Magpie Moments

More WriteWays experimentation...

The thing that I'm finding hardest about trying out some of these new teaching approaches is giving more detailed language feedback. So I am so grateful for the template that Jason Renshaw made available here.

It's funny I was thinking about this yesterday. Whilst this resource is great for learners in its own right in many ways the resources and templates Jason's making available are kind of like scaffolding for teachers. In the same way that I make worksheets simpler or create boxes and grids to encourage my learners to try new things... these templates do the same for me!

So whilst the learners were on their break, (following the adjectives session I described here)  I rushed to the staff room, typed their errors into the template and printed it.

It's here if you're interested...

Download WritewaysA'sE1errors

They then corrected all their spellings as a group without too much trouble (we've done this before) and we went on to the sentence errors.

However, they found the sentence errors much harder to correct. As did I! I was desperately trying to think of how to explain some of the rules off the cuff while they tried to figure out what the mistake actually were. I must admit I didn't do all of them. Below you can see my attempts at some.
I actually tried to convince them to delay the rule and pattern section till next class to give me time to prepare but they really wanted to do it there and then. Which in itself is encouraging! What was also encouraging was that for the first error they just could not see the missing article but after we'd gone over the rules/patterns they immediately spotted a missing article in the third sentence.

Well by the end of this whole session I was exhausted... but... it made me realise how much I do actually know and how useful that is for the students especially when delivered in such a focused way to meet their individual needs.

My plan is now to brush up on my grammar knowledge using this great book by Scott Thornbury! ;-p

A WriteWays experiment...

Really interested in this offering from JR last week so had a go this week with my E1s. Their writing skills are generally quite a way behind their speaking and the first unit seemed ideal for their level so I got them to do the initial piece of writing and then inputted it into the template very generously shared by Jason.

This is what I ended up with:

Download Writeways_lvl_1_unit_1 adapted for A's E1 class

So how did it go? Well it's certainly given me a lot of food for thought and again brought home to me just how complacent and frankly lazy I've been over the last few years especially with error correction. Also, the intrinsic difficulties of teaching classes of learners some of whom have study skills whilst others don't.

This class is made up of mostly Asian learners and also some Polish learners. Interestingly the Polish learners  immediately noticed the difference between the passages and very easily corrected not only their own punctuation but also their grammar using the model to help them. (I didn't ask them to do that) However, the Pakistani learners found the incorrect passage easier to read despite the errors mainly because it was about a more familiar person. They didn't really notice the errors!!

However, after some more explicit explanation they did begin to get the hang of it and what was really encouraging was some of them began to notice that they were using capital letters throughout their work for words like Live, Favourite, Mother etc...  and were self correcting.

The part that made me hang my head in shame was just how easy and natural it was for me to simply tell them their errors. Especially at the end, after the follow up writing and dictation, as I was running out of time. So, despite having just witnessed some 'aha' moments for some of them when they were self correcting, I just pointed out their fresh mistakes and wrapped up the lesson.

However, if they really can begin to self correct and notice their own mistakes that's a priceless study skill that would have been really worth teaching them. And by they  I actually mean if I can persevere with this whole noticing approach rather than falling back on old habits. Since it was clear from this class that they definitely can self correct it just takes more initial effort from me!

I will definitely try the second unit after the half term holiday although I might not do it all in one chunk as I did today as it's quite intensive. However, definitely well worth it both for them and me :-)