![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Ana had a worksheet on verbs for today, the first one I've seen her do.
This is what it says at the top: "A verb tells what people or things do. More generally, a verb tells the action a noun or pronoun does."
1. Ana does not admit to any firm knowledge of what nouns or pronouns are, mind, but it's a subject we can work on.
2. This is far from the best definition of "verb" I've ever seen... but for first graders just beginning to learn this sort of thing, it probably doesn't matter. Except...
3. They were supposed to underline the verbs in various different sentences. And in each sentence, afterwards, we were helpfully told how many verbs were in the sentence. And almost all the verbs that Ana was supposed to identify weren't "action" verbs!
Has to (where dollars to doughnuts she's only supposed to identify "has", although the has in "she has a bed" is very different from the has in "she has to go to bed", which is the sentence she had), is (several times), will be (this is two verbs, of course), be, was.... Do and did I guess imply some action, but really, is a beginner gonna pick up on them?
Worse, some of the sentences had words that are verbs in ONE context, but not in others - "the play" and "be quiet".
The sample sentence lists "can" as a verb. Tell me, what sort of action is implied by "can"? If you're going to have them jump in with helping verbs and various conjugations of "to be", give them a better definition than "it tells what people or things do". Because when you do that, kids expect, well, to see things being done!
Instead of bothering about that, which didn't make sense to her, I told her that a verb can come after "I" or "she", and that if it comes right after "the", "a", or "an" it's probably safe to say it's not a verb. (Let's not talk about gerunds and all, okay?)
This is what it says at the top: "A verb tells what people or things do. More generally, a verb tells the action a noun or pronoun does."
1. Ana does not admit to any firm knowledge of what nouns or pronouns are, mind, but it's a subject we can work on.
2. This is far from the best definition of "verb" I've ever seen... but for first graders just beginning to learn this sort of thing, it probably doesn't matter. Except...
3. They were supposed to underline the verbs in various different sentences. And in each sentence, afterwards, we were helpfully told how many verbs were in the sentence. And almost all the verbs that Ana was supposed to identify weren't "action" verbs!
Has to (where dollars to doughnuts she's only supposed to identify "has", although the has in "she has a bed" is very different from the has in "she has to go to bed", which is the sentence she had), is (several times), will be (this is two verbs, of course), be, was.... Do and did I guess imply some action, but really, is a beginner gonna pick up on them?
Worse, some of the sentences had words that are verbs in ONE context, but not in others - "the play" and "be quiet".
The sample sentence lists "can" as a verb. Tell me, what sort of action is implied by "can"? If you're going to have them jump in with helping verbs and various conjugations of "to be", give them a better definition than "it tells what people or things do". Because when you do that, kids expect, well, to see things being done!
Instead of bothering about that, which didn't make sense to her, I told her that a verb can come after "I" or "she", and that if it comes right after "the", "a", or "an" it's probably safe to say it's not a verb. (Let's not talk about gerunds and all, okay?)
no subject
Date: 2010-06-04 05:55 pm (UTC)What ever happened to "a verb is a doing word"?
Well, that's what they originally said. Unfortunately, that definition is at odds with half the verbs they expected Ana to identify! Like, uh, can.
They didn't teach her about auxiliary verbs before giving her this worksheet. It would've been marginally better if they had.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-04 03:43 am (UTC)Is she making these lessons up herself, or getting them out of a book? Y'know, this really reminds me of John Gatto's assertions about the systematic class-structure agenda of the public-school systems. Consider: this lesson sets children up to fail unless they have help at home from an adult who already understands verbs, because the instructions are misleading.
It does matter if first-graders are given bad definitions, because first definitions are the ones that stick in the mind, even if they are not consciously recalled. They're the foundation, and if the foundation is shaky, not much can be built upon it.
The best way I know to teach kids about the parts of speech is through Mad Libs (http://www.synergyfield.com/mad.asp), and there's a ton of them online. Enjoy! :)
no subject
Date: 2010-06-04 12:52 pm (UTC)A website.
Consider: this lesson sets children up to fail unless they have help at home from an adult who already understands verbs, because the instructions are misleading.
I know. And I told her outright that the assignment was badly written, there was NO WAY she could've done it with the information she's supposed to have had. Because she was getting every. one. wrong. Of course she was! And I don't want her thinking it's her fault, because it's so not.
The best way I know to teach kids about the parts of speech is through Mad Libs, and there's a ton of them online. Enjoy! :)
I think we'll do a lot of that this summer, good idea.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-05 12:00 am (UTC)That is so, so important. It's difficult for children to grasp the fact that often they're having a hard time because the grown-ups who were supposed to be helping them either didn't know how or couldn't be bothered. They tend to think grown-ups know everything, and actually live by the principles they espouse, and adults are tacitly expected to foster these notions.
