I was teaching EL to a Secondary Two Express class. Even though they belonged to the express stream, they were one of the weakest classes in the level. They were also infamous for being restless, noisy and unmotivated. They did not take too well to grammatical rules and structures and got bored very easily. The texts available to them also made them switch off they could not relate to the South African context and found it difficult to pick up the nuances of the piece.
The objective for this particular lesson was to teach the chronological aspect of autobiographical writing. I remembered the EL games that we learned from QCE520 and conducted the Jigsaw game. I cut up an autobiographical narrative into different paragraphs and jumbled them up. Students were then to arrange them according to the structure they deem best. Because they could not relate to the stories that were assigned to them, I wrote an autobiography from the POV of a boy who tries to juggle soccer and school. The students could relate to it and the activity was carried out smoothly. I added some excitement by telling students that I was keen to see who would be able to finish organizing the passage first. A dose of competition always seemed to motivate these boys!
I only mentioned that they were going to learn one aspect of autobiographical writing. However, at the end of the activity, they knew they were going to learn chronology. I liked this because they discovered the teaching point on their own.
After this starter, they used graphic organizers (something else I learned from QCE520) that required them to fill in information according to chronological order from the unscrambled passage. This allowed them to further examine the passage. And in the next lesson, they had to fill up the same worksheet but with their own information for their own autobiography. At the end of the Unit, (i.e. 3 lessons) students were to hand in an autobiography for their CA assessment. Fortunately, I could tell that students learned the importance of chronology during marking because of their (mostly) well-structured essays!
I use alot of graphic organizers for my classes as well. My express stream students are not very strong as well, and they need to do alot of hands on work coupled with something visual or leading up to their own individual writing. These organizers I find are good at helping them put their thoughts down and organized and many of them do realise that.
ReplyDeleteAnother issue was that I have mixed classes, so I have to familiarize myself with all these new 'hip' elements that they are crazy about... taylor swift... *bleh*... the script... just so I know what they are on about, and as well as making sure that I know their likes and interests. The boys love soccer, girls like.. erm... whatever else.... mention Cristiano Ronaldo.. Kaka... they both go nuts for whatever reasons. So I think it was good that you did make sure that understood their psyche cos that sure makes the lessons go smoother too sometimes.