The Great Grammar Fair [Classroom]

For the last week in my Language Arts classes, the kids have been preparing for The Great Grammar Fair. Making up a name like that does wonders for exciting the kids. Saying with a bit of an echo -- The Great (great) Grammar (grammar) Fair (fair fair fair)! -- makes them go wild.

In groups of 3s, the kids tackled 9 different grammar concepts. Here's an outline of the concepts and what the kids put together.

They had 2 1/2 class periods to work on their booths. This past Friday they held the fair for each other. One person from each group ran the booth while the other two rotated, then we switched. Today, two other classes came to visit our fair. It was pretty amazing. Check out some videos on our classroom blog.

I called my mom tonight to let her know how it went. The one frustration I have is that I'm not sure how to assess what they learned. Grammar isn't something that I'm content "testing." It's also not the only skill I was hoping they were honing with this project. I wanted them to get better at working in small groups. I wanted them to show some creativity. But that doesn't address the grammar.

I believe in most cases, grammar is a pride thing. I'm talking about non-typos, here. For example, I just missed my shift key when typing "I'm", but I noticed it and I went back to correct it. That's the pride I'm talking about. Pride is a weird word, though. It's also knowing what is appropriate when and where. When I'm on instant messenger, I rarely capitalize. If it's going to be confusing to leave something lowercase, I'll capitalize it. (I'll have you know that I have never substituted the letter "u" for the pronoun "you.") Why do I let myself get away with being such a grammatical heathen? I'm lazy, but I know when to step up my game. My point -- and as I tell my kids, "there is one" -- is that kids don't take pride in having proper grammar. I don't mean prescriptive, don't-end-your-sentences-with-a-preposition grammar. I mean capitalizing proper nouns, spelling common words correctly, and putting punctuation at the end of a sentence.

While I was talking with my mom, she had another of her great ideas that I'm going to run with. I now have different groups of kids who are experts (presumably) on one of nine grammatical concepts. I'm going to have each group decorate a poster to put up around the room, so the kids know who to go to when they have a certain grammatical problem. So, instead of always coming to me, they can start going to each other.

Grammar doesn't begin and end. It's around us all the time, in fluid contexts. Helping kids understand those contexts is one of my big goals for this year.