This week there are two interesting topics for discussion: just wish I had more time to be there, but this project is really time-consuming, for the students and for me. I have already had to make some adjustments, as the way I had planned to correct students’ mistakes didn’t really seem very effective. I cannot simply correct or even point them out to students. If I want them to develop some critical thinking and some more autonomy I will have to let them find and correct their own mistakes. It’s important that they understand why it is wrong and try to find out how to correct it. Of course they will need support, but I expect this way they will learn and remember much more.
Tomorrow we will have a completely different lesson: I’m going to take some examples of their Penzu pages and some transcripts from the chat and, in pairs, they will try to find the mistakes they have made. I hope they will be able to recognize and correct many of them. Then I will help them find the rest and with the use of our course book, grammars and dictionaries, they will try to correct those as well. I know I’m going to get behind in the syllabus, but I have informed the school board and besides, I don’t think this is wasting time, quite the opposite, I will be gaining time in the long run if they learn to write better and to apply the grammar structures and rules they have already learned to real situations. I hope that seeing their texts will also make them aware of how important this project can be for them. I also hope they will feel more committed to their own learning and will learn to be more autonomous at writing. In fact, I think that this Writing Extension Project fits quite well into one of our topics this week.
The week has also been a mixed-feelings week. The first days were terrible and I was almost getting depressed with so little feedback from students, but maybe I was expecting too much: after all they were on holidays and it’s usual for people to spend carnival with their families in the nearby villages. Today things changed completely because they’re back to school and suddenly remembered what they had to do.
Hi Luisa, I just love the picture you have on your blog.
ReplyDeleteI also like to ease my burden the way you mentioned for example: I pick some typical mistakes from their writings print them out and let them find the mistakes. Some of the most courageous students shout out when they find their own mistakes on the paper. I have also noticed how they react on their own mistakes and it is important to point out that they should try to learn from them. The following mistake is quite common: they write whit instead of with or i instead of I (with a capital letter). They know it and promise to improve but the next day do the same mistakes again, it’s not very rewarding, is it.
For a couple of years I have tried a system with a list of the most common grammatical points and they are numbered, for instance a mistake with articles is number 0 and spelling mistake is number 16 etc. When I mark their essays I just the write a number in the marginal and the students correct their sentences accordingly. After each essay they ‘count’ their mistakes and in three years they should be quite aware of their typical mistakes – and hopefully learn from them, too. This is system is a bit time-consuming but with some of the students it seemed to work.
Well, just some thoughts again,
Greetings, Sinikka
Hi Sinikka.
DeleteGood to see you're OK again. This week I really felt I ahve been a teacher for too long, but the feeling is gone and I'm back to my usual good mood. Students are responding very well to the project and that's great. It makes you feel it's worth it. And they are really enjoying error correction. Let's hope they just remember all that when they start writing!
Hello Luisa!
ReplyDeleteI really like your reflection on the implementation of Writing Extension Project. And the way you are going to organize the correction session is very interesting. It would be great to learn how the students responded.
Helen.
Well, Helen, their response was great. It was a funny, busy class and they even asked to take some of the texts home to try and correct them as homework. I'll talk about it in my next post!
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