I don’t do creative writing with pupils whose vocabulary in Enlgish is so small (in 10th grade!) that we could sit down and count it.

However, since I’ve entered the world of blogosphere and started experimenting with all this new stuff, interesting things have been happening. And since, as usual, these 30 goal challenges seem to be have a direct link to current events in my classroom, here’s a brand new story related to goal 21: encourage creativitity! I thought I would write about slideshows some of the kids made for the poem “The Road Not Taken” but there’s not really much to tell.

A story in three parts (so far):

Part One

Our beloved retired volunteers, Linda and John ( a married couple) were away for 3 weeks. When they returned, Linda sat down next to a very weak 10th grade hard of hearing pupil, who we’ll call H.,  who wanted to know where she had been. I told H. that she could ask Linda what she wanted to know and that we would write a story about it together.

When H. heard that Linda had just returned from Cuba she exclaimed ” But that’s a name of a food” (Kibbeh in Israel is pronouinced Kubbeh)! We put a hold on the activity until Linda took H. to the map on the wall…

H. asked the questions in Hebrew and I wrote out Linda’s answers in simple English. Here’s the story we produced:

Linda went to Cuba and Costa Rica. It is far away. She had fun. She saw beautiful birds. She went for one week.

H. hadn’t known the words “went” ” fun”  “far away” or “birds”.

We read it twice and then I erased one word in each sentence.  We did this several times (each time only one word a sentence) . H. really concentrated and was very proud of herself that she completed the missing words. Linda copied the story off the board and she put it in the binder.

Now, that may sound educational but hardly creative writing.

Part Two

Later in the day H. had another lesson, without Linda. Using the story we wrote about two vacations she went on, replacing info in the original story (such as: Eilat instead of Cuba, dolphins  instead of birds, one week instead of three). She was very focused.

Part Three

Two days later she came to class, pulled out the story and said: What are we going to do with MY STORY today?

I think that counts as creative writing!

This story isn’t over! To quote Tyson Seburn ” One of the best things you can do with material is milk it for all it’s worth!”

Once again this challenge of the 30 goals challenge seems to be related to current events. I just got the ” speaker form” for this summer’s ETAI conference (our local affiliate with TESOL).  I may be immodest here, but for a teacher who teaches a very specific population, my lecture at last year’s conference was very well attended. It seems that my assumption that strategies and materials I use are applicable for others  in different teaching settings is correct (make no mistake, when I tried to focus my lecture on pupils with hearing problems in the regular classroom, the largest attendance I had was four people!).

So, that wasn’t very modest of me but thinking about it did actually make me feel better. Today was a “burn-out” today. It rained really hard this morning and some girls didn’t bring an umbrella and (big surprise, right?) got wet and then got all upset about it!

So here’s a taste of one of the strategies I spoke about at last year’s lecture, using pictures to help weak high-school students prepare for their national matricualtion exams.

General explanation and picture activity one:

https://visualisingideas.edublogs.org/2010/12/09/reading-pictures/

The most popular “reading picture” activity

https://visualisingideas.edublogs.org/2010/12/18/finally-the-kitchen-picture/

If you want more, check out the “visual corner” category on this blog.

This goal of the 30goals challenge deals with  “burn out”, which is a very real problem for me. I’ve been a teacher for 25 years and I’m very involved in what I do.

I’ve been spending less free time doing other things  since I started blogging and reading all these fascinating blogs by others! Yet I feel that doing so encourages me to keep going! Don’t really know what to do about that one.

Anyway, here’s something I wrote for a local English teacher’s  publication, the ETNI RAG on why bird watching is good for teachers:

by,

a puffin

This goal of the 30 goals project is ” a piece of cake”! Participating in this whole challenge has been about sharing my story! Since I’ve begun the words seem to come pouring out!

So, today’s story is about my second attempt at adapting Jason Renshaw’s disappearing text strategy. I’m really excited about this. Tried it twice today!

Lesson one went very well. There were only 3 students (3 were absent!), two VERY weak 12th graders (20 year old girls) and one bright, 10th grade boy. Once again we created a text on the board about the holiday of Purim. The weak girls suggested the content (in Hebrew) and the bright 10th grader supplied a lot of the vocabulary and sentence structure in English. Again, 6 sentences.

Then we started erasing words. At first one by one they came to the board to complete the words. But then just the girls took turns at completing missing words and they turned to the boy who fingerspelled the spelling of the words for them. Suddenly these girls were paying attention to those pesky “is” “are” which don’t exisit in Hebrew. These are girls who don’t remember the meaning of simple words such as “walk”. But here, because they helped create the text, at least during the lesson, they remembered the meanings of the individual words and focused on whole sentences and structure! Wow!

Two hours later I became ambitious and tried the strategy again with a rambunctious group of seven  10th and 11th graders (with 2 other pupils doing other things in the back). These kids use four different coursebooks, big differences in level. It was noisy but they liked creating the text. They were surprised enough by the idea of me erasing words to be fairly quiet when I had them come one by one to complete two missing words each.

But then I had a bit of a problem. When I ereased words the second time, the pupils who weren’t writing gradually stopped following. There were seven of them and the process went too slowly. Ideally we should have split into groups for the second “word filling” time, but how was I supposed to do that? It’s a tricky issue to divide them into two equal groups (fair share of different abilities) and, since they just invented the text, I didn’t have the text to hand out to each group! They wouldn’t copy the text off the board – that most certainly doesn’t work with these pupils.

Any sugesstions?

I’m really pleased about the addition of this new strategy to my “toolbox”!

NOTE: This counts as completion of goal 16. Teaching frontally in such a manner is definetly a change in my learning center!

I see this goal of the 30 goal challenge as something different from what came up before regarding the need to look for some kind of academic success as a basis for future learning. This one is about making sure students know that their classmate is good at something, even if its hardly related to their English studies.

With some students I’m proud to report that my strategies work. Once again, I bless the YALP vocabulary program we’re using. When students tutor each other with the vocabulary flashcards, the “tutor” doesn’t need to know the vocabulary, the answers are on the other side of the cards! What matters to the students is who is the patient, encouraging pupil acting as a tutor. Some of the weakest pupils are good tutors (repeating for emphasis “some“. Nothing ever works for everyone in my class!)

Then there are the kids that are our “resident computer experts”. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, we’re just wrapping up a literature project. The pupils needed WORD and powerpoint. Some pupils needed help with these programs. We have a computer in class (no Internet) so our “experts” were very helpful. This computer has WORD7 which is fairly new to me so they helped me sometimes too!

In addition, I think the fact that all levels and grades are mixed places slightly less of a spotlight on the students still working on 5th grade material in 11 grade. There are so many different books (different colors of the covers) being used that an easy book doesn’t stand out quite as much.

However, there are definetly situations when the weak students are acutely aware of where they are compared to the others (I have a 10th grader still on her ABC’s) and they don’t feel happy…