Grammar

November 8, 2012 in Homeschooling | 10 comments

I think I mentioned here before that we are now using First Language Lessons as a kind of pre-grammar curriculum. I still think it is a worthwhile book, and very easy to use. However, I noticed something interesting.

This book contains a lot more rote practice than I would do if designing a curriculum from scratch. It has the instructor say phrases like, “a noun is the name of a person, place, thing, or idea,” and have the student repeat it three times until he has memorized it. It also has the instructor ask questions and then the student is supposed to answer in complete sentences. For example, the book would have me ask Sam, “Is ‘city’ a common noun or  a proper noun?” and then later, “Is ‘Oakton’ a  common noun or a proper noun?” Well today, as review, I asked Sam about the difference between common and proper nouns and her answer was, “A common noun is the first one and a proper noun is the second one.”

I had to really think about why on earth she would say that before the light bulb went off.

I’m not 100% positive the book always asked about common nouns first and proper nouns second, but it certainly was a trend. And Sam never had any idea what I was talking about. She just caught on that I would always ask common before proper.

And now I think back on a lot of the other Q&A we did using this book and Sam could have fooled me into thinking she understood most of it, just by her pattern-recognition abilities. She does have an excellent memory. (I don’t mean she fooled me intentionally – she just found the shortest distance between two points – the easiest way for her to get the “right” answer.)

Part of the problem is the whole approach of classical education – way too much rote memorization of “facts.” But the other part of the problem is indicated by my scare-quotes around the word “facts.” This book basically starts out by defining a noun, and then adding on the narrower concepts of common and proper nouns. It gives the definitions, yes, but not one time, ever, in this book, is there a sentence with words in it and an attempt to show the child that each word in a sentence has a purpose. It doesn’t touch on why we should figure out the purpose of different types of words – in other words, what is the motivation for learning all this?

Sam didn’t balk at the lessons and I thought that was because she was getting something from them. But now I think all she liked about it was that she could parrot something back to mommy and get my seal of approval on it. It fits in with her love of memorization.

So now I’m stuck again on grammar. I looked at the Montessori curriculum guide again and it’s really not all that different. It has concrete manipulatives, yes, but it still kind of just jumps in by telling you what a noun is outside the context of a sentence. And of course it requires a ton of specialized materials and takes a lot of prep work. I’m willing to do that if I think it’s worth the effort, but I’m not convinced the Montessori approach is quite right either. I never diagrammed sentences when I was a child, so I don’t know if there is a prerequisite for it. But it seems like the sentence is the first-level concept here. (I don’t mean first-level overall, just the beginning concept in the subject of grammar.) Maybe that’s where we should begin. And maybe it is too early, which is fine with me as well.

So, my plan now is to listen to Leonard Peikofff’s course on grammar (which you can now get for a super-low price from the Ayn Rand eStore in digital format) , and then to take a look at Rex Barks, (sentence diagramming) which I’ve had on my bookshself since long before Sam was born. Then I’ll decide whether we are ready for grammar at all, and try to find a better place to start.

We’ll still use First Language Lessons for the poem memorization work and some other exercises. And the Q&A might work as a supplement to whatever we end up doing with grammar. But on its own, I don’t recommend it as a way to start grammar.

  1. Kim on November 8, 2012 at 10:35 pm

    I think nouns (the naming of something) is the first place to start. It’s very concrete. It is how our Montessori school worked. The movable alphabet exercises all started with things that the kids then spelled. They then moved onto verbs–something you can do. Of course the simplest sentence is a subject (noun) and a verb. So defining those two things really would be a fine place to start.

    The Well Trained Mind, of course, hands kids the full definition immediately but that’s not really necessary as the definition can be updated as the context expands. Once nouns and verbs are in place, then it seems obvious (color, texture, size) adjectives and adverbs would follow with lots of real life interaction.

  2. Bill Brown on November 8, 2012 at 10:50 pm

    I don’t understand your disparagement of facts or memorization at all. I’d recommend Peikoff’s “Philosophy of Education” and Daniel T. Willingham’s “Why Don’t Students Like School?” for a great elaboration of why facts are the currency of knowledge. Neither argue that all learning should be rote or parroting, but they don’t shy away from recommending it as a tool.

  3. Heike Larson on November 9, 2012 at 2:16 am

    Not sure why you think Montessori is about memorizing for grammar? In fact, a lot of grammar in elementary Montessori starts with stories that make the parts of speech real to the children.