What I wonder: how many of the kids in Ana's class also got every. one. wrong. and do think it's their fault, think that they're 'stupid' for not comprehending what they were supposed to do? Worse yet, how many of their parents will look at that assignment, fail to comprehend it, and have their own childhood "I Hate Grammar!" issues triggered like pop-up ads?
Sheesh, it's almost like in Brave New World, where the babies crawl toward the lovely books and are just beginning to enjoy them, when the strip of floor they're sitting on is electrified. The idea is supposed to be to encourage children to like writing, to find it fun and natural, and feel confident in their ability to learn to do it well - not to discourage them by making it a tedious chore full of hidden traps.
Tell you what; a teacher who wants to encourage good writing doesn't have to do much. Assign them to write at least half a page per day on any topic they think worth reading about, so that they write it as well as they're able, in terms of both technical skills and literary style. Provide them with resources, both hard-copy and online, that clearly explain the technicalities of style and usage, and show them how to refer to them as needed. Read to them every day from good writing of all different varieties, and talk with them about what makes it good. Turn them on to all your favorite books, and anything else they might find interesting.
That's pretty much 'it'. And to hell with all 'workbooks', sez me; way to make an otherwise-fascinating subject deadly dull.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-05 12:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-05 01:54 am (UTC)True enough, though, they ought not to be told that their original dialect is wrong, and definitely not encouraged to go around correcting their elders. School-talk is for school, and that's the place to speak it; people at home are not obliged to do so.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-05 02:37 am (UTC)I just don't think they should a. say that a child is WRONG for not speaking SAE b. say that SAE is THE only option everywhere you go or c. for looking at differences between the dialect/language in question and SAE only as deficits and mistakes.
A child who speaks AAVE, or Spanish, or what have you isn't speaking badly, they're just not yet bi whateveral.
Do you know, there's another silly review of "I Ain't Gonna Paint No More" up saying that children should never EVER learn the words "ain't" and "gonna" because that makes them ignorant. I don't even want to know how adding two words to a child's vocabulary makes them less knowledgeable. The ignorant child is the one who, upon hearing the word "gonna", looks around and has no idea what is meant. The ignorant child is the one who, with a little more experience, thinks that everybody who says "ain't" is ignorant, that they can't be making a deliberate stylistic choice or simply speaking differently, and that therefore there is nothing of worth in what that person says. The child who can speak colloquially with his friends, and formally with his teachers, who can speak one dialect at home and another at school, who knows when to use a nonstandard form and when to use the standard (and when to deliberately break the standard for some sort of humorous or home-like effect) is not ignorant.
/tangent
I also don't think that there's any benefit in teaching children to recite "a noun is a person place or thing a verb is an action word". If you have a job that requires you to know this stuff, you probably have a job where you learned this is all nonsense anyway. Otherwise... it's not important. Children don't need to know the words "noun" and "verb", they already know how to USE nouns and verbs. If they didn't, they wouldn't be able to speak at all, and wouldn't that be a pity.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-04 05:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-04 12:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-04 10:23 pm (UTC)I'd had that perception for several years, actually - in third grade I'd determined to become a teacher because I was certain I could do a better job than was being done to me - but John Holt was the first grown-up who ever admitted it was true, and explained why. He's up there on my Childhood Heroes list, along with Vance Packard, Thomas Szasz, Robert A. Heinlein and Henry David Thoreau.
Of course, when I actually became a teacher, I quickly found out that I couldn't do a much better job than was done to me, because the system was set up to herd children, not to teach them. So I jumped ship, went over to Alternative Education, found it not much better but at least with room for improvement. LOL, here in my 'advanced late youth' I guess I've become an UnSchooler in principle, though in practice I acknowledge that UnSchooling only works well in an enriched environment.
What would really work would be if we could provide every child with an enriched environment, and there certainly has been some progress made in that direction, but a lot more is needed.
Ever think, if we could get just one generation of children reared on this planet, who had all had their primary needs adequately met, we'd be good to go for the rest of our species' lifespan.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-05 05:53 am (UTC)As to unschooling and enrichment, I am possessed of the radical notion that we wouldn't need enrichment if we somehow meaningfully reintegrated children into our societies. Their environments are only impoverished because we put them in artificially impoverished environments. But that's a pretty tall order.
Ever think, if we could get just one generation of children reared on this planet, who had all had their primary needs adequately met, we'd be good to go for the rest of our species' lifespan.
