I'm a new teacher and I mainly teach social studies but next semester I am teaching English 9 and 10 and aside from a brief stint in my practicum with Eng 10, teaching English is a bit overwhelming for me. The basic structure of where I live is Poetry, Short Story, Play, and Novel Study with grammar etc thrown in the units. The only thing is, I'm not an English teacher and teaching grammar, proper ways to write an essay or even how to mark English essays, is scary. Has anyone taught English before that was trained in another subject? And yes, while I can ask other fellow English teachers, I don't want to appear like I don't know what I'm doing or that they won't have confidence in me but I'm feeling quite out of depth. So basically, I have been looking at other English 9/10 syllabuses and they have similar units but for grammar, writing styles, do you do that at the beginning of the year or integrate it into different units?
Grammar and writing is usually integrated into the units. I suggest doing some form of daily writing. To bone up on grammar, see www.grammarbytes.com . I don't think you need to be so frightened. Will you have access to the textbook and additional materials (teacher guide, class sets of novels, etc.) before school starts? They can be remarkably helpful.
If you’re looking for a nicely scaffolded grammar program, I can recommend Mechanics Instruction that Sticks. I didn’t come across it until my last semester of teaching, and I wished I had found it sooner. It’s set up to be used as warm-ups, and each unit builds very logically on the previous one. One note of caution: check the answer key carefully! This is a teacher-created product and it’s not perfect, but I liked it very much. http://www.davestuartjr.com/grammar/
