Month: July 2019
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The Key to Teaching Grammar? Make It About Opportunities, Not Errors
My most popular posts have been the ones on grammar. This is not surprising, as grammar remains one of the most maddeningly frustrating problems of the writing classroom. We know from over 60 years of research that teaching grammar out of the context of student writing (aka, in stand-alone worksheets, diagramming, term memorization) doesn’t work…
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I’m So Sorry About the Rain: How to Significantly Improve Relationships With Students in Four Seconds
Teachers tend to be both helpers and problem solvers. In fact, if a random group of teachers were polled, my guess is that those might be the two most common traits found, as to be called to the classroom generally means you like to both help others and tackle major problems. And being helpful and…
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Feedback Should Be a Two-Way Street
“Before I know what to teach, I need to know whom I teach.” -Cornelius Minor Last week I finished We Got This., Cornelius Minor’s relentlessly positive and ridiculously quotable book (which is a highly recommended read), and while it has me thinking about a lot of things, what I keep coming back to is the…
Matthew M. Johnson 