Rookie Reflections

I am frustrated with the (lack of) grammatical knowledge my ninth-graders have. I reviewed parts of speech during the first six weeks, because I wanted them to have a good review before we start harder concepts like subject-verb agreement, sentence structure, style, etc. I realize that for all those who are not grammar nerds, it can be a little boring. So, I came up with (what I thought were) effective, entertaining ways to learn parts of speech. For example, after we learned pronouns, I played "Can't Buy Me Love" and had them pick out the pronouns. Also, after we did adjectives, we played a game to see which group could come up with the most adjective for everyday objects. They were very involved and seemed to understand it at the time.

Fast forward to today when I'm grading their six weeks exams. THEY DON'T KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN COMMON AND PROPER NOUNS. You can just forget about pronouns and adjectives. They can tell you every single word to every single Gucci Mane song, but they have no idea which of the words in the song are nouns.

I re-taught what should've been a review, reviewed the review, and then tested. These are primary concepts, and yet they still don't know them. What gives?