Grammar-to-Go with Roald Dahls Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf

By: Elias Stenersen

During our practice period, Runa and I have been teaching English in a 7^th grade consisting of 13 pupils. The English skill level of the class is very widespread. Some pupils have a lower level of English, whilst others have a higher level of English. The pupils at a lower level had problems expressing themselves, reading and understanding texts, and listening and understanding others.

 In the second part of our practice period, we were given the task of making a lesson based on the concept of Grammar-to-Go. Grammar-to-Go is a teaching scheme where one does not teach grammar as a separate part of the language, but you teach it by teaching the pupils grammar by having the grammar in context. This will help pupils see how important grammar is in the English language and they will do so through a more interesting approach. The specific grammatical element we chose to focus on in our Grammar-to-Go lesson was adjectives.

Choice of Text

The text we chose for our Grammar-to-Go teaching scheme was Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf from Roald Dahls Revolting Rhymes. The reason we chose this text was that it is a story that will be intriguing for the pupils as it is a funny twist on a story they already know. Not only does Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf offer funny twists, it also contains end rhymes and many adjectives for them to work with.   

Teaching Scheme

The preparations for the Grammar-to-Go lesson started the week before, when we re-introduced the pupils to adjectives. We did some repetition of how to use adjectives and how to conjugate adjectives. Other preparations included reading the text Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf for the pupils, watching a video related to the text as well as having the pupils read it at home. This was done in order to ensure the pupils were familiar to the text before they were given tasks related to the text. Below is the video we used

At the beginning of the lesson the goals we had set for the lesson were written on the blackboard and we explained them for the pupils. The pupils were then given a copy of the text Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf and a worksheet with grammatical tasks connected to the text. Before they started working on the tasks Runa and I decided that they were going to do a warm-up activity The class was divided into groups and asked to do a freeze frame, where the action in parts of the text are frozen and made into a still photo. The pupils had already tried freeze frame before, so no explanation was needed. Runa and I made sure the pupils only spoke English during the preparation of the freeze frames. We gave them 10 minutes to practice and after that, they performed their freeze frames in front of each other. When they were done performing, they were asked to find their seats and look at their worksheet. Runa and I proceeded to carefully explain the tasks on their worksheet to make sure everyone understood what they were going to do. When explaining the tasks, we were careful to not use words like adjectives, nouns or conjugate. Instead we explained the words, for example: instead of using the word adjective, we would say “a word that describes something”, and instead of using the word conjugate we would say, “writing the words in the three different forms”. After explaining the tasks, they started working independently on their worksheets.

The first and second task that was on their worksheet was connected to the freeze frame they did earlier in the lesson. The first task asked them to create a freeze frame, and the second task the pupils tried to guess where in the story the different freeze frames were from. The other tasks, task three and four, were tasks that focused more on the grammatical aspects of the text. More specifically, on adjectives. In task three, the pupils were asked to identify 10 different adjectives in the text. They were to circle them and then write them down on their worksheet. The fourth task was a basic conjugating task, where they conjugated seven of the 10 adjectives they found in task three. As explained before, the task descriptions did not use words like adjective and conjugate. When they finished all of the tasks they were asked to either write their own version of the text, write a poem based on the text or write a short text where they describe one of the characters or the settings from the text.

Reflection and Evaluation

I believe this Grammar-to-Go session with the pupils was successful, as I felt the pupils actually learned some grammar and it also seemed like they actually enjoyed learning grammar.

The first thing I think we did right was the preparation leading up to the Grammar-to-Go part of the lesson. We did some repetition of nouns, adjectives and adverbs, but had a main focus on adjectives. We also exposed the pupils to the text, as I first read it for the class, they watched a video related to the text and then the pupils got to read the text themselves. Another thing I feel we did well was to not use words like adjective and conjugate, as this could have made the pupils see the tasks as the ordinary and boring grammar tasks they are used to work with.

One thing I feel we could have done better, was that I think we could have created more Grammar-to-Go related tasks for the worksheet. We only made two Grammar-to-Go tasks, because we were unsure about how much time the tasks would require. Based on what I saw during this lesson, the pupils could have done one or two additional tasks. Do not get me wrong, the pupils were working constantly, but more of the work could have been focused on grammar.

After the lesson, we spoke to the university teacher that was observing our lesson. The feedback we got was positive, as she said she saw the pupils were engaged in the lesson and seemed to learn grammar, but at the same time enjoying learning it. We were also given positive feedback from the pupils. During a teacher – pupil conversation, one pupil said that he never thought he would enjoy learning grammar, and that the Grammar-to-Go tasks and text were fun to work with.

I really enjoyed working with Grammar-to-Go in the classroom, and I hope that I will be able to take what I learned from this lesson and use it later on.