I am a middle school Language Arts (and Social Studies) teacher, primarily of self-contained Gifted/Talented students. Even among this population, I have found that grammatical awareness is "not part of the culture", and that I have far less success with students in this area than in all the others (in which most, as GT students, do well.) My kids think I am a Grammar-Fascist, of course, but actually I care about grammar only to the extent it impacts students' writing. Unfortunately, to avoid the common mistakes regarding punctuation, vague pronouns, verb tense usage, etc., one has to understand a fair amount of the grammatical world.
In the past, I have made digital voice recordings as I read and evaluated student writings; students and parents have said they appreciate the feedback, but I can't say that such feedback has prevented such students from making the same mistakes in the future. I have had students try some basic sentence diagramming. For some students this seems to help in their understanding of sentence structure, but not for most.
The most radical technique I have used (and still use) is to red-pen portions of a writing selection of each and every student on the Promethean Board (my district's version of SmartBoard) in front of the entire class. A few people, including one administrator, gasped when I told them about it. My response has always been that kids have been doing algebra problems on the board since the Neolithic Era, and no one has minded. Unlike algebra problems, of course, writing more intimately expresses one's persona, and thus public criticism of the writing is construed as criticism of the person him/herself. But for precisely that reason it is all the more important to get the writing right! Few adults ever solve a math problems in public, but many adults have plenty of chances either to distinguish or embarrass themselves in business memos, letters to the editor, blogs, etc.
Believe it or not, no parent has ever challenged my use of this technique, and quite a number have applauded it. Does it work to improve writing? I think the jury is still out. It certainly does help students to see that large numbers of them make the same mistakes, even the brightest among them. It also reinforces the reality that writing is both public and, once out there, very hard to retract! But I still see too many comma splices...
Anyway, I am curious as to others' thoughts in this regard. I am also curious if any of you have tried the public red-penning technique (and what happened after, of course!)
A few years ago a student of mine went to Northwestern University for the summer as part of their Talent Search program. She decided to take a Latin class. From there she sent me a card which said, "Mr. Smith, I can't believe it! They made me buy a book called 'English Grammar for Latin Students'." At least I know one student finally got the message. (BTW, I had to use quote marks for the book title because this blog doesn't let me italicize.)
