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.

Unsolicited Advice - Take a look where you're bookmarking before you hit save [Advice]

The strangest thing happened the other day. I took some copies over to one of my colleagues. They're for a unit that's coming up in a few weeks. Nothing he needed that day, but definitely something he'd want to find again. Here's the strange part: when I gave him the copies, he actually said to me, "I'm going to need these soon," then he flung open his file drawer and jammed the copies into the middle of all the other papers in the drawer!

"Don't you want to file that in your Social Studies folder?" I asked.

"Social Studies folder? I've got one folder. It's for my files. All my files." he responded.

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I'm itching to get rid of my iPhone

I'm ridiculously excited about my 2-year contract with AT&T being up at the end of January. I've had a like/hate relationship with my iPhone since I got it, and I'm looking to move on to an Android phone when my contract is up. 


Note: I bought my Original iPhone in January of 2008. It came with iPhone OS version 1.1.3. My wife and I each bought one. To pay the unsubsidized price of $400/phone, we sold our Nintendo Wii, which I had stayed overnight at Walmart to get, and her Nintendo DS. I have jailbroken every version of the iPhone OS, from 1.1.3 to the current 3.1.2. I estimate my phone has been jailbroken 40% of the time I've had it. In my opinion, I have spent enough time with it "not broken" as my wife would say and enough time with it jailbroken to feel that my complaints are valid. I know of and have explored an adequate quantity of options for any fixes to the complaints I have. To Apple's credit, the complaints are few. For me, though, they're game changers.


One last note: I believe all of my complaints could be brushed off with an "Apple could fix that with a software update." This is true. I have zero optimism they would do it, though. As I've said, I've had this phone long enough, and the problems -- as I see them -- have remained unchanged from day 1. I do not see Apple having any motivation to rectify what I see as problems. I'll  be happily wrong if they make any fixes to my complaints. Unless they're done by January, I won't be around to see them, though.



With every complaint, I'll give you my solution for fixing it along with how Android does it.

Notifications

The iPhone notification system is completely broken.

While it may not be obvious if you've never received more than one notification at once, the notification system on the iPhone is nearly useless. I'll give you an example that happens to me every day. I use Twitter to maintain contact with the online-side of my Personal Learning Network. I use Boxcar's (now free) app to get push notifications when I get an @mention or a direct message. Because I'm active on Twitter, there are times every day where I will get multiple notifications before I can access my phone. Combine that with a notification that I have an SMS message and I may get 3-4 notifications at a time.

Apple's solution to this problem?

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