Checking for understanding.

For the days of November 18^th 20^th and 22^nd

 

This week in the grade ten honors class the focus was on essay writing. Much to my surprise the standard 5 paragraph essay wasn’t the norm, actually, it was discouraged. Graduating from high school recently, I found it really great that Geoff was discouraging the standard format so early. Coming to college and only knowing how to write a five paragraph essay was a hindrance for me. And seeing these kids really get creative with writing lead to some amazing results, and inevitably variety in their skill. Class time was heavily awarded to writing these essays, so I spent majority of time going around to kids who needed help. Reading exerts from the essays and helping them edit certain sentence was very enjoyable for me. I really feel accepted in the classroom and valued for my help by the kids, having this relationship has been extremely motivating for me. I know that this career choice is exactly what I want to do with my life. In the 30-2 classroom this week, the students were finishing up with the novel study on “Night”. They were assigned a final project on the book giving 7 options of response to the novel to suit all the learning types. After Geoff explained all the details of the project to the class, I went to help an ESL student catch up on another assignment in the hall. I will call this student Y. For the assignment I was helping him with, he needed all his notes from the chapters of the book, but he had lost many of them, and didn’t do the other portion. So we worked collaboratively to read through the chapters and find quotes that helped him to complete the assignment. It was clear that Y was very foggy on what exactly the assignment was asking from him, but when I explained and checked for understanding he would immediately agree, even if he didn’t understand. I saw Y’s tactics, he wanted to fit in, he wanted to understand the material and show he could do it on his own. But what Y didn’t understand was that I see how smart he is, and his ability to complete the assignment, I see that it’s simply a language barrier. At this point, I stopped and asked him about Thurber, if he liked it here? And he opened up to me, he shared that he used to live in southern Alberta and he moved to Canada when he was 8. We continued a personal conversation for a few minutes and returned to work. I could tell immediately the comfort level had changed, not tremendously, but he was more open with me. I offered him extra help to finish that assignment after school on my next visit. I think students like Y really need to be shown clearly your understanding of how the language barrier holds them back, and not intelligence. After talking to Geoff about Y, he agreed with me about Y’s reluctance to ask for help or clarification. But I didn’t believe that Geoff had talked to Y on a personal level to show his interest in Y as an individual who just needs extra clarification due to language, not intellect.

One very interesting method Geoff used this week, while helping the Grade nines write essays was that “arrow test”. This test was a simple way for students to check the context of their work, making sure that the ideas they are using stay in line with the thesis of their essays. This test simply asks students to take the _ line down in the second paragraph and read it aloud, while they read it Geoff asked them to be thinking about their thesis statements and making sure they were congruent. This simple exercise got students to focus on how important a thesis statement is throughout and entire essay. I’m truly enjoying my time at Thurber, though it does take up virtually all of my extra time with work, school, and homework. It has been a great kick start into my career, I’ve already been asking for any volunteer work I can participate in next semester when I’m done my field experience. I love being in the school.