Renee Breznak, an eighth-grade English teacher, and Johnny Scott, a principal, collaborated on their experiences teaching grammar. The two discuss past experiences teaching grammar. One had the nickname of “Lord of the Board” because everything was presented on the chalk board or projector. What they realized was that most students were not listening. A changed had to happen.
That change came in the format of working with students individually in writing workshops. However, Breznak and Scott found that students still did not take the opportunity to learn from their mistakes and kept making them. Because the students still were not learning, another change had to be made.
The two took what they had learned over their many years of teaching and based their new strategy of teaching on those observations. They …show more content…
This strategy not only derived from Breznak and Scott’s frustrations but also from no child left behind. It can also be applied to a variety of classes. The strategy follows several simple steps. First, students take a pre-test to determine prior knowledge. Since teachers cannot expect students to just be able to begin teaching, teachers will lead the first few lessons. Students are assigned to a group and given an individual lesson on the same topic that they are to teach to the class later. The teacher does give the students 10 practice sentences to use in their lesson. Also, students are given homework before the lesson. A problem could arise with an absent student, but since each group member is responsible for the entire lesson, another member teaches the concept that the absent student was supposed to teach. Students cannot just stand in front of the room and read word for word from their lesson. The lesson must be interactive and use a transparency. Once all the groups have presented, each student takes a post-test on the