Starting to Update
I have decided to update this blog to reflect on my teaching experiences so far. A huge amount of me wishes that I kept a running journal of my experiences last semester in the middle school but not much I can do about that now! I am currently student teaching in high school, 9th grade honors to be specific, and am so far thoroughly enjoying the experience. I enjoy being able to have conversations about meaning and life issues with these students and their writing impresses me more than I ever thought it would. They did a name piece as their very first writing assignment and some of them brought me tears!
That being said, grading the writing was much more difficult. I worked on a check system (plus was excellent, check plus was good, check was average, check minus was needs work and minus was see me to work on it) which worked pretty well because I hated labelling them with grades. I did my best to use positive reinforcement as a teaching tool versus pointing out what they did incorrectly and I think it went really well, I even wrote ‘share?’ on some papers that were especially good (in my opinion) hoping that would encourage them to do so.
The discussion following the sharing was more than I ever hoped it would be. I started out by asking if anyone would like to share and once they had read their piece, I asked the other students to point out things they liked about the writing. I hoped this tactic would encourage others to share once they realized we weren’t making fun of it but what I got was so much more. These students were actively engaged in critiquing each others’ work in the same way we critique famous authors/poets. They were pointing out the use of symbolism, the narrative elements, certain lines and phrases that held meaning and discussing if and how they relate to the work. I used this opportunity to introduce vocabulary like imagery, metaphor, simile, narrative poetry, etc. I have never (in my limited experience) seen students enjoy studying poetry and prose so much!
Talking about each others’ work really got the other students willing to participate. We discussed the importance of names and what they represent. We explored how we would feel if we had to completely change our names for some reason and they really just enjoyed talking about the subject. I felt like I did a good job of passing the discussion from one student to the next without lecturing. They also asked me if I had written a name piece (which I didn’t) so I simply told them the story of my name. I think they liked that I shared with them.
The important thing for me to remember about that particular experience is that the students were perfectly capable of engaging in higher level thinking and indepth class discussion without me needing to set it up for them, so to speak. in other words, they were studying and analyzing literature as if it were second nature. Obviously, these students are capable of analysis and interpretation, so encouraging them to use these skills as much as possible can really help them develop cognitively. I’ll have to use this in the future.
jpeel1
