REFLECTION #2

Reflection on teaching

Reflecting on my teaching after being introduced to this course of study was not a very pleasant experience for me however very enlightening. This exercise forced me to take a very introspective look at my self and the teaching strategies that I employed during my two year tenure in the classroom. Was I a strategic teacher?

Answering this question meant that I had to firstly examine what it means to be a strategic teacher. My interpretation of a "good" teacher was one who cared about her students' learning, and therefore took the time to plan her lessons, teach vocabulary skills, and generally assist my students in understanding what they have read. Strategic? This was a totally new realm of literature to me. I now recognise that it is my responsibility to actively and directly teach my students the basic reading and writing skills that will equip them to becoming better learners.

Previously during my teaching of Language, I did utilise some strategies to help my students become effective readers. Our lessons always commenced with an exciting scenario to focus the students or just to get them organised and energised. The topic would then be written onto board, followed by examples of the concept I wanted to teach. This was done especially when teaching spelling rules. In the case of comprehension passages, I read the passage in their hearing, then distribute the passages to be read as a whole. New words would be picked out and students were required to derive meaning context.

In many instances the results were positive, but there were other students lagging behind. I could not fathom their misunderstanding and this became very frustrating for the class. These students would have to be dealt with at another time or given other tasks to accomplish. I know now that although i may have engaged in some useful strategies, this was hardly sufficient. The lessons seemed to be lacking and I must now admit that I was not a "good" teacher.

Every child has the potential to learn and therefore need special attention and the necessary skills to foster learning. The teaching/learning process must be an explicit exercise, and it is the responsibility of the English teacher to ensure that her students can apply the skills learnt to their other content areas. Knowing how to do so is a procedure that must also be taught not left to chance or assumption. My goal is to become a strategic teacher, develop strategic learners and allow my students to view their learning as a journey where despite the hindrances we will get to our destination. I have much learning to do.

Leonilla Minvielle

SIR ARTHUR LEWIS COMMUNITY COLLEGE

Division of Teacher Education and Educational Administration

Associate Degree in Education Program

ENG 204 – Content Reading and Writing for Secondary Teachers

REFLECTION #1


Reading is a skill, mistakenly, that we as Secondary school teachers expect our students to possess. After all how else would they be able to succeed the common entrance examination? Traditionally, and still so presently, it is assumed that students are taught to read at the primary school level a opposed to the secondary level where this already acquired skill is nurtured and developed at a higher more elaborate content area subjects. But, many teachers and educational administrations are ignorant to the fact that teaching a child to read is a more strenuous and difficult job that perceived.

Reading to many of us is the early progress in oral development, teaching a child to read focuses on the child’s ability to orally repeat what is seen on text. It goes deeper than that. As teachers we should not only focus on teaching our children how to read but also to form some sort of understanding as to what they are reading. We have to take into account the child’s prior knowledge, stimulation and practice outside of the classroom, and they different learning styles of our pupils.

There is this utopia that children raised by normal caring parents develop speech and language abilities naturally and without effort. But what about the percentage that are not given the “right” stimulations from home. We have these students filtrated in our classrooms at secondary schools. There are students with varied backgrounds, social situations, and economic constraints who basically have to struggle to keep up with the faster more privileged students. Even the more privileged student sometimes find difficulty in reading. This gives priority to the fact that students don’t learn to read simply by being exposed to the books or educational advanced technology. Reading must be taught explicitly, and systematically, one small step at a time.

Now because of USE, Universal Secondary Education, and other educational policies, we are now faced with a number of students in Secondary Schools with significant differences in their educational level. What are teachers to do? We cannot throw the students out of the classroom or just proceed with our lesson knowing that there are students who don’t understand the content being taught or find difficulty in understanding the work, or understand at a slower pace than others. This makes our task as teachers more difficult simply because we don’t have the necessary training and skill to deal with such situations so we simply move on allowing that child(ren) to fail because we don’t know how to reach them.

Teachers who teach content areas such as Mathematics, Science, Social Studies, Geography etc. do so with the expectation that students know how to read and write and their job is to adapt that skill in the understanding of the content areas. For example, as a Social Studies teacher, I will go to the classroom simply to help the students understand content under Social Studies such as; the Family, Tourism etc. I would not expect that a student cannot read at that level. Even we as English teachers don’t go to class equip to teach literacy to students. We go to the class expecting that the students already possess the skills of reading and writing and therefore go to class prepared to elaborate and enhance that skill i.e. Comprehension, essay writing, higher level vocabulary.

For a content area teacher to attempt to teach reading and writing to a Social Studies class or a Science class would be quite difficult because they would not have the required training, the time constraint on the syllabus would be at risk and the schools would now have to stream the students so they would not be affected by the provisions made for other students.


By : Leonilla Minvielle

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