RESPONSE TO A QUESTION ABOUT ENGLISH TEACHING
This is the question that I answered.
Could you suggest me some materials which can help me to improve my students writing skills?
Some activities that you can develop in the classroom; in order to improve your students writing skills are:
1. The use of Blogs.
I do not know if you are interested in the use of technology inside of the classroom, but if you or your students have a blog, you can talk, discuss and write about many topics, you can also give your students feedback making comments about what they have been writing about, suggesting things; In fact you can actually observe their progress.
2. Portfolios
A portfolio is a collection of students’ best or evolving work overtime; so as a teacher you can actually observe important aspects of their writing skills. I think this is not as modern as the use of blogs, but it is very useful.
3. Magazine or Newspaper.
In groups or individually you can ask your students to write and create a magazine or newspaper about any topic they like using pictures, comics, etc.
4. Pen pals.
There are many websites on the Internet, when you can actually meet or get in touch with students from other cities or countries. You can use the old way “Snail Mail” (letter) or e-mail.
Some websites such as: http://www.yahoo.com/ have groups to do this activity; although you can also create your own group and contact student`s from another school, so they will be writing letters to each other and hopefully they will become friends.
The website http://www.friendship-by-mail.com/ contains information about pen pals, and it will help you to understand what snail mail is.
I responded as I did because these kinds of activities must be planned according to student’s interests, and technology motivates them, since it is the way they communicate with their friends, so it is a very important tool.
Another aspect that I focused my answer was that the teacher needs to follow students’s improvement, then every writing activity must be saved somewhere to compare and see the difference between new and previous work.
Finally, the teacher have to make his or her students feel comfortable with the activity, that is, students have to feel that what they are doing is important, since they are communicating ideas, feeling and thoughts to the rest of the class, or the people.
The video shows an idea of Pen Pal programm between High School and Elementary School students.
Could you suggest me some materials which can help me to improve my students writing skills?
Some activities that you can develop in the classroom; in order to improve your students writing skills are:
1. The use of Blogs.
I do not know if you are interested in the use of technology inside of the classroom, but if you or your students have a blog, you can talk, discuss and write about many topics, you can also give your students feedback making comments about what they have been writing about, suggesting things; In fact you can actually observe their progress.
2. Portfolios
A portfolio is a collection of students’ best or evolving work overtime; so as a teacher you can actually observe important aspects of their writing skills. I think this is not as modern as the use of blogs, but it is very useful.
3. Magazine or Newspaper.
In groups or individually you can ask your students to write and create a magazine or newspaper about any topic they like using pictures, comics, etc.
4. Pen pals.
There are many websites on the Internet, when you can actually meet or get in touch with students from other cities or countries. You can use the old way “Snail Mail” (letter) or e-mail.
Some websites such as: http://www.yahoo.com/ have groups to do this activity; although you can also create your own group and contact student`s from another school, so they will be writing letters to each other and hopefully they will become friends.
The website http://www.friendship-by-mail.com/ contains information about pen pals, and it will help you to understand what snail mail is.
I responded as I did because these kinds of activities must be planned according to student’s interests, and technology motivates them, since it is the way they communicate with their friends, so it is a very important tool.
Another aspect that I focused my answer was that the teacher needs to follow students’s improvement, then every writing activity must be saved somewhere to compare and see the difference between new and previous work.
Finally, the teacher have to make his or her students feel comfortable with the activity, that is, students have to feel that what they are doing is important, since they are communicating ideas, feeling and thoughts to the rest of the class, or the people.
The video shows an idea of Pen Pal programm between High School and Elementary School students.
posted by Pamela Correa at
8:24 PM
1 Comments:
Pamela,
This is both a wonderful list of suggestions to the teacher as well as some very good reflective thought on what it is that we really do for students. For example, your pointing out that what we need to do is to keep records in some way for our and our students' noticing of improvement is true. Blogs are indeed one way to do that. Nicely done!
Gina
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