Code-Switching Lesson

Code-Switching Lesson

When teaching past time patterns to a classroom of students’, that may predominantly speak and/or write with a vernacular dialect, it is important to lay a solid foundation to ensure they have a complete understanding of the definitions; formal, informal, and code-switching. Many students may not realize the differences relating to formal and informal or why they use code-switching to adjust in various situations, especially writing situations. To help ensure students grasp the full concept of past time patterns, it is helpful to follow four basic lessons that include defining, classifying, practicing, and editing, informal and formal past time patterns. Each of the following lessons will help students to improve upon their existing foundation in order to become more effective writers.
The first lesson, defining informal and formal past time patterns,
In this lesson, students will begin to be encouraged to apply their newly learned skills and develop an understanding that the majority of the writing they will do should to be done using formal language. In this lesson, student will have an opportunity to share in an exercise called peer review. Peer review exercises are a great way for students to read and correct a peer writing, all the while preparing themselves to complete their own self-review. The reason this lesson may be the most important is because this is an chance for students to use all of the patterns previously taught.
The fourth and final lesson, editing the formal past time pattern, is where we, the teacher, will begin to see which students have grasped the concept and are able to apply the patterns using past time and those who have not. In this lesson, children will begin to edit their own writing to decide if any informal language appears and how make necessary correction in order to achieve formal