Grammar-to-go teaching

This year we are learning grammar, and in that occasion we learned about something called “Grammar-to-go”. The purpose of Grammar-to-go is to teach the pupils about grammar without them knowing. According to Hestnes many teachers divide the grammar from the language, and teach them as separate parts. You can say that the real purpose is to unite the two parts, and teach them as one. 

Our group has been practicing our teaching in two 5th grade classes, with around 25 pupils in each class. When we got the assignment, we decided that we wanted to work with grammar before we planned, and used the Grammar-to-go method.  Our practice teacher told us that they had not had much grammar yet, so we saw it as an opportunity for both ourselves and for the pupils. 

Grade: 5th

number of pupils: 25

level: spread (differs alot from top to bottom)

Tid	HVA (skal du gjøre)	HVORDAN	HVORFOR	LÆREMIDLER	NOTAT
15min	Introduction and teacher reading the poem	Rutines: write the goal for the lesson on the white-board   Introduction: The teacher asks the pupils about what they know about poems. Teacher reads the poem “What is sweeter”, then tell them what the poem is about. The pupils are going to translate the poem in pairs.	Activate previous knowledge.	Smartboard	Eskil
10 min	Go over nouns adjectives and rhymes	Talk about nouns, adjectives and rhymes, ask them if they remember what these three words means. Introduce the task: Ask them if they can find nouns, adjectives and rhymes in “what is sweeter”, and invite pupils up to the whiteboard to ring around these three.	Help them identify nouns, adjectives and rhymes. Activate previous knowledge	Smartboard, poem: “what is sweeter”	Karita
15 min	Tasks	The pupils are going to point out the rhymes, adjectives and the nouns in the poem «What is sweeter». When they are done, they are going to fill in adjectives in the poem «Monster» (creative work)	Help the students to easier identify and remember the different word classes in the poem, and remember parts of the poem.
5 min	Ending	Exit notes: The pupils get a piece of paper each where they are going to write five adjectives. At last when they are finished and we gather the exit notes, we then use adjectives to send them out. Eks: -        Everyone wearing something blue can og home. -        Everyone with long hair can go home.	Theis is to see if the goal for the lesson is achieved	Post-it	Helene

 Kilder:  https://en.islcollective.com/resources/printables/worksheets_doc_docx/poems_superlative_adjectives/beginner-prea1-worksheet/16631

The evaluation 

We used our time planing the teaching scheme well, but we struggled to grasp the concept of Grammar-to-go. We had to ask our teacher for some help before we understood what it was all about. Even then we found it hard to plan something so big for so young pupils. We managed to plan something we were pretty happy about, and something we thought would be achievable for both the strong and the weak students. 

We were pretty happy with the teaching scheme and how it went, but we still found some things we could do better. The first thing is that we should have talked more English to the students, we used a lot of Norwegian to explain the tasks. We used grammar terminology like "Nouns and Adjectives" and that was wrong, since we were trying to teach them grammar without them being aware of it. We also could have practiced pronunciation and oral communication, but with only 45 minutes at our disposal, we felt that we had enough for one lesson. For the next lesson we had with them, we let them read their poems into a soundstudio. That way they practiced speaking English and pronunciation. Personally, I agree with my practice teacher, he said that people assume that the pupils hate grammar so we have to make it fun or different (like grammar-to-go). I think that Grammar-to-go could be used on older pupils, because when we used it on 5th graders we found out that too much components is too messy for them. To teach 5th graders about nouns, adjectives, verbs, rhymes, and pronunciation at the same time will only confuse them. Our practice teacher told ut that his pupils seemed to like grammar in both English and Norwegian. All in all I think Grammar-to-go would fit better for older pupils who has had the time to "learn to dislike" grammar. 

The weaker pupils used the colours, because they were the first adjectives they learnt.

The majority of the class managed to write down the five adjectives on the exit notes, but some struggled. The picture above shows a pupil who managed one adjective "Slimy", but writes "Something x4). The levels differs a lot.  

  -Karita Hansen