Response to Weaver Chapter 6

For the last chapter in the Weaver textbook, she once again gives examples for how to successfully teach grammar concepts to students and what some research says works. The one thing out of the chapter that I really enjoyed, was the idea of mini lessons. Mini lessons can work well with any grade level because it takes a small portion of grammar that my students are having trouble with or will find useful and then I give them a mini lesson on what the rule is, how it functions, and how they can use it properly. I think that this will work well with any group of students because the mini lessons will be tailored to the individuality of each group of students and it will be less overwhelming because they will be taught only one lesson at a time. It can be extremely overwhelming to learn tons of different grammar rules at once, but mini lessons can make the grammar more memorable because the students will have time to focus their attention on one rule instead of ten at a time. Also, Weaver made a good point that with the mini lessons, I cannot expect to never retouch that rule again. I cannot expect that after one mini lesson to have the students memorize the rule and be able to apply it correctly. I think that after each mini lesson, it would be best to focus most of the attention on usage because that is the most difficult part of learning grammar. It is easy to list a rule and it's function, but it is another thing to be able to put the rule into practice. Focusing a lot of attention on usage will make the rule more concrete in the students head, and it would be best to  try and put the rule into practice with examples  of the students' writing. The hardest part of teaching usage is finding examples that are relevant to the way students write. Therefore, it would be 100 percent useful to have the students practice usage on their own writing, so that hopefully, the mini lessons will positively affect the way students write.