Yes, often. The great bootstrapping problem.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-05 02:35 pm (UTC)But that's not very nice.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-05 05:33 pm (UTC)A generation raised (successfully!) in a lab would only know how to raise their children... in a lab. Societal solutions require societal interventions.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-05 05:38 pm (UTC)Why, the saviors of humanity themselves, of course! Toiling diligently to give the new generation a better and brighter future!
And how would they know how to raise those children correctly?
Everybody thinks they know how to raise children correctly. That's why people keep having kids.
A generation raised (successfully!) in a lab would only know how to raise their children... in a lab.
Sometimes the price of freedom is eternal slavery to the lab.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-05 05:46 pm (UTC)I thought it was because sex feels good, babies are cute, and they want to be loved unconditionally.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-05 06:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-04 05:26 am (UTC)I wonder if an early grade child could deal with 'a verb tells you when'. That is, a verb is the word that can carry a time marker, such as -ed (past), -s (present), or will (future).
no subject
Date: 2010-06-04 08:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-04 12:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-04 06:05 am (UTC)There was this awesome little poem I had to memorize as a kid. I can't remember the rest of it though!
A verb means action, something done
To read, to write, to skip or run.
A preposition shows relation,
as IN the street or AT the station.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-04 06:07 am (UTC)http://www.happychild.org.uk/acc/tpr/mne/0011gram.htm
THE PARTS OF SPEECH
Every name is called a NOUN,
As field and fountain, street and town;
In place of noun the PRONOUN stands
As he and she can clap their hands;
The ADJECTIVE describes a thing,
As magic wand and bridal ring;
The VERB means action, something done -
To read, to write, to jump, to run;
How things are done, the ADVERBS tell,
As quickly, slowly, badly, well;
The PREPOSITION shows relation,
As in the street, or at the station;
CONJUNCTIONS join, in many ways,
Sentences, words, or phrase and phrase;
The INTERJECTION cries out, 'Hark!
I need an exclamation mark!'
Through Poetry, we learn how each
of these make up THE PARTS OF SPEECH.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-04 08:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-04 03:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-04 04:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-04 09:48 pm (UTC)*wry grin* Yes, I was a burden and a trial to many of my teachers, and an even worse one to some of my daughter's teachers. It's no wonder to me that the children of this country do so poorly in school, when the people hired to instruct them don't even understand the subjects they're purportedly teaching.
I'd like to see every teacher, legislator, judge and government administrator in this country walk in to work the first day after Labor Day, to find that - surprise! - they're all going to be taking the SATs. What, no preparation-time? Why should there be? Haven't they all taken that test before? Should be a piece of cake for them then, shouldn't it? Post the scores on a national website so we can all see how the system's working; that should prove very educational indeed.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-04 05:50 pm (UTC)She was very flustered because her speech (like mind, and also like her father's - this is a feature of both AAVE and of Southern speech (I often have odd little facets of this which I must've picked up from my Texan dad) - so that's two important adults in her life!) has the pin-pen merger, where short i and short e become homophones before nasal consonants. (I remember being a little older than her and wondering WHY you couldn't say a short e in front of an n or m, in fact!) So to her, ALL the words had the same vowel!
This was an opportunity to introduce her to the joys of a simple linguistic survey, where we attacked people and made them read the words "pen" and "pin" off a slip of paper, and then wrote down whether or not they said those words alike.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-04 09:30 pm (UTC)Texans pronounce pin and pen the same (to a non-Texan ear at least; maybe other Texans can tell which word is intended without contextual clues.) Puerto Ricans pronounce sin and seen the same. Southerners pronounce been and bin the same. Arabic speakers pronounce bin and pin the same. There isn't any standard or consensus in English As She Is Actually Spoken about how to pronounce them; the language is just too large and too widespread: everybody has a regional accent of some sort.
When I moved here to Washington after 10 years in Ohio, I was astonished to realize how much of an Ohio accent I'd picked up, and the way I realized it was through listening to my first class of Washingtonian preschoolers. Harder to hear the differences in adult speech; adults come from too many different places and have had too many 'external' modifications in their speech through school and the media.
We moved from California to New Jersey when I was 9, and while I could understand the adults fairly well, it took weeks before I could understand the other kids: they spoke twice as fast as me, but with only half the consonants, and with everything heavily nasalised so that all their vowels sounded like different vowels. If some linguist had been recording our speech phonetically, it might have come out looking almost like two different languages.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-04 10:54 pm (UTC)Did you see my post last year on Ana and the pen-pin merger?
Harder to hear the differences in adult speech; adults come from too many different places and have had too many 'external' modifications in their speech through school and the media.
Actually, I think the consensus is that dialectical variation in the US is increasing. It might not be just that adults travel a lot and watch TV, it might be that children, as always, are at the head of the change in language.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-05 12:32 am (UTC)