Calendar, Objectives, and Grammar

This weekend I’ve been working on writing my unit objectives and calendar.  As with other parts of my unit (and probably my work in general), I think I’m getting a little caught up in detail.  I am writing a lot, but not necessarily thinking through it thoroughly.  I end up with a lot of words on a page, but not any organized reasoning behind it.   Some of this has come from trying to begin with a detailed narrative-type calendar then switching half-way through to the map/visual calendar others have been completing.  The end result is two jumbled calendars neither of which I am happy with. 

So I am setting aside the calendar for now and turning to my unit objectives instead.  I am going to try and approach these by going back over my unit assessment plan.  To avoid the endless descriptions that are not fully thought out, I am going to try and unify what I am assessing to a few core things then write simple objectives that articulate those. Easier said then done, I know.  But I hope by the end to have objectives that reflect the assessment and that can be broken down into my day-to-day lessons.

Switching subjects, the article I read for the grammar discussion was pretty interesting.  It was written by a composition teacher about making his students metawrite about their grammatical and mechanical mistakes.  Although such writing seems a little boring to complete, I could easily see how it would be beneficial since it made students compare grammar rules, consider correct and incorrect uses, and apply to their own writing.  Although after writing these papers students still make some errors, these were often clearly intentional—students choosing to break the rules to make their writing stronger.  While this method doesn’t necessarily address all the issues with teaching grammar that Smagorinsky brings up, it is one option that moves toward contextualizing grammar rather than isolating it.