Dwyer, Grammar, and the Farm

Question:

I absolutely love your take on language in the classroom, neuroscience, dyslexia--thank you for providing this much-needed resource!

My question for you is: Do you know of any resources that cover integrating th Muriel Dwyer method with use of the Grammar Farm?

Julia says:

What a great question. Muriel Dwyer's method focuses on early reading. She was an AMI teacher trainer so she generally followed the AMI language approach. She wrote a little book (maybe you have read it) describing adjustments to the method that she made based on teaching in two partially phonetic languages: English and Swahili. The focus of her book is teaching phonetic/phonogram reading with partially phonetic languages. As far as I know, she did not need to make adjustments to the standard AMI language program in other areas; once you understand the key sounds, you can keep to the standard approaches that work in Italian and partially phonetic languages.

I do know that the London AMI trainers (like the amazing Lynn Lawrence) have a slightly different approach to the function of words activities. Instead of exclusively using the farm, they encourage children to gather items/objects from around the environment and then include those in sentences. So, for example, instead of writing a phrase about the pink pig, the grazing sheep, and the busy farmer to teach the conjunction, the London approach (which Maitri Learning's grammar materials follow) might write the sentence the ten bar, the hundred square, and the thousand cube. The child would gather those items and then tie them together with the pink ribbon to show how the conjunction ties things together. Hope this helps!