BONUS: Is Traditional Grammar Instruction Hurting Your Students' Progress?

In this S5E8 Schoolutions Teaching Strategies BONUS, I break down my conversation with Patty McGee about revolutionary grammar instruction that replaces shame with curiosity and memorization with discovery. If you've been struggling with student engagement in grammar lessons or wondering how to make grammar instruction actually stick, this episode will transform your approach..

Stop teaching grammar the way we were taught—there's a better way that takes just 10 minutes a day.

What You'll Learn:
✨ Why treating grammar like math (with manipulatives and exploration) changes everything
✨ The power of "conversationally compatible" grammar partnerships for student participation and classroom belonging
✨ How to implement effective 10-minute daily grammar study sessions that boost student motivation
✨ Why we need to stop expecting mastery after one lesson (active learning strategies that actually work)
✨ How to replace grammar shame with student empowerment and student success

Perfect for: teachers, education coaches, new teachers, mentor teachers, instructional leaders, school administrators, homeschoolers, and anyone passionate about effective teaching and inclusive teaching practices.

This approach supports culturally responsive teaching, equity in education, pro-kid mindset, and whole child education while improving classroom behavior, attention in class, and overall student engagement.

Chapters
0:00 - Welcome & Introduction to Grammar Revolution
1:00 - The Problem with Traditional Grammar Instruction
2:00 - Revelation #1: Treat Grammar Like Math, Not Memorization
4:00 - Grammar Manipulatives: Making Grammar Tangible
5:00 - Revelation #2: Conversationally Compatible Grammar Partners
7:00 - Rethinking Partnerships for Student Success
8:00 - Revelation #3: The 10-Minute Daily Grammar Study Method
9:00 - What 10 Minutes Actually Looks Like in Practice
10:00 - Your Monday Morning Challenge
11:00 - Replacing Shame with Curiosity in Grammar Learning
12:00 - The Gift of Discovery Over Memorization
13:00 - Final Thoughts: Grammar as Power, Not Rules
14:00 - Coming Up Next & Closing

💫Check out linked episode mentions here:  https://www.buzzsprout.com/1890886/episodes/17989335

🚀📚 Watch the full S5E8 Schoolutions Teaching Strategies interview here.

Join our community of educators committed to cultivating student success, inspired teaching, and creating inclusive classrooms with a pro-kid mindset focused on the whole child. When coaches, teachers, administrators, and families work hand in hand, it fosters a school atmosphere where everyone is inspired and every student is fully engaged in their learning journey.

📧 Connect: schoolutionspodcast@gmail.com
🎵 Music: Benjamin Wahl

Don't forget to 🔔SUBSCRIBE for more teaching tips, and💬SHARE with fellow educators! 

#TeachingStrategies #GrammarInstruction #StudentEngagement #EffectiveTeaching #TeacherTips #EducationPodcast #ClassroomBelonging #ActiveLearning #StudentMotivation #InstructionalCoaching #TeacherCoaching #NewTeachers #MentorTeachers #ProfessionalDevelopment #InnovativeTeaching #InclusiveTeaching #CulturallyResponsiveTeaching #EquityInEducation #ProKidMindset #WholeChild #StudentSuccess #EmpoweredEducators #InspiredTeaching #EducationTransformation #TeacherImpact #SchoolLeadership #InstructionalLeadership #LessonPlanning #TeacherSupport 

When coaches, teachers, administrators, and families work hand in hand, it fosters a school atmosphere where everyone is inspired and every student is fully engaged in their learning journey.

Transcript

[00:00:00] What if I told you that everything we've been doing with grammar instruction is backwards? The conversation I released on Monday with Patty McGee really helped me flip my own thinking. If you haven't listened to that conversation, pause this bonus, go back. It's season five, episode eight. It's called Grammar Instruction Your Students Will Actually Like and then come back for this bonus content. She said something that stopped me cold: “grammar gives us power, not rules, not correctness, but power.”

So think about that for a second. Again, we don't teach multiplication once on Monday and expect kids to have mastered it by Tuesday. We give them manipulatives, we let them explore patterns. We celebrate when they discover that three times four is the same as four times three. But with grammar, we've [00:01:00] been operating on this bizarre assumption that one lesson equals instant mastery. Patty's approach is like finding the perfect volume setting as far as I'm concerned. Not too quiet, not too loud, but just right. 

She's talking about only 10 minutes a day. That's it. Today I am sharing three revelations from my conversation with Patty that are going to, I hope, change how you think about grammar forever. Plus, I hope I'm leaving you with ideas you can try right away on Monday morning. No worksheets, no red pens, just real language power.

This is Schoolutions Teaching Strategies, the podcast that extends education beyond the classroom. A show that isn't just theory, but practical try-it-tomorrow approaches for educators and caregivers to ensure every student finds their spark and receives the support [00:02:00] they need to thrive. 

Welcome back to our Friday bonus episode of Schoolutions Teaching Strategies. This episode is an accompaniment to my conversation with Patty McGee, season five, episode eight: Grammar Instruction Your Students Will Actually Like. If you haven't listened to that episode yet, it's right below this one. Listen to that and then come back to this bonus content. I'm Olivia Wahl and I've been sitting with something Patty McGee said That completely shifted my thinking about grammar instruction. She said, “Grammar gives us power, not rules, not correctness. Power. Power to make people laugh, power to persuade, power, to teach power, to affect our own lives and the lives of people around us.”

