Grammar to go with Humpty Dumpty's Song

By Maja Berntsen

Here is the text that we chose to use:

Humpty Dumpty's Song

~Lewis Carroll

In winter, when the fields are white,

I sing this song for your delight.

In Spring, when woods are getting green,

I'll try and tell you what I mean.

In Summer, when the days are long,

Perhaps you'll understand the song.

In Autumn, when the leaves are brown,

Take pen and ink, and write it down.

I sent a message to the fish:

I told them "This is what I wish."

The little fishes of the sea,

They sent an answer back to me.

The little fishes' answer was

"We cannot do it, Sir, because-"

I sent to them again to say

"It will be better to obey."

The fishes answered, with a grin,

"Why, what a temper you are in!"

I told them once, I told them twice:

They would not listen to advice.

I took a kettle large and new,

Fit for the deed I had to do.

My heart went hop, my heart went thump:

I filled the kettle at the pump.

Then someone came to me and said

"The little fishes are in bed."

I said to him, I said it plain,

"Then you must wake them up again."

I said it very loud and clear:

I went and shouted in his ear.

But he was very stiff and proud:

He said "You needn't shout so loud!"

And he was very proud and stiff:

He said "I'd go and wake them, if-"

I took a corkscrew from the shelf:

I went to wake them up myself.

And when I found the door was locked,

I pulled and pushed and kicked and knocked.

And when I found the door was shut,

I tried to turn the handle, but-

Grammar to go is suppose to be a more fun way of teaching grammar to the pupils. We had never tried it before and had quite mixed feelings about it before we began testing it out. Tim, Sigve and I had our practice period in the same class. It was a year five class consisting of 28 pupils.

Preparations and introduction

We chose the text ”Humpty Dumpty’s Song” for our grammar to go ”experiment”. Our class had 28 pupils and they were divided in to three different stages in English. Stage one were the weakest, stage two was average and stage three were the strongest pupils.

Introducing the text was something we did quite early. When introducing it we had the whole glass gathered together. We went through the text with the pupils and read it out load together stanza by stanza. This is something that we did at the start of almost every day. Tim, Sigve and I then decided to split up and work with one stage each. I got to work with stage two which was the pupils who was doing alright in English.

First try

The first time I had not planned the lesson well enough. I wanted to read through the entire text with the pupils in my group and translate it to Norwegian to make sure that they all understood all of the words in the text. My group of pupils had a couple of boys who just would not do what they were told which made the whole experience a bit rushed and I noticed that most of the pupils actually found it quite boring. After we had rushed through the song, I made them find all of the words that described something in the text. Some of the pupils went on and happily looked for adjectives in the text whilst others found the task being too hard. Suddenly I had nothing left to do and we still had a lot of time left so we all just decided to end our plan and do something else instead.

Second try

 

(My lesson plan for my second try at grammar to go)

This time I had thought through the lesson a lot better. I started by making the pupils read through the song once more out load. The pupils then got one work sheet each. The work sheet consisted of “Humpty Dumpty’s song” where I had removed all the adjectives and made blank boxes in stead. The pupils then filled in their own adjectives. After they had done this, the ones who wanted to read their version out load got to to that. Then at the end I made different word-class houses on the blackboard and had small notes with different words from the song on, got the pupils to pick a note each, taking turns, and place the work in the correct house on the board. The pupils enjoyed this lesson a lot better than the last one. 

Evaluation

We learned a lot from our first try at grammar to go. We learned that planning is super important, that we had to try to make the tasks more fun (at least for my group with a few pupils who just could not sit still) and have a plan B in case the initial plan goes wrong. So we went back to our planning and made detailed plans for our next try which went a lot better than first time. One mistake we made when using grammar to go was that we did not read the article well enough. We soon got to know from the other groups that we had done a few things wrong such as using terminology when doing the grammar to go programme. I do see the benefits with this, but I honestly do not think that it would have worked with my stage two group. They were already kind of confused when it came to word classes, so messing around with “hidden” grammar would possibly just make them more confused and insecure about it.

However, I can understand that grammar to go might work well with some pupils, but I do not think that it was ideal for that group of pupils at that time. I will hopefully get the chance to try it out again later with different students and a different text and maybe it will work better.  

One thing that I quickly learned was that the pupils loved playing games and puzzles, so making small games or puzzles with grammar was a great way of teaching them grammar. In my group there was a couple of boys who just would not work with grammar in the beginning because they thought it was boring, but when I introduced different games and puzzles, they happily tagged along and it looked like they actually enjoyed it.