CLASSROOM TOOLS for teaching grammar through culturally engaged instruction

Renee Moore

• Classroom Standards that are binding on student and teacher alike.
  
• Comprehensive Pre-Assessments that provide a broader view of student interests and abilities.
• Using the information from the pre-assessments, I conference with each student to create a Personal English Plan with mutually agreeable learning goals that are reviewed every grading period.
  
• A systematic, culturally appropriate method to teach and encourage classroom discussion and participation.
  
• Encourage various formats of response and participation other than standard academic writing and develop effective ways to evaluate them.
• Link classroom learning to the broader community in meaningful ways to address the social/historical based resistance towards academic literacy.

The best way to determine students' proficiency in grammar and mechanics is to look at that usage in the context of their writing. When I first looked at my students' writing [Sample 1] I was challenged almost to the point of frustration by the number and degree of errors; after all these were high school students. Like many new English teachers, my first inclination was to carefully mark every error, ostensibly so the student would know what he/she needed to "fix" [Sample 2].

With experience and research, however, I soon learned to evaluate student's abilities in grammar and usage more accurately and focus not on quantity of errors, but on types and patterns. My instruction also became more focused starting with a more systematic approach to understanding grammatical terms and recognizing standard English syntax.