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/
You might also want to have a look at Dorling-Kindersley's Help Your Kids With English; it's designed for parents, but that mostly means that it's nicely clear.
Do you know if your district has a pacing plan for eng 9 and 10? In my district they are pretty clear about what are the most important things they want us to cover - in 11th the jrs take some high stakes tests. I'm teaching 9 for first time this year and I'm covering how to annotate when reading text - first pass for understanding second pass for reader's opinions about the text. As for grammar, I do integrate it as much as possible - pointing out how authors work and using sentences I pull from our reading. I really suggest you do talk to other english teachers if there are any at your school you feel comfortable around. Every teacher needs to start somewhere with a new class - They might be able to lead you in directions that make your semester much easier than reinventing the wheel. Do you have a textbook that you are using with them? Often the text book has some great fiction collections so that you can work with excerpts from classics and teach in depth. also check your districts web site.
ps - some of my favorite teachers from way (ahem, waaaay) back when I was a student did not consider themselves "teachers." My middle school English teacher was brilliant at getting the class to love plays and literature as much as she did. She shared with us often that she wasn't an "English teacher." Maybe she did something else better, but she sure was a great English teacher!
