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
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
I am glad that you were able to finally post your first reflection.
ReplyDeleteYou have made some useful observations here about the role of content area teachers and the challenge they face in helping children comprehend what they read. Yes Leo, we do recognize that in an effort to develop students' literacy skills in the content area class, you will have many odds to defy. You have a curriculum to teach, students have to get ready for exams and because of this some of us do not teach 'the students' but the curriculum. It is very unfortunate though, but as you mentioned Universal Secondary Education has made us realize even more the need to help students become strategic readers who will be able to function more adequately in society. What we need to do as teachers is to make the teaching and learning more meaningful and authentic so that students can see the relevance of what they are learning. One way to do this is by incorporating students' interest in teaching. I wonder what you and the others think about this.
Although wer are learning all this valuable information, some of us may go back to the schools and still employ the traditional methods, and still get frustrated when our students cant 'read', and still expect students to come into the secondary school at the reading to learn stage...Like one of our classmates expressed on her blog, some of us see teaching as a job, not as a vocation.
ReplyDeleteWe need to open our eyes to the realisation that we are developing the future generation, and the effort, devotion and care that we put into them is the same that they will produce later in their lives.
With the introduction of USE, the Ministry of Education simply has to take effective measures - such as advocating that all teachers are qualified or undergo some training in how to manage these students. The students have potential, they just need someone to unlock the potential. Someone like me and you, who are now learning all this stuff about reading and writing in the content areas and how we can use various strategies to help our students become strategic readers and writers.
I agree with Ms Polius that we need to provide authentic learning experiences for the students. We need to connect the students we provide for the students with real life situations. We have to make them see the value of the experiences we engage them in. I am all for authentic practises.
ReplyDelete