REFLECTIVE FINAL
My reflections on reading the textbook: Teaching Writing by Gail Tompkins and the Online Resource. How I have reacted on the various theoretical perspectives, concepts, instructional techniques and instructional materials. How I have related, evaluated, questioned, responded and reacted to these perspectives, concepts, techniques and materials as relevance to my experience expertise.
NAME OF STUDENT: VICTOR FRU ASONGWE
STUDENT NO. 200574994
COURSE: ED 6641- Teaching Writing in primary, elementary and Secondary schools
Memorial
A reflection of the various theoretical perspectives, concepts, instructional techniques and instructional materials I have experienced in teaching English Language, Literature, and French both to learners of English as first language and to learners of English as a second language. This also takes me into another experience of teaching French to second learners and first learners. What an exciting experience I have got over the years to share with my teachers, peers, friends and classmates. In the past three months I have been reading Gail E. Tompkins and sharing opinions online with my classmates and Dr. Glassman. In a collaborative atmosphere, I have learnt a lot and continue to think that each new atmosphere gives a new room for new knowledge and the need for continuous research. This makes me to think along with Karen M. Feathers, in her book Infotext (1993, Pippen Publishers) as he writes the following on the importance of reflective writing: “ Learning involves more than memorizing and repeating facts. It involves relating information to what is already known, as well as evaluating, questioning, comparing it to other information, responding and reacting. Providing students with strategies for organizing information is one way to help deepen their understanding. Encouraging them to think critically about information is another – and reflective writing provides a useful tool for doing so.” (P.100). As Dr. Feathers goes on to expand this idea of reflective writing, I feel that in my presentation I will demonstrate my experiences as a teacher, what I have discussed online and my new perspectives and how I am presently teaching my students and those I intend to teach in the future. By reading, writing and discussing online with colleagues and Dr., Glassman, I feel a fresh man ready to influence and change several minds in my future teaching. In the following paragraphs I am going to show how the different ideas I have learnt have influenced my teaching or differ and what techniques and materials in the text (e.g. utilizing literature focus units and learning logs in content area subjects) do I feel are compatible with my personal teaching style.
I have taught English reading, writing, listening and speaking to students of all grades, from kindergarten to University. Poetry is another area where I have equally exploited creativity in students. Literature in short is a good subject that students enact stories and can write down, using the tools of writing demonstrated or taught by the teacher in class. I have used quite a combination of teaching strategies and tools in enhancing this knowledge to my students in the different grades. Beginning with the alphabet, which is just twenty-six letters, can be a very good game and eye opener to many students learning English. It is so exciting to students learning English as a second Language to notice that ‘apple’ or ‘banana’, ‘man’, ‘boy’ can form words or joining vowels and consonants can make meaning .I often play puzzle game with my students to show them how to form words from a few letters of the alphabet. It is so interesting when they hear just nine letters or twelve letters of the alphabet can give many words. Through this experience they begin learning how to write it does become a surprise to them when they come to know that just twenty-six letters of the alphabet can write encyclopedias. As compared to Chinese, Korean, and Japanese, it continues to be a surprise to me when people use strokes to write. I speak Chinese but I have barely crammed how to read and write down a few words in Chinese character because of time space. The Chinese language has no formula to learn the strokes as we learn and teach students how to write words using the alphabet. Having taught elementary Chinese students and having noticed the challenges of teaching a new language to students whose original language has no relationship with English, I feel it is my duty to use special tools to focus thoughts and opinions that are essential concepts to consider when teaching these young readers and writers. Having introduced word games and vocabulary in reading, I try to make them to read and write directions, interests, about their hobbies, short poems, personal experiences, field trips, families posters, posters, pictures write questions and answers. As a strategy we may sit together and discuss and I then give them room to write. Usually when the students are made to write their own personal experiences they have much to say. Writing is a special creativity that warrants one to think a lot before putting ideas down and the students need to be orientated with different writing techniques to follow this up. Good writing requires prewriting, drafting, revising, editing and publishing. Since I teach students of different levels, I always consider these facts and approach the children differently. It is not an easy task to follow the kids step by step to be