Recently I have been looking over my field notes and I’ve been trying to find a theme that resonates across all of my observations. I found myself highlighting similarities between my notes and was surprised to find out that I had written so much on the style and structure of teaching in classes. I had constantly detailed the different ways in which teachers make students enhance their literacy capabilities. From my notes I found that there are two ways in which teachers make students learn Basic English sentence structures. In the first method, students are given the opportunity to write on anything they want as long as they use either a declarative, imperative, or exclamatory sentence in their descriptions. They are given the chance to write about what happened to them at home, what they saw in recess, what they like/dislike, what they wish for, or what they hate. On the other hand, teachers at the school site also restrict their students writing choices. For example, at times teacher A would make his students learn how to write sentence structure by answering question from a text book. The process of formulating these answers did not require much thought since the students merely copied what the textbook said. For example, one question read “What is a Declarative Sentence?” The student would then open the book, look up Declarative Sentence, and copy the definition on a work sheet. I noticed that several students got bored of this type exercise and frequently turned to talking to one another. Conversely teachers that used the first method of giving more freedom on writing saw their students more engaged in their assignments. It seemed as if these students were more interested in writing on their personal experiences rather than looking up definitions from the book.
Stemming from my observations I think I’m going to focus on teaching style when it comes to letting students have options and freedom in their writing. Through this trajectory in my investigation I see other questions coming up:
-What do the students write about when they are given this freedom?
-Which is method is more successful in teaching students the different styles of sentence structure?
-Can promoting student-choice in classrooms spark an interest in learning to read and write?
What do YOU think? Any feedback appreciated!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment