High School/College Topic: Grammar

10-second review: Students pick significant, recurring mistake from their compositions. Research the problem in textbook. Teach the solution to the problem to small groups of fellow students.

Title: “Helping Students to Help Themselves: An Approach to Grammar.” C Viera. College Composition and Communication (February 1986), 94-96. A publication of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE).

Summary/Quote: After students have researched the problem in grammar or style, using the textbook, they become the “expert” for a group of six students. “The expert’s mini-class listens to a presentation of the problem, asks questions, and takes the expert’s quiz. (The quizzes can be graded by the group….) The mini-class then rotates to the next expert, and the process is repeated until the students have listened to the explanations of all six experts. Then six new ‘experts’ are chosen.”

Comment: The students research their particular recurring grammatical problem in the textbook. Well, they should start with the textbook, but if they go to the Internet, they are likely to find MILLIONS of Web sites dealing with the problem and some pretty clever ways of presenting it. A good idea in 1986. A better idea with the Internet in 2009. RayS.