Month: August 2019

I used to run the first day of my classes according to how I thought a teacher was supposed to run the first day of classes:

1. Say hi.
2. Take role.
3. Go over the syllabus and rules.
4. Maybe do a quick icebreaker, if time.
5. Dismiss the students and begin with real learning the next day.

I now do something quite different.

Continue reading “Rethinking the First Day of Class” →

My last post was about how if we want grammar to stick, we need to do two things:

1. Teach it in the context of student writing
2. Approach it as a study of opportunities that enhance our writing, not errors we need to avoid

When it comes to doing this, I have found no tool more useful than the sentence. While on the surface the definition of a sentence is rather dull…

…in practice, sentences can be gorgeous laboratories of nearly infinite variety. They can be extended, cut down, puffed-up, moved around, mixed-and-matched, and generally treated like Playdough. And in the process one can teach nearly any grammatical rule and tool imaginable. Here are the top three ways that I use the humble sentence to help my students learn and learn to love grammar:

Continue reading “My Favorite Grammar Hack” →