English and Literature Teaching Routines
English and Literature Teaching Routines
Scenario
I have selected stage 3 and 4 to focus on the class scenario at Leafy Hills. These grades have students from age six to nine.
Leafy Hills is located in a regional area, and its students live in semi-suburban situations. The school comprises of Aboriginal students that have PLSs as well as learners from low SES. The class I will be teaching has twenty-eight students where nineteen are boys, and nine are girls across two grade levels. It is recorded that twenty-two students are from low SES backgrounds thus have been poorly prepared for their learning journey. They have low literacy level, home life issues, and poor social skills. Of the twenty-eight students, three are Aboriginal, and they use PLPs to support their academic journey.
Statistics has proved that many teachers, especially in America face the problem of teaching literacy skills and English to learners who have another heritage language. Therefore, there is a need to assess the students’ level of competence before developing and implementing literary routines to determine the English and literacy aspects that require to be developed further.
Reading
In the third and fourth grade, learners should be able to read and critically analyze a text to understand the author’s meaning. Through reading and analyzing texts, students develop critical and inferential skills as well as building their vocabularies. Therefore, I will use cooperative learning to teach the reading skills. Cooperative learning is a teaching routine that requires students to discuss a piece of literature in small groups and then shares their ideas in large groups (Wyse & Jones, 2001).
As most of the students from the Leafy Hills are from low SES with social skills and with evident home life issues, I will be inviting peer counselors from other grades every morning during the reading sessions and peer counselors from other performing schools every Friday. This will not only allow them to share the things they have learned but also share some of the issues affecting their reading. The discussion will also help the local Indigenous Australian students and the local Aboriginal community since they will be able to learn English from other competent students. I will also encourage silent reading during the students’ free time so that I can correct their reading behaviors such as using fingers to point at their piece of reading. In an attempt to assess their participation in the groups, I will require each student to write a summary of what they read in the group discussion and read it aloud in front of the class.
Writing
According to Aijmer (2014), writing must occur every day for students to be competent in the skill. Therefore, since the learners at Leafy Hill do not have a good background in writing, I will use the peer response and editing teaching routine to improve students writing skills. This strategy involves learners thinking critically about other’s writing and making recommendations of what they think should be improved. I will, therefore, place learners in groups of five according to their performances where each student will be writing a composition and giving it to the group members for scrutiny.
Besides, I will use instruction technique to introduce to the learners the different types of writings that include planning, drafting, and editing. I will also cultivate a daily writing culture where students will be writing about things of their interests. I will be assessing the students’ progressing by collecting their books and marking some of their piece of writings to correct spelling, punctuation, grammar, vocabulary, and handwriting issues. The students’ progress record book will be very useful in recording their progress to ensure that they are improving.
Listening, Speaking, Responding, and Viewing
According to Prendiville & Toye (2007), these are critical skills in an individual’s life since they affect his or her social life. From the record, it is apparent that most students at Leafy Hill struggle with social skills thus there is a need to offer them with daily tasks that will enable them to improve the above skills. Therefore, I will expose students to movies where they will watch and share what they have learned. This will enable them to grow their listening and speaking skills. Moreover, students will be required to ask each other questions based on the movie and respond to the questions asked to them. That will enable them to develop the viewing and responding skills. To assess the students’ participation, I will require them to write critical questions based on the movie they have viewed and listened to and record the answers they use to respond to the questions asked.
References
Aijmer, K. (2014). Conversational routines in English: Convention and creativity. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
Explicit teaching: Teaching AC English. (2016). Teachingacenglish. Retrieved 5 September 2016, from http://www.teachingacenglish.edu.au/explicit-teaching/overview/explict-overview.html
Prendiville, F., & Toye, N. (2007). Speaking and listening through drama 7-11. London: Paul Chapman Pub.
Winch, G. (2001). Literacy: Reading, writing, and children's literature. South Melbourne: Oxford University Press.
Wyse, D., & Jones, R. (2001). Teaching English, language, and literacy. London: RoutledgeFalmer.
