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Key principles for teaching grammar
The purpose for teaching grammar is not simply for you to be confident about correcting mistakes in children’s work, nor is it to pass on tricks and techniques to be replicated in a mechanistic way. This does not make children writers or lead to good writing.
Teaching grammar effectively is about enabling children to control grammar to express increasingly complex ideas. When grammar is taught well, it can make a significant different to children’s literacy development.
Here are 7 key principles to bear in mind when teaching grammar:
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Build up your own subject knowledge
To teach grammar, you need explicit as well as implicit knowledge, to be confident about using the correct terms and explaining these. Don’t just learn the next term you are teaching. It is important to be able to relate new learning to other features and the text as a whole. -
Give talk a high priority in your classroom
Children need to be able to select from a wardrobe of voices that includes Standard English. -
Remember the purpose of teaching grammar
Grammar is not simply the naming of parts of speech or for teaching the rules of English. It needs to be strongly embedded in classroom talk, reading and writing. -
Teach grammar in context
By introducing children to grammatical features and language in context, you will be helping them to internalise these principles. Try not to go for the ready-made solution by using a worksheet from a book. It will make very little difference to children’s use of language and will be meaningless for those learners who are not yet able to think in abstract ways. -
Read aloud and discuss how authors use grammar
Children who read extensively and are read to will have a ‘toolbox’ of structures, patterns and rhythms to draw on. -
Be systematic
Make sure you know what the class you are working with have already learned and what they need to learn now. Link new learning with their prior knowledge. -
Make learning grammar fun
Teaching grammar can involve investigations, problem-solving and language play as part of developing children’s awareness of and interest in how language works.
*This is an edited extract from Teaching Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling in Primary Schools.