This week, the reaction paper was on Chapter 7 which focused on the writing process. My school is a Success for All school. I love the Writing Wings program because it breaks the writing process down into each step and requires a lot of student interaction among their peers. What surprised me as I read the chapter was that research has found that focusing on correcting written papers may actually detract from the writing experience. The most important part of writing is gathering and organizing ideas. Mechanics and grammar can come later. Subconsciously, I think that if I correct my ELL's, their papers would improve with time and extra attention. I think I should start focusing on gathering ideas and planning a little more.
I wrote a couple of lesson plans about Idioms, Figurative vs. Literal Language, and a Social Studies lesson regarding the newspaper and current events. I added in standards from the TESOL website. If you would like a sample of either lesson plan, I would be more than happy to share them with you.
Have a wonderful weekend.
Katrina, I remembered I was always scared and nervous waiting to get my writing papers back from the teacher because I don't like to see a lot of red markings. The chapter indeed mentioned that as educators we shouldn't focus a lot of making correction on the grammatical errors but we should focus more on gathering and organizing ideas. Students are all different just like they all learn differently. Some of them take the red marking deeply that affects their self-esteem. Some take it well in terms of improvement. So we have to think carefully and see which students will take it as part of their learning process and which ones are not going to take it well. Thanks Katrina for sharing.
ReplyDeleteKudos to you Trina...on teaching about idioms. The other day, I was dropping off my granddaughter to school and I was telling her about figurative language and what it means. I gave examples to see if she had grasp the concept. At first, she was taking it literally and then she figured it out. I use games to teach her lessons on language whenever I have the time with her. Sometimes we play "radio announcer", "an interview on Miyah's day at school", "news reporter", record it on my phone and we would play it back to listen to how it went. We would laugh at our mistakes and I would give her tips on how to say it next time. I teach her as much as I can about language skills so she can become a good communicator.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely true, Katrina! I remember during my first year of teaching: I thought classroom management was the top priority of every teacher in order to be able to teach. However, especially with my ELLs, that compassion tops that priority. Students learn more when they are listened to and are treated with kindness. Without compassion, they become too afraid to even learn. And that! is not advantageous for anyone at all. :(
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