The best EL lesson I conducted was on narrative writing.
My pupils were very poor in English, and were at the tail end of the Sec 3 Express classes in a neighbourhood school. Nevertheless, they were intelligent and exuberant and generally interested in English lessons.
Using a combination of process and product writing, they were to produce a narrative essay on the topic of an impulsive decision by the end of 2 lessons.
In the first lesson, I played them a youtube video of a public awareness advertisement from the UK featuring teenage anti-social behaviour. The class became very excited and we talked about how things were similar or different in Singapore.
We then discussed impulsive decisions. We unpacked the question and established the demands of the question, which helped the students with a weaker command of the language. I asked them to think about what impulsive decisions we could write about, and we compiled a list of possible topics.
I then divided them into groups of 4 and told them to plan a story featuring an impulsive decision. They used a graphic organiser that helped them divide their story into paragraphs and plot the introduction, rising action, climax and conclusion. The better groups were given the chance to present the ideas to the class.
As homework they would produce the first draft of their essay individually. In the second lesson they would practice peer editing and a final draft would be ready by the next week. Due to their standard of English, many mistakes would not be found during peer editing, but it certainly was not a case of the blind leading the blind. Every student was able to at least make some corrections to another student's draft. I was happy to see that even low-ability students were enthusiastic enough to submit 6 page essays.
According to my CT, this combination of process and product writing produced essays far better than simply assigning a piece of writing as homework, with the very first draft to be submitted. Not only was the final product better but students tended to retain awareness of their mistakes and improve as they edited their own essays and those of their peers.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Clarence,
ReplyDeleteI think the topic 'impulsive decisions' is a very unexpected move and I'd love to present that to my class.
How did your students interpret their 'impulsive decisions'?
Also, while they worked in groups of 4 in class, did their drafts differ in style and language use? Or did you set the narrative voice to be used, the tenses/setting etc?
I had my Sec 3E students (top class) engage in some short creative writing every Tuesday and they were unable to give me a half-page essay, even after giving graphic organisers and providing all sorts of visual and auditory triggers to get their juices flowing. Flow they did not.
I think next time I shall try to provide more content (like your video) and structure (like identifying common elements in a narrative).
Yati
The students talked about taking drugs and running away from home or running over pedestrians and driving away. My CT advised me to vet all their ideas before letting them begin, just to make sure that we didn't get too many essays with irrelevant subject matter. This was the only control we implemented.
ReplyDelete