This week's conversation with Patty has me rethinking so [00:03:00] much, not just about grammar, but about how we approach any subject that's traditionally been taught through worksheets and sometimes shame. So today I want to share three revelations that hit me after our conversation, and I'm going to give you something you can literally try on Monday morning. Here is something Patty said that made me pause as soon as she said it. It seemed so obvious and yet it was still revolutionary. We don't just teach a math concept once and expect perfection. So why do we do that with grammar? 

Think about that. We teach multiplication. We give kids manipulatives. We let them explore patterns. We celebrate when they discover that three times four is the same as four times three. We give them time, multiple exposures, different contexts. But grammar. We've been operating on this bizarre assumption that we teach a [00:04:00] comma rule on Monday, and by Tuesday they should have it mastered forever.

What if we treated grammar like we treat math? What if we gave kids grammar manipulatives, which just saying Patty and Tim actually provide in their book, and then let's let our kids be pattern detectives. 

Here's what this could look like. Instead of, this is a compound sentence, memorize it. We give partnerships actual word cards. They physically move words around. They combine two simple sentences into a compound sentence. They can see it, they can touch it, they can manipulate it. 

The second thing that's been rattling around in my brain all week is this idea of conversationally-compatible grammar partners. Petty specifically said to pair kids who can actually talk to each other, who feel safe making mistakes together, who can co-build knowledge.

This is not about pairing [00:05:00] students as thriving writers with striving writers. It's about helping kids talk and think about language. They may not be technically correct every time, but are they thinking about language? Are they theorizing? Are they engaging in actual intellectual work instead of just waiting for someone to give them the answer? This week, I challenge you to rethink your partnerships. Who are the kids who laugh at the same jokes, who choose each other at recess? Who can disagree without shutting down? Those might be your best grammar study partnerships. Patty even suggests these partnerships stay together for at least one full unit long enough to build trust. Long enough to develop their own language for talking about language. 

Now, when I was in conversation with Patty, I did address what I called the elephant in every classroom time. When Patty said, grammar study only needs 10 minutes a [00:06:00] day, I was skeptical. But then she said something that reframed everything, don't expect mastery after those 10 minutes.

Again, we've been trying to force feed grammar in 45-minute chunks, expecting immediate results. But what if instead we thought of it like maybe brushing our teeth. You don't brush your teeth for three hours once a week. You do it for two minutes, twice a day, every day. Grammar study can be the same. 10 minutes every day, or even just three to four times a week. Small deposits in the grammar bank account that compound over time. 

Here is what 10 minutes could look like according to Patty. Minutes one and two partners get their grammar manipulatives or notebooks out minutes three through eight, they could explore the day's focus, maybe combining sentences, maybe hunting for patterns in a mentor text. Minutes [00:07:00] nine through 10, quick share out one partnership, shares a discovery or a question. That's it. No slides, no worksheets, no red pens.

And something that really stayed with me from this conversation, Patty spoke to the shame that we feel from our own schooling, from not remembering grammar rules ourselves. How many of us are walking around with that same shame? How many of our students are developing it right now?

But here's the hope. Patty and Tim's approach isn't about eliminating rules or lowering standards. It's about replacing shame with curiosity, replacing memorization with discovery, replacing isolation with partnership. 

She said something beautiful about grammar being like art. That's where we're teaching kids to craft their writing like artists. When's the last time you heard grammar compared to art instead of rules? [00:08:00] I want to leave you with this. I pulled out my old grammar notebook from college this week, the one I mentioned to Patty, and you know what? The rules I remember are not the ones I memorized. They're the ones I discovered, the ones that I played with in my notebook, the ones I understood the why behind.

20 some years later, I still remember the day I finally understood why we used semicolons. Not because someone told me the rule, but because I discovered how they create a pause that's stronger than a comma, but softer than a period. That's the gift we can give our students. Not grammar as gatekeeper, but grammar as power.

Let your students see you not knowing a grammar answer, but model that beautiful phrase from Patty. “I don't know. Let's figure it out together.”

Remember, we're not raising kids who memorize grammar rules. We're raising kids [00:09:00] who understand the power of language to change their world. I'll see you on Monday for another incredible conversation with Angela Stockman. She speaks to pedagogical documentation and how we can go as narrow and in depth as choosing one focus area for an entire year of study as a school and really see our growth over time. Until then, go make grammar study and adventure. Sometimes the smallest shifts we create have the biggest transformations. Take care.

Solutions Teaching Strategies is created, produced, and edited by me. Olivia Wahl. Thank you to my older son, Benjamin, who created the music playing in the background. You can follow and listen to solutions wherever you get your podcasts or subscribe to never miss an episode and watch on YouTube.

Here's my invitation. Send me an email at schoolutionspodcast@gmail.com and [00:10:00] tell me one thing from this episode that's shifting your thinking. Tell me what your next step is. Maybe pick one grammar pattern your students are struggling with. Grab some index cards to create word manipulatives. Set a timer for 10 minutes. Let the partnerships explore. No worksheets, no right answers, just discovery. 

Remember, we're not raising kids who memorize grammar rules hopefully. We're raising kids who understand the power of language to change their world and make sure to tune in every Monday for the best research-backed coaching and teaching strategies you can apply right away to better the lives of the children in your care. Stay tuned for my bonus episodes every Friday where I'll reflect and share connections to what I learned from the guest that week. See you then.