Celebrating Diversity Through Language Study: A New Approach to Grammar Lessons

What is language study?

Jen McCreight introduces us to a new approach to grammar study, a subject area all too often taught without students and their unique backgrounds in mind.  In today’s linguistically diverse classrooms, she argues that a more personal approach to grammar is necessary if we want to reach every learner.  “By linking language study to children’s’ backgrounds,” she writes, “and by empowering teachers, students, and families to become actively engaged in this work, the disconnect so many children feel from school will begin to shrink.” 

Language study is a student-centered approach to grammar study, with two primary components:

• teaching students how to negotiate the language they use based on context
• building on background knowledge to make the study of words relevant for all children.

Used either exclusively or embedded into an existing grammar curriculum, Jen’s step-by-step language study plan brings children’s home and school language together for more authentic grammar lessons that help students begin to view their own unique backgrounds as important and connected to the study of words.  With examples from 1st and 3rd grade classrooms, activities, tools, and project ideas that bring grammar to life, Celebrating Diversity Through Language Study promises a more culturally sensitive approach to grammar that will help all children thrive.

Educator, researcher, writer, and teacher, Sonia Nieto is Professor Emerita of Language, Literacy, and Culture, School of Education, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. In her career, she has taught students from elementary school through doctoral studies and her research has focused on multicultural education, teacher education, and the education of Latinos, immigrants, and other students of culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. With many journal articles, book chapters, and several books to her credit, she has received numerous awards for her scholarship, teaching, and advocacy, including four honorary doctorates. She was selected as a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association and as a Laureate for Kappa Delta Pi in 2011, and in 2012 she served as the Wits-Claude Distinguished Scholar at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.

Jen has eight years of experience teaching kindergarten and first grade, and is currently an Assistant Professor at Hiram College in Hiram, OH. She teaches Early Childhood Education courses, and enjoys working with her students and area teachers to honor and build upon language diversity within elementary school classrooms. Jen holds a Ph.D in Language and Literacy Education from the University of Georgia.