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Society for Quality Education

Ode to my great-aunt

October 29, 2011 by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) at 06:23 AM

I refer you to this blog because I had virtually the same experience as the author - to wit, I endured a grade 7 & 8 teacher who taught and drilled her class how to diagram sentences. I hated it and thought it boring and a total waste of time, just more fuddy-duddyism on the part of our elderly teacher. Lo and behold, looking back I realize that my ability to diagram sentences, to feel their structure in my bones, is the foundation of my ability to write clear and interesting prose. 

Really, this should not come as a surprise. Diagramming sentences is similar to knowing your times tables or being a good speller - a necessary pre-requisite to more advanced performance. 

Just for the record, my grade 7/8 teacher also drilled us in spelling, and I am an excellent speller to this day. She didn’t have to drill us on our number facts, though, because we all knew them by grade 7. And, by the way, this teacher was my great aunt Victoria Malkin.

Comments

Yes.  I’m for drill.  It’s one of the simplist ways of teaching.  Personally, I found that depth of understanding always followed. 
There is so much our children are missing nowadays—it seems as thouh their minds are ruined.

Posted by Bev on 10/29 at 08:21 AM

The first 10 to 15 minutes of the start of the school day, was on grammar. Consisted of two books, small but very thick, with small dense text labeled grade 3 to grade 5 or grade 5 to grade 8. As students we were expected to take the grammar lessons of the day, and applied it to all of our notes and other writings. Never did have a grammar test, but we were graded for grammar as well as spelling in our tests and other written work.

It was not until grade 7, that grammar became interesting when it became the subject that arrived at any time during the course of the day. It was no longer set at the beginning of the school day.

“Well, at least it’s stuff we need to know.”

The same phrase was being banter about by the grade 11 students, when the grade 11 English teacher decided grammar lessons first, before writing, in my child’s English class. By hook or by crook, the English teacher is going to have her students prepared to write the English public exam within two years. Or else, a large percentage of them will fail the public exam, not because of their knowledge, but their inability to expressed themselves in clear, and interesting prose.

Posted by Nancy on 10/29 at 09:16 AM
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