Paper, Pennies, Popcorn, and Grammar?

Gail Yost

In Room 2A, clusters of students intently fold, twist, fringe, and tear pieces of bright construction paper. Art project? No. English class.

Down the hall, fifth graders peer behind venetian blinds, flip through library books, and check under erasers on the chalk board. Hunting for a misplaced class roll? No. English class.

A pungent odor wafts from 3B. Students record their observations of the smell, taste, texture, size, color, and even the sound of just-popped popcorn. Science experiment? No. English class.

All of these students are studying grammar. Their teachers are among the growing numbers who are putting into practice an old educational truth: The more abstract the idea presented to children, the greater necessity for dramatic visual aids.

Kim Hughes knows that by manipulating pieces of scrap paper, her second graders will learn (and remember) more about verbs of action than they ever will by memorizing the definition. She's also quite sure that many parents will be learning about verbs at the supper table that night.

Brian Johnson will eventually have his students memorize prepositions by singing 37 of them to the tune of "Yankee Doodle," but hunting for pennies comes first. Once the pennies have been plucked from between books, under erasers, behind the aquarium, and inside the waste baskets, each student must tell the others where he found his pennies. "If you can't tell the place, you can't keep the cash," according to Mr. Johnson. Except for an occasional "I found the penny there" (accompanied by a gesture toward the window sill), the students respond with wonderful, lilting prepositional phrases. This first exposure to the preposition puts it, as few other methods can, in the environment that makes it a preposition. By the time the students have acted out, verbalized, and heard all those phrases, they have prepositions down. And, they know why down is not a preposition in that sentence. Do you?

Karen Wooster doesn't particularly like popcorn, but she loves the way it introduces adjectives. Her air popper adds to the excitement of the preparation, and her students can hardly wait to describe what all their senses tell them about this favorite treat. Starting with words like small and white, the third-graders progress to chewy, salty, puffy, smooth, crunchy, and soggy without realizing that they're studying grammar. Mrs. Wooster jots down the words on the chalkboard, making a word wall that the class will use when they dictate their story about popcorn.

Like their peers in other educational settings, these students will do their share of underlining verbs twice, putting prepositional phrases in parentheses, and circling adjectives. But these students will be working from a background of concrete sensory activity that develops understanding and mastery. And all it takes is a handful of paper, pennies, and popcorn.

Reprinted from Balance, a publication of the School of Education, Bob Jones University. Used with permission of Bob Jones University. Please write BJU Press, for permission to reproduce this article.