sentence structure.