Instructional routine • Explore and learn Have students preview any grammar charts and visuals before engaging in the unit activities. This will help activate background knowledge. Ask students questions that will help them engage in the grammar concepts that will be discussed. Encourage students to make connections to the structure of their home languages. • Practice Provide ongoing support and encouragement as students work on grammar activities. Reassure students that errors will occur and not to worry about making mistakes as they learn new grammatical concepts. Recast any errors: orally mirror back what a student has written or stated aloud but use standard English grammar. Add intonation to your voice where the student should notice the change. • Communicate Have students retell in their own words newly introduced grammar concepts. Encourage them to discuss in pairs what they have learned. Provide ample opportunities for students to rehearse oral presentations and give feedback to support the use of standard English. This will help lower the affective filter, which is essential because students may feel very self-conscious about their understanding of language structure, rules, and patterns. • Assess Listen in on conversations and gather information from written responses to gauge students’ understanding of newly introduced grammar concepts. Use data from formal and informal assessments to reteach or reinforce concepts during 1:1 or small group instruction. Grammar is a set of patterns that holds language together. Students must learn grammar to help them to be proficient in both social and academic language; the teacher’s role in facilitating the learning of grammar is key (Beare, 2018). In each unit of Connect, grammar is taught using deductive, “top-down” explicitly taught grammar instruction, and inductive, “bottom-up” discovery, approaches. Students learn grammar rules in isolation and have an opportunity to apply them in specific activities. Then they apply what they learn as they complete activities throughout the units. It is the teacher’s role throughout to identify and respond to grammatical errors that students demonstrate in speaking and writing as research has shown that usage errors can become permanent if left unchecked (Dias-Rico and Weed, 1995). References Beare, K. (2018, June 27). Methods for Teaching Grammar in an ESL/EFL Setting. Available at: https:// www.thoughtco.com/teaching-grammar-in-esl-eflsetting-1209075 Diaz-Rico, L.T. and K.Z. Weed. The Crosscultural, Language, and Academic Development Handbook: A Complete K-12 Reference Guide. Massachusetts: Allyn and Bacon, 1995. GRAMMAR Txxviii
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