    Lindsay Journo of LePort Schools shared one such story at a Parent Education event: a teacher might pull together a group of children, offering to tell them a story: “This morning, Miss Journo woke up and walked to Miss Journo’s kitchen. Miss Journo opened Miss Journo’s fridge, and took out the milk Miss Journo wanted to heat for Miss Journo’s daughter. Next, Miss Journo prepared coffee for Miss Journo and Miss Journo’s husband. Miss Journo really enjoyed having hot coffee in Miss Journo’s bed in the morning…” By this point, most of the children would be chuckling, and Miss Journo would stop her story, and inquire what was so funny. The children would say something like “You keep saying Miss Journo all the time, Miss Journo.” This would then lead to a discussion how in normal language, we don’t restate people’s names whenever we talk about them, but instead, use a specific class of words. The teacher and students might then try to write down this short story, substituting the words we’d normally use instead of repeating a person’s name (she, her, who…) – and they thus discover what a pronoun is, namely, a word that stands in for a noun.

    Of course, by the time the Montessori student enters elementary, he already has manipulated the symbols for the parts of speech in his preschool Montessori class. He probably just memorized the use of these symbols (although we do talk about “action word”, for instance, even in preschool.) But now, with these types of stories, he’ll really understand what a pronoun is – and when he then uses the Montessori grammar boxes, to make sentences and automatize his understanding, he is able to get grammar in a way that’s much different than mere memorization.

    The tricky part here is that much of what makes up Montessori elementary is not just the Montessori materials, but the very special way that a trained Montessori teacher presents the materials, and helps the children explore concepts with the materials – and I think that’s hard to replicate at home, not just because you’d really need the training and probably some guided practice, but also because so much of Montessori elementary relies on interactive experiences with peers.

    Not sure that this is helpful to you, but I thought it might at least be interesting.

  4. Heike Larson on November 9, 2012 at 2:21 am

    Bill – I think the difference here is that memorization of facts should *follow* understanding, not precede it. Willingham is very clear that you need to start with a question that motivates learning – so the students understand why what you teach is relevant. In the case of parts of speech, for example, they need to understand first why they should care (the story I mention above is a good example: it makes clear how important pronouns are.) Then, after they care and have a basic understanding, you can then work on automatizing knowledge through repeated practice.

    Or take another example: in Montessori math, students start by doing addition with the Golden Beads. They put huge quantities of beads together – so they really understand what addition is, namely, putting quantities together. Only after this fundamental idea is solidly established (around age 5 1/2, typically, after working with the beads and the Stamp Game for quite a while) do children start to practice math facts, with the goal of memorizing these facts and getting faster at them.

    Not only does this order ensure that they really understand what they do – it also motivates them to learn the facts: they’ll notice that they can get much faster at adding big numbers if they don’t have to count all the units, but instead can do the addition in their heads!

  5. Amy on November 9, 2012 at 7:49 am

    Bill, I don’t see how you call what I’ve said “disparagement of facts or memorization.” You’ve missed my point.

    Kim, I don’t know. I don’t think Sam has any clue what we’re talking about when we talk about nouns. I don’t think she understands that there are different types of words yet. She did work with the farm in Montessori, but I don’t think it really meant much to her. But I agree that the WTM book can be useful once she has a better context. Then she can do the memorization and rote work. But now, it seems to be totally empty of meaning for her.

    It’s possible that Sam is just very slow in this area. She is wildly inconsistent in her development. But one thing I know: she is not learning anything if she thinks a common noun means the word mommy says first. I think I’m going to have to fight her super-memory as I teach her. It’s too easy for her to memorize and not understand. Adam did the same thing in school. Even until adulthood, he never grasped the idea that the number 547 is a sum of five hundreds, four tens, and seven units. Because 547 was just one more concrete number to him, and all of the numerical operations he did were rote processes that he had memorized. He did great in math until he got to algebra – then he was lost. Me, on the other hand – I had to conceptualize because my memory is weak.

    I would guess that, in the Montessori farm activity, Sam could figure out all the nouns – the objects. But she would not figure them out because they are objects. She would have memorized them the first couple of times she worked with the farm. Talk about other nouns and she’d be lost. But that is something I will test. And it’s even fine if she starts out that way…memorizing that “pig, hen, barn” are all nouns, whatever that means to her. That is the data she will eventually have to bring together. But I have to be sure to bring her to the concept at some point, and that point can’t be too far off, or she will build up bad habits of being concrete-bound. She already did that with math and numbers, and her Montessori teacher never noticed.

