Wrapping Things Up

Since the school year has just come to an end, I feel like this blog needs some sort of closure too. I haven’t posted in awhile since some of the projects begun on this blog have been taking shape in other forms. Much of the information from the blog now resides at Exploring Language, a website that contains lessons for grades 3-8. It is very much in a newborn stage, so I will be making changes, corrections, additions, etc. Please feel free to send feedback using the contact form on the website. Also resulting from the blogging is an article on the Common Core, spurred by this post that will be published in Wiley-Blackwell’s Compass later this year. And I have a couple of other articles out for review that may be of interest to readers of this blog; when they have a published form, I’ll let you know.

Another good site that Dave Pippin tipped me off to is Englicious (that’s the log in page, but teachers can have a free trial period, and you can read see sample materials before registering here). It’s tied to the UK’s National Curriculum, which is much more of a top-down curriculum than anything we have in the U.S., though with many similarities to the Common Core (which, remember, is not a curriculum). Linguist Bas Aarts, at University College London, is heading up this project, which looks like a good model for us here. Here’s a brochure about the enterprise, and here’s a Telegraph article about the need for more instruction in language, grammar, in particular, that is motivating the Englicious materials.

I may still post here on MiddleSchoolLing occasionally; I do find that I like to spit out stuff here first and hear from some of you; then it can begin to take a more refined form (as a lesson or an article or a conversation with a friend).

Haboo!

(See Angela Roh’s article, “And you can all say haboo: Enriching the standard language arts curriculum with linguistic analysis” in Linguistics at School: Language awareness in primary and secondary education for more on "haboo".)

Sandra Wilde's Funner Grammar

I saw something about this book when it came out in 2012, but I’ve just gotten my hands on it (my library didn’t have it, so it had to come from St. Martin’s University in Lacey, Washington), and I’ve now ordered my own copy because it’s so good. It’s called Funner Grammar: Fresh ways to teach usage, language, and writing conventions, grades 3-8, and it’s making me breathe a sigh of relief. Sandra Wilde has written many other good books and resources for teachers, including You Kan Red This! Spelling and punctuation for whole language classrooms, K-6 (1991), What’s a Schwa Sound Anyway? A holistic guide to phonetics, phonics, and spelling (1997), Miscue Analysis Made Easy: Building on Student Strengths (2000), Testing and Standards (2002), Spelling Strategies and Patterns (2007), but this one makes me so happy, and I want all the 3rd-8th grade teachers I know to give it a look.

How refreshing that she starts off with “Did you know that are about six thousand languages in the world?” and then goes on to talk about language change, grammar, and even the Common Core. For a resource book of this type, it does the best job I’ve seen of talking directly and convincingly about language privilege. “Language variation is a social justice issue just as much as racial identity is” (96).

But it also talks about what a lot of teachers are very interested in – mechanics and usage. Here are the chapter titles, after the introductory one.

2. Mechanics: Conventions Found Only in Written Language
3. Nitty-Gritty Grammar: Words, Tenses, Sentences, and Complexity
4. Usage
5. Language Diversity and Social Justice
6. Linguistics for Kids

And Wilde provides annotated lists of other resources, appendices of suggestions of what to do in each grade (3-8), commentary on the Common Core (saying straight up that to teach about the subjunctive, as indicated in this 8th grade standard is misguided. Yeah, I agree - it’s a bit crazy.), and a careful consideration and explanation of why each subject she addresses should be taught. And it’s a nice slim volume at that.

It's been great to be able to do some reading of some of the other resources out there, like this one, while on sabbatical, so I’ll soon be adding an updated list of resources to TeachLing, which has a list that Dave Pippin compiled a few years ago. But the list is lacking in resource books like Wilde’s, so I’ll add the few other suggestions I have. But in the meantime, get this book. And thank you, Sandra Wilde!