what we are today but we must continue to strive in collaboration and new teaching methods. “ The need to communicate with others must be present for literacy to occur”, (Brown 1990). Talking or writing about weather can be an important topic to dwell on with the students. Just like in Tompkins, page 4, I equally teach my students to write about the weather. “Mrs. Reeve’s multiage primary class is learning about weather, and they use writing as a tool for learning. They begin the unit by making a K-W-L chart (Ogle, 1986) Mrs. Reeves divides the chart into three columns “ K: What we know”, “W: What we wonder” and “L: What we learned.” Children begin by brainstorming things they already know about weather and Mrs. Reeves writes them in the k column. The list includes “ weather is different in summer and winter, “ Lightening is very dangerous,” “You tell the temperature on a thermometer,” and “ snow is frozen rain.” Then a child asks, “How does it rain?” and Mrs. Reeves writes the question in the W column. Others question about tornadoes and different types of clouds are asked, and she adds them to W column .The discussion continues and other information and questions are added to K and W columns. During the unit, children continue to add questions to the W column, and as they learn more about weather, they write what they are learning in the L column to complete the chart. The children may want to keep daily weather calendars. Mrs. Reeves talks with them about the kinds of activities they might pursue during the unit. The children may want to interview a television weather forecaster, do weather experiments and write an ABC book about weather as they did plants earlier in the school year. Writing will be an important tool in these activities. Mrs. Reeves uses the children’s ideas together with the standards specified by her school district to plan the unit. In brainstorming the lesson Mrs. Reeves prepares a large pocket chart for the “word wall”; children will write interesting and unfamiliar words about weather on cards and display them on the word wall during the unit. They refer to words including tornado, thermometer, hurricane, freezing and thunderstorm. Children in guided writing may also chose individual projects to do that relate with weather. Their projects included
- Drawing weather maps
- Painting mural about weather
- Making weather safety posters
- Performing a skit about weather forecasting
- Constructing weather instruments
- Retelling a favorite weather story such as Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs
- Making a weather can (a coffee can be decorated with a picture and filled with five facts about a particular type of weather, such as tornadoes)
- Writing a weather book.
In fact this demonstration of Mrs. Reeves teaching technique in writing is very good as most of the elementary students are interested in fun and searching for words to talk about weather. I have often related other topics in my teaching like she does. It is quite captivating but as we handle very large classes and have much to cover in the syllabus for children’s tests and end of year tests we hurry up and may not deepen our real efforts in making the students think as they are really supposed to do. However it is a good way to make the children to start the process of writing by discovering new words and playing with them, writing and putting on the wall, making their friends get familiar with them. “ Classroom teachers as well as writing researchers have discovered that even young children communicate through writing, and that they begin writing as they are learning to read or even before they read” (Graves, 1983, 1994). During the elementary grades writing serves three purposes:
1. Children learn to write. Through experiences with writing, children learn how to write. Informal writing activities such as clustering and quick writing, provide opportunities for children to acquire writing fluency
2. Children learn about written language. As children learn to write, they discover the uniqueness of written language and the ways in which it differs from oral language and drawing. In addition, children learn about the mechanics of writing, including standard spelling and usage, capitalization, and formatting.
3. Children learn through writing. Writing is a valuable learning tool that has many applications across the curriculum. Children write informally to analyze and synthesize their learning, and they write formally and apply their knowledge when they write books and reports. (Halliday, 1980)
Mrs. Reeves’ second and third graders exemplified all three components as they used writing during their unit on weather. They learned to write by writing and practiced the writing process as they drafted, revised and edited class books and individual projects. The students learned about written language as they revised and edited their writing when it was to be published. They also used writing as a tool for learning about weather through both informal writing and more formal writing projects.
Frank Smith (1988) reflected, “ the first time I explored in detail how children learn to write, I was tempted to conclude that it was, like the flight of bumblebees, a theoretical impossibility” (p. 17). The writing samples in the Vignette about Mrs. Reeve’s students show that as bumblebees really do fly, elementary students do write even do it may seem improbable that children who are becoming literate can be fluent and expressive writers.
