Alter_native Education: Wearing Both Hats
1821 sats \ 5 comments \ @cryotosensei 15 Apr alter_native
Let me explain my title. I teach teenagers English at a secondary school. In short, regular classes. The weakest-progress students are pulled out from these regular classes to form a class of their own. They typically have dyslexia and/or language disorders. I teach them English too, but my role is more of a literacy coach because I am tasked to teach them foundational literacy skills.
So, for these weakest-progress students, I am both their English Teacher and Literacy Coach. This throws me off array because I wear both hats at once and feel conflicted about which role to pursue at any one time. Though I admit that last year, I just focused on preparing them for the Mid-Year Exams because I didn’t know any better.
Now that I have had more time to assimilate into my unique identity, think the most important thing I should do is to clarify these two roles. Because if I’m unclear about my place in the classroom, I would always be sacrificing the forest for the trees. I need to ensure that the seedlings will blossom to form part of the vast canopy in the forest.
Wouldn’t you know? I just learnt how to create a table in Markdown yesterday! Let me apply what I learnt.
Literacy CoachEnglish Teacher
1. Follows Scope & Sequence. e.g., magic e ruleFollows Table of Specification
2. Uses assistive technologyUses gamification to instill good learning habits
3. Getting students to learn Dolch Word ListClarifying common misconceptions for high-frequency words
4. Focuses on syllabication (decoding & blending)Work on Work Attack Strategies (deducing meaning of unfamiliar words)
5. Get students to apply immediately after “I Do”Use Gradual Release of Responsibility (I Do, We Do, You Do)
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70 sats \ 2 replies \ @Undisciplined 15 Apr
I meant to ask you about dyslexia, a while ago. Does it manifest the same way in symbolic written languages like Mandarin as it does in English? Or is it a particular problem related to alphabetic languages?
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51 sats \ 1 reply \ @cryotosensei OP 15 Apr
Great question. I have been wondering that myself.
Some dyslexic students are exempted from taking Chinese in school in Singapore. It is likely due to the fact that Chinese characters sometimes have a lot of strokes, so they feel daunted memorising all these strokes.
I’m by no means an expert, but I think perhaps the experts don’t have a conclusive answer anyway since dyslexia is manifested differently in individuals and affects them different as well. I think learning Chinese may actually be easier for some individuals with dyslexia because it is a pictogram-based language. Understand the significance of the radicals and you can remember how to write part of a character. It also has to do with how good an individual’s listening is. My son’s preschool Chinese teacher taught her class the names of the various strokes. That day, my son blew me away by reciting all the strokes of 狗, one by one, accurately and confidently. It made me realise that Chinese characters can be mastered - one stroke at a time. Just like how we conquer life’s challenges, one foot in front of the other. Haha.
I’ll update you when I have more insights on this matter!
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 16 Apr
Thanks. I have a little bit of training with some common learning disabilities, but nothing very comprehensive.
I remember learning that one common difficulty (I think with dyslexia) is differentiating b/d/p/q because they're all the same shape just oriented differently. Other things don't change their meaning when oriented differently, so some people struggle to see it correctly.
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11 sats \ 0 replies \ @cryotosensei OP 15 Apr
Let me explain my title. I teach teenagers English at a secondary school. In short, regular classes. The weakest-progress students are pulled out from these regular classes to form a class of their own. They typically have dyslexia and/or language disorders. I teach them English too, but my role is more of a literacy coach because I am tasked to teach them foundational literacy skills.
So, for these weakest-progress students, I am both their English Teacher and Literacy Coach. This throws me off array because I wear both hats at once and feel conflicted about which role to pursue at any one time. Though I admit that last year, I just focused on preparing them for the Mid-Year Exams because I didn’t know any better.
Now that I have had more time to assimilate into my unique identity, think the most important thing I should do is to clarify these two roles. Because if I’m unclear about my place in the classroom, I would always be sacrificing the forest for the trees. