Carnegie Notes from
Oct. 3rd through Oct. 7th
This week in class we continued work on fragments (used the “Added-Detail Fragment” slides and finished up with the “Hidden Dependent Word Fragment” slides). We also worked on verbs (Present Tense Agreement, Past Tense, and tomorrow we begin Past Participles). Many of them were diligent about taking notes on the present-tense lessons, despite the same rules being in their books. I have found that since using the lecture slides, the students are not doing their book homework (reading the rules in the chapter before class). I’ll have to decide whether to try the class “bookless” next semester (though that means writing new lessons for and adding to PowerPoint slides). But the students do seem to find the slides quite helpful.
Tomorrow, after a brief period of discussing past participles, my students will spend half the period (30 minutes) working individually on WebCT exercises so that I can assist the weaker ones and so the stronger ones can make a little headway on the numerous exercises I’ve assigned.
Regarding technology and my 191 classes (though not directly involved with the Carnegie Grant this semester), despite what I thought was a thorough slide show on types of nouns (proper, concrete, abstract, and pronouns) and types of verbs (linking, helping, and action), when I gave the students time to work on the quizzes during class (so that I could help them), I found that many felt quite confused about differences between linking verbs and helping verbs and wondered whether it was important to make that distinction (though it would be important in more advanced grammar and determining when to use adjectives and adverbs, to name one). I spent an enormous amount of time going from student to student when the same questions would come up (although they had a list of both common linking and helping verbs—the “be” verbs, which can be either one or the other, threw them a bit). I’m wondering how important it is to distinguish between them. While I think showing them all the kinds of verbs and nouns, via slideshow, is important to raise their awareness of all the possibilities of nouns (and therefore subjects) and all the words that could be verbs (so they KNOW how to find any subject or verb to ensure they have them in their sentences), maybe it’s not necessary to have quizzes that distinguish. I don’t know that their understanding the difference is going to make a difference in their determining whether they have enough of a subject and verb (to help them find fragments) or too many subject-verb groups (to help them find run-ons). But I’m still thinking it through. I just hate for them to get bogged down in what may, at this level, be unnecessarily detailed.
On the bright side, I planned this one-time session for
students to have one full class during the semester as a kind of study period
in which they could knock out a lot of WebCT
exercises. It would give them some
momentum, for one thing, and since we just started on grammar, I would be
available to help them with both grammar questions and technical issues as they
took the quizzes. The class is two hours
and twelve minutes long. These students
sat there for the ENTIRE class period WITHOUT taking a break (though I told
them at the start that they could leave for water and bathroom breaks), and
some stayed past the official end of class.
They were fully attentive and the only talking was when they conferred
with one another on certain grammar questions (do you think that this is a
proper noun or a concrete noun?—I forgot to address that there can be an
overlap). They’d call me over when they
didn’t understand why they’d gotten an answer wrong. They were fully immersed—I’d say the word
“flow” applies here. Two students,
unsolicited, told me that they had FUN.
They used the word FUN! When the
last student left, he said he was going to get dinner (the class ends at