How Do You Teach Grammar? – @Flocabulary Hosts #engchat May 14

Guest Post from our friends at @Flocabulary

Check out the lyrics and more.

We spent a long time thinking about grammar while we were working on our 16 new grammar songs, including our Prefixes song above. It quickly became clear that for some, grammar is a dirty word, conjuring antiquated scenarios of sentence diagramming and homonym horrors. But for others, grammar wasn’t scary…it was fun and wacky and not-so-hard.

We did our best to associate with that latter camp. And we wanted to create a forum for teachers to share pain-free, fun and creative ways to teach grammar.So on Monday, May 14 at 7pm, we’ll be hosting #engchat for the second time around to discuss this very topic. (If you’re wondering, “What’s #engchat??” see below).

The Topic: How do you teach grammar?

Here are questions we’ll use to guide the discussion.

1. Why do you think that teaching grammar has so many negative associations? How can we overcome these associations?
2. How can teachers cover grammar while also considering and respecting the modern ways that students speak? (Slang, texting, etc.)
3. Do you think that teachers should directly or indirectly teach grammar concepts?
4. What are your favorite strategies for directly teaching grammar concepts?
5. What are your favorite strategies for indirectly teaching grammar concepts?
6. How can non-English teachers integrate grammar instruction into their curricula?
7. What are your most unconventional ideas for teaching grammar?

Feel free to suggest related questions and ideas you’d like to discuss in the comments.

So, what’s #engchat?

Each Monday night from 7-8pm, engaged and creative English educators connect on Twitter to discuss a pertinent topic and share lesson ideas. It’s called English Chat, or in character-constrained Twitter-speak, #engchat. On Monday, May 14, we’re excited and honored to moderate the discussion. Learn more about #engchat here. Or just reach out on Twitter by using the #engchat tag. Even though the chat is on Mondays, educators share ideas more casually at all hours, every day.

If you’re new to Twitter, or have never experienced a Twitter chat, learn more about why every teacher should join twitter. To follow the conversation, set a filter for #engchat and add your comments by adding “#engchat” to your tweets. If you’ve never Twitter chatted before, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by how quickly you can develop a strong PLN, or personal learning network.

And you can connect with Flocabulary on twitter by following us here. See you on Monday!

Archive for October 17, 2011

Last night's discussion was hosted by Aliza from @Flocabulary about how we teach vocabulary. We had seven questions that we pondered and I'm going to list them below (copied straight from Aliza's tweets!). Check out the link to the full chat archive to see how we answered them. (SPOILER: There were some pretty amazingly creative ideas bounced around as answers to question 5 that are worth checking out!)

You can also see the pre-chat blog post shared on Flocabulary's blog.

Check out Flocabulary's website for the great resources they offer to engage your students in vocabulary, reading and writing, literature, current events, history, science, and math.

1. How do you *directly* teach vocabulary? (Or do you *directly* teach it?)
2. How do you *indirectly* teach vocabulary?
3. For those who do direct vocab instruction, what words do you teach? How do you choose? Where do you find them?
4. How can non-English teachers help students with vocabulary?
5. What are your most unconventional ideas for teaching vocabulary?
6. What are your favorite vocab games?
7. What's your favorite word??