I equally remember having requested my form five students to write a summary of their lives in Sacred Heart College Douala. In all they had started as infants and had spent five good years together in the dormitory. They had a lot of experiences to share. This was to serve as part of their test and it was also to be published in the school magazine for all their parents to read. In fact some students first hesitated to do this but as they saw that I was very serious about it every body started writing. It was a free topic and many of them had much to say. Many started by writing their hobbies, places of birth, Nationality, when they were born and their experiences. Many of them wrote drafts, proofread, edited and then gave to me to mark. I gave them to exchange their readings make necessary corrections before giving me for the final typing and publishing. When students are aware that their friends, parents and other members of public will see their work, they decide to be more serious. I n short I initiated an idea that has remained over the years. Each year to students are graduating now they always have stories to tell about themselves and the school administration and this will always be published in the school magazine. This enables the students to start their writing process as early as form one as I initiate them into the Press club and teach them how to write poems, read aloud, write the news and present and also write Bible verses and read at the assembly ground every morning. This happens with everyone, as there is a roster for all. The introduction of Commonwealth Essay competition in 1999 also gave a boom in the writing strategy of the school .As Head of the Language department, I encouraged everyone to write and all the teachers were responsible to see the creative abilities of the students and then report to me. I t was a general initiative but when the other teachers could not collaborate well, I took it as a duty with all the language department teachers. Because of this practice most of my students have always scored about 90% in their scores in English Language, French Language and Literature. The overall results in National exams always range around a hundred percent. I received a prize from the Bishop for having worked hard with my students. This is a serious collaboration in teaching and learning. As the students equally receive prizes and certificates from the Commonwealth Royal Society, they are always motivated to continue with annual writing competitions.
The writing process is a way of looking at writing instruction in which emphasis is shifted from students’ finished products to what students think and do as they write. James Britton and Janet Emig were two of the first researchers to examine students’ writing processes. In her study, Emig (1971) interviewed 12th graders as they wrote, and studied the writing processes that one teenager used in depth. Several years later, Britton and his colleagues (1975) examined 2000 essays written by British high school students and found that students’ writing processes differed according to the type of writing. Donald Graves (1975) described a similar process of prewriting, composing and prewriting as he examined young children’s writing and documented that 7 year- olds, like high school students, used a variety of strategies as they wrote. Usually topics are supplied to students to write. Donald Graves (1976) calls this traditional approach of supplying topics for students “ writing welfare” Instead, children need to take responsibility for choosing their topics for writing.
In my teaching of writing, I usually give more than five topics for students to choose one. My form four and five students choose topics from the different kinds of essays: narrative, argumentative, expository and Descriptive. In these different models we have either through group discussions or from reading discussed what each essay type stands for. They know that in narrative essays they have to use past experiences and talk about events using the past tense. In the case of an argumentatative essay topics we brainstorm topics in class or I ask students to say some topics common to their lives. The environment may also give rise to an immediate topic. For instance in
1. Instrumental language. Language to satisfy needs, such as in business letters.
2. Regulatory language. Language to control the behavior of others, such as in directions and rules.
3. Inter actional language. Language to establish and maintain social relationships, such as in pen pal letters and dialogue journals.
4. Personal Language. Language to express personal opinions, such as in learning logs and letters to the editor.
5. Imaginative language. Language to express imagination and creativity such as in stories, poems and scripts.
6. Heuristic language. Language to seek information and to find out about things, such as in learning logs and interviews.
7. Informative Language. Language to convey information, such as in reports and biographies.
In each particular writing as I have read from Tompkins, I have equally directed my students to consider purpose, audience and form when writing an article or any piece of writing. Sometimes I do not need to bother the second language learners much with genre. As Gibbons puts it, “some second language, however, are not familiar with genres and they benefit from explicit instruction so that they can “succeed in school and actively participate in their dominant community” (Gibbons 2002, p. 60).
Normally after a piece of writing, I grade the students accordingly. The students are aware of the fact that I will grade them according to content, accuracy and expression. I have taken time to explain to them that Content means the ideas or points you put into the essay, expression stands for direct flow of material. The style and choice of words a student uses and accuracy will be looking into spelling problems and punctuation issues. This puts into the minds of my form four and five students that they need to take note of particular types of careless errors. I make them aware of the rubrics. “Rubrics are scoring guides that teachers can use to assess students’ achievement on particular writing assignments,”(Tompkins, 2004, p. 172) When students participate in making the rubric, they become more aware of the characteristics of good writing and they understand the assignment better. (Tompkins 2004, p.175) Also encouraging students by giving them feedback or good comments after a piece of writing is a good tool in writing. “ An individual’s cognitive growth in their writing abilities should be seen as a continuum,” (Glassman, 2007).It is critical for a teacher to realize that constantly providing justified praise for efforts made by each of their students will help each student to strive to reach their personal potential.(Glassman 2007)
“ Teachers have the responsibility to teach students how to write, and part of that responsibility is teaching the students the skills that capable writers use” (Tompkins, 2004,p.103). We need to create an atmosphere where authentic and meaningful conversational exchanges are encouraged; where the “real” voice of a learner expresses what they are thinking and feeling” (Glassman, 2007)
In teaching writing, I always discuss and ask questions that relate with the students’ senses. Questions that can quickly make them reflect and write. Summary writing is one of the ways in which I equally use. Like I mentioned before that they might write summaries in journals, letters through the school year, school magazines, and personal connections to background experiences and world knowledge connections. There is also the need to make students to reread the work they have written. I always allow my students to do this to see if it can make meaning to them and to others. “ Language to be used effectively, must be meaningful for both the “sender” and “receiver” of communication (Glassman, 2007).