  6. Amy on November 9, 2012 at 7:55 am

    Oh, I meant to include another point. In order to understand “noun,” you have to integrate and differentiate. So another thing that is missing in all these exercises is quickly adding in the verbs. I agree, those are the two to look at first. But in my Montessori curriculum guide and in the WTM book, they go on and on about nouns for weeks and weeks, before talking about sentences or verbs or anything else. So there is no differentiation. That’s why I think a sentence is the basic unit to begin with. Why not look at a bunch of sentences and draw out how each one has some things in common. That seems more inductive to me. But I don’t want to design lessons from scratch, so I’m hoping I can find that approach somewhere.

  7. Amy on November 9, 2012 at 8:12 am

    Heike,
    Your comments were waiting in my queue for approval so I didn’t address them before.

    The way you describe the Montessori approach seems totally sound, and the pronoun story is exactly what I mean by “starting with a sentence.” But maybe the issue here is that Sam is not yet at an age where she is ready to conceptualize. She should still be in that pre-school mode. If so, manipulatives really are the way to go, I think, not memorization of phrases. Words are conceptual. It would be a mistake to think we are giving the child a wealth of facts to draw upon later by having them memorize (definitions, math facts, etc) while they are in their pre-conceptual (loosely) stage. I’ve never been excited about the Montessori shapes to represent parts of speech, but if I look at it as just a pre-grammar training, it makes more sense.

    I am heartened by what you said about the children needing to work with the Stamp Game and the Beads for a LONG time before they grasp the concept of addition as putting together and the rest. Sam is definitely still in that stage. She was doing the finger charts at school but I pulled her way back from that when we started homeschooling. Now I see real progress from her, but it is amazing how slow it is.

    My Montessori curriculum guide is for Lower Elementary, so that might be the problem right there. It does have the farm activity as a review, but it does not give much advice about how to use it. So I also agree, the teacher has to have the right intention and understanding. I’m not buying the farm game, but maybe if I find more details about how to use it, I can develop my own way of doing this “pre-grammar”. I can find that on the internet, so I’ll add it to my list of things to investigate. Thanks!

  8. Bill Brown on November 9, 2012 at 11:59 am

    Heike: That wasn’t my exact recollection of what Willingham said, so I went back and checked. This paragraph’s guidance is repeated throughout the book but I picked this one because it’s instructive:

    “When is it appropriate to ask students to memorize something before it has much meaning? Probably not often, but there will be times when a teacher feels that some material–meaningless though it may be now–must be learned for the student to move forward. Typical examples would be learning letter-sound associations prior to reading, and learning vocabulary in both their native language and foreign languages.”

    The next paragraph contains a personal anecdote wherein he wished he had been taught the multiplication tables by rote because he hit a wall around fifth grade at being able to do larger problems more quickly.

    My point wasn’t that memorization was the be-all–that would guarantee concrete-boundedness–but that it could be useful and needn’t be dismissed out of hand.

  9. Lindsay on November 12, 2012 at 2:40 am

    Hi Amy,

    As a grammar nerd and Montessori advocate, I can’t resist adding my two cents.

    I don’t think that you can conclude “The Montessori approach to grammar [isn't] quite right, either” if you’re beginning with Lower Elementary. A Montessori grammar education begins in Primary, with a series of concrete, vivid, and effective presentations and follow-up activities that cover the parts of speech (verbs, conjunctions, prepositions, etc.) as well as parts of the sentence (subject, predicate, direct object). What you are seeing in Lower Elementary with the symbolizing is a much later movement toward abstraction. Montessori grammar education does not rely in any way on rote memorization and regurgitation.

    I would also second Heike’s note of caution with an anecdote about my personal journey with Montessori. I have read almost all of Montessori’s work over the past 20 years, and have worked at Montessori schools for 14 of them. But I didn’t truly understand the Montessori method until I finally took the AMI primary training (which I’m now 3/4 of the way through). I’m not sure where you bought your training manual, but I know that AMI albums are not available for sale. So, you do need to be somewhat cautious as to how accurate or complete the guidance you’re receiving is, and aware that it is impossible to divorce the Montessori materials from the Montessori environment (trained teacher, multi-aged groupings, etc.)

    I hope that helps!

    Best,

    Lindsay

  10. Amy on November 12, 2012 at 1:28 pm

    I should clarify: what I thought about the Montessori program that I have is not that it had too much memorization, but that it seemed to start off in the middle, without the proper context. But Lindsay’s point is probably valid: I’m probably missing the beginning work from Primary. And I do think that this curriculum guide (NAMC, which is an unaccredited Montessori training operation but the only thing I could find available to the public) is not detailed enough–at least for me. It’s not really meant to be used without training for the instructor, and I agree with Lindsay that you can’t really replicate a Montessori school without all the elements. So, the Montessori approach might be okay or even great, but it’s problematic for me.