Putting the g back in english: Preparing pre-service teachers to teach grammar

Classroom teachers need to have a solid foundation in understanding and applying English grammar in order to buttress their content and pedagogical content knowledge and support their students' literacy development. However, teacher preparation programs are challenged to incorporate this kind of content into the existing curriculum, which is heavily laden with other core requirements, including the need to prepare teachers for classrooms of diverse learners, many of them ELLs. How can we best prepare future teachers so that they have the requisite knowledge and skills, curiosity, and training to meet the language learning demands of today's students? This case study explores a collaborative attempt to respond to the grammar challenge in teacher education involving a block of literacy courses and a linguistics course.