Strategies are cognitive tools are cognitive tools that students can use flexibly and selectively. These thinking tools are essential in order for students to transform into independent writers.
“The purpose of instruction is to enhance students’ awareness of strategic writing, so that they can plan, evaluate, and regulate their own thinking” (Tompkins, 2004, p. 98) It is just like I have regulated many things in my teaching as I read online discussions and get new opinions about writing from Dr. Glassman and colleagues. When the Dr. Glassman appreciates me or encourages me on a point I am very happy. I feel that this goes along way; the same feeling our students feel when their teachers talk to them or mark their papers and comment positively to them. Assessing students’ writing is a critical aspect in helping them become effective writers. “ No matter what type of assessment measure is used, assessment is to help children improve as writers and feel successful,”(Tompkins, 2004, p.168). One of the ways I assess my students is through formative assessment. Formative assessment is good because it reveals the quality of the teaching and learning by the students,( Glassman , 2007) It provides opportunities for students to reflect on their writing in a more relaxed state of mind.
Portfolio assessment is another measuring tool that I use. “ A writing portfolio is a collection of samples of work from different phases of a students’ learning process,” (Glassman, 2007) this is one way to approach on- going assessment through the school year. Portfolio assessment is a valuable tool that represents students’ achievements. It requires reflection. “Indeed reflection is part of the writing process itself,” (Tompkins, 2004, p. 152)
Observing students is one of the methods I implement in reading and writing. In fact I have used this method with a lot of success in teaching my university students in
In fact there are several theoretical perspectives presented in the text that I feel are personally relevant at this point in my career. As I have read through the text in several areas, I felt I was the one working with the students, especially in some of the examples presented by Mrs. Reeves in her teaching and discussion about “weather” at the beginning of this article. There are equally several concepts, which have been presented in the text (e.g. Writing is a valuable learning tool) that I feel is very important in my career. However, those who have never been to school can still manage life without knowing how to read and write. In the eyes of the present world it is worth important to know how to read and write because one may face a lot of difficulties not knowing how to read and write when faced with the computer world which is so full of technology which requires reading and writing. There are several techniques and materials presented in the text, which are very compatible with my personal teaching style. Environment may influence a teaching technique but this remains stated that there are several methods of teaching students the same thing .The way students may be taught writing or reading in the city using audio – visual aids may not be the same way in a typical village school. This makes a difference. Equally, teaching in
Computers have come to change the phase of handwriting, as many students decide to answer their questions directly by typing to their teachers instead of showing their natural craftsmanship. In the past we used to be told that the best form of writing a business letter or an application is by using one’s personal handwriting. Today many things have changed. Like spelling, handwriting is a functional tool for writers. Donald Graves (1983) explains: “ children win prizes for fine script, parents and teachers nod approval for a crisp, well crafted- page, a good impression is made on a job application blank… all important elements, but they pale next to the substance they carry”(p.171). We are following the direction of the wind. However, I feel science and technology are making things more easy for us especially in the teaching of reading and writing. Teaching tools have changed from simple classroom, pen, pencil, textbook, and teacher to computer, Internet, microphone and photocopy machine to name just a few. It because of these technologies that I also think we are succeeding, as we are able to add our knowledge in reading some of our courses through Distance Education.
References
- Teaching Writing, Balancing process and product. Gail E. Tompkins. Fourth Edition. (2004)
- Online Discussion (2007)
- Glassman (2007)
- Internet readings
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