Monthly Archives: May 2019

Day by Day in the Classroom

Are Cell Phones Killing Students’ Word Processing Skills?

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Before the days of word processing…
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At first, I thought it was an isolated phenomenon.

I tried to hold on to that thought but I really can’t ignore it anymore.

The number of students who don’t have a working computer at home is rising steadily.

And they don’t seem the least bit perturbed by that fact.

There have always been some students who didn’t own a computer, but that was clearly due to their family’s economic difficulties. In many such cases in the past, wonderful teachers and administrators were able to get a hold of computers for these students thanks to various donations. The students were glad to receive these computers – it was clear they really wanted to own one.

But now I hear the following more and more often:

Am I stuck in the past?
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“We have a computer but it stopped working and we never got it fixed. Nobody wants to use it anyway, every member of the family has their own cell-phone”.

I talked to a student about the issue the other day and she tried to show me that everything the school system could possibly want CAN be done on the cell phone.

I am not convinced.

We have two computers in our English Room.  They are in use most of the day. The students have tasks in their Edmodo groups which require written answers and literature papers which some students choose to type (they are allowed to hand in these papers in handwriting if they wish). All of these require that the students use WORD (and PowerPoint!) installed on the school computers.

I now find myself teaching students how to toggle between languages on the keyboard – which used to be an absolute basic thing to know about using a computer in this country! They hit Caps Lock as a solution and then don’t understand why they can’t access sites that require a password that is case-sensitive.

Naturally, when you are only using the Caps Lock the text won’t progress nicely from left to right instead of right to left, especially if you are using numbers or bullets. That also causes problems when I point out they have forgotten a word and then the students can’t seem to add it in the right place.

Students also don’t align the text and the issue of spacing is completely ignored…

Today a student called me over to look at his work and I saw he had totally ignored the red and blue markings that “WORD” used to indicate errors.

Sigh…
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There certainly still are students who know their way around a computer way better than I do but their number seems to be steadily decreasing.

So, is teaching word processing skills something I’m supposed to be adding to my curriculum for next year?

Sigh…

Do you teach such skills as well in your lessons?

 

 

 

 

 

Books I enjoy!

Saturday’s Book: “84 Charing Cross Road” by Helene Hanff

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Different lives behind different windows can connect…
Naomi’s Photos

What a BIG SMILE of a book!

That may be a grammatically incorrect statement but it is the best way to describe how reading the book made me feel.

I read this quite short book, composed entirely of an exchange of letters, in 24 hours. I began it before bedtime (and turned off my reading lamp rather later than usual) and completed it as soon as I got home from work the next day.

I think I smiled the whole time.

The correspondence begins shortly after the end of World War Two and is between the actual author, who presents herself as a poor American screenwriter and author, living alone in New York and an Antiquarian bookseller in Charing Cross Road, London. The touching, engaging and often humorous correspondence spans 20 years.

I  don’t want to give too many details in case you haven’t read the book ( I’m sure many have somehow I missed it!) as it’s better to discover the characters’ lives as you read, but I also found it interesting to be reminded of an era when people traveled less and there was no Internet. Helen has no idea how to “translate” pounds into dollars and sends actual cash in envelopes (we actually used to do that for years, too!!!). More than that, it was a revelation to her how difficult times were for the British in the years right after the war ended!

Sometimes,  “sharing” (via a book) a friendship between people from different countries who have never met, is just what a person needs to read and be reminded of.

Particularly so when one takes into account the fact that I learned of this book AND was lent a copy by a friendly colleague whom I lent the book “Address Unknown”, which is another book composed of letters.

It’s always good to talk to people about books!

Enjoy!

 

 

Day by Day in the Classroom, Visualising Vocabulary

When an Error Turns into a “Very Lonely Felt Jacket…”

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Distortions…
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“Wow”, I thought to myself as I moved between the students who were working individually on their reading comprehension tasks, “this student’s error is a classic mistake! Here is a great opportunity to remind the class of the dangers of ignoring parts of speech and the importance of using the dictionary wisely”.

So I called everyone’s attention to the board. In my 12th grade class of Deaf and hard of hearing students, all comments for the whole class must be made while standing by the board where everyone can see me, and I can write-up the words and sentences as needed. The students are used to me pointing out errors in this manner. They know I absolutely never ever make fun of a student. I also thank the student for giving us this opportunity to pay attention to some point. Since this happens once with one student’s error and then with another, the students are all well aware that they are all “in the same boat”.

Appearances deceive – a  boat that is a bench…
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The source of the problem was the word “felt.” One word led to multiple errors.

“I felt certain that my second attempt would be successful”.

The student had forgotten the meaning of this irregular verb so he looked up the translation in his electronic dictionary.

However, he did not pay attention to the fact that he was looking for a verb and that the electronic dictionary first presents translations that are nouns.

The student wrote down the noun meaning of the word “felt” (as in a type of cloth) which in Hebrew is a three-letter word “leved”.

The electronic dictionary does not use diacritics and the student understood those same three letters to mean a totally different word in Hebrew, “levad”, which means “alone”.

Therefore, the student could not understand the sentence in the text.

A textbook error to be presented to class, right?

Or, as it turned out, an excellent example of how explaining too much can totally confuse students and introduce other mistakes!

Lost my way…
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I should have just reminded the students of how to pay attention to the syntax and look up the word “felt”  as a verb and left it at that.

Sigh…

When we looked at the meaning of “felt” as a noun it turned out that not a single one of those students knew what the material felt was. I didn’t have anything made of the material felt in the room to show them and none of the students were wearing anything made of felt (it’s a hot country, you know!).  I started trying to explain. The only example I could think of at the moment was a  “felt jacket”.  I’m sure if they had touched the material it would have been familiar but they simply did not have a word for it in any language they used.

The fact that  I had also been trying to explain how the first student had made an error with the meaning of the noun as well, confused the students even more.

No, there were no “felt jackets” mentioned in the sentence.

Yes, yes, I agree, jackets, made of felt or any other material cannot be lonely, so it is ridiculous to use the word lonely in the context of a jacket except that aren’t any jackets in the sentence.

Aargh!

Sometimes less actually is more – explain less!

The sentence remained on the board when the next class came in.

I simply pointed to the word “felt” and reminded the students how they could (and should!) know the word is a verb even if they forget it’s meaning.

No “lonely felt jackets” were allowed into the room!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Books I enjoy!

Saturday’s Book: “The Leavers” by Lisa Ko

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Journeys…
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This is a good book.

A sad one and an important one very relevant to our world today.

Vivid, clear, engaging and moving.

The book is told from the point of view of the two main characters and in their “voices”. The tale moves between these voices.

There is the story of a young Chinese woman with an individualistic streak, who dreams of making her own way in life, forgoing the future mapped out for her. We learn how she arrives in the USA, saddled with debt to those who brought her there, how she is taken advantage of as a worker, striving to pay off these debts. Her son is born in the US…

The other voice is that of the son. One day, when he was in the fifth grade, his mother vanishes. No one knows what happened to her. No one can explain to him why his mother abandoned him and his whole life turned upside down. He is adopted by well-meaning people who bring him into an environment with no diversity, he is the only who looks different despite his new American name.  The feeling of exhaustion arising just from being so conspicuous every single day wherever he goes is just one of the several issues that could be discussed while reading the book.

What happens to each of these characters unfolds as you read on.

I believe the book would be even better if it were a little shorter – more focused. I found that when the story was told from the point of view of the son it was a bit too long, belaboring details that were clear. I did not have this issue during the parts told by the mother.

I certainly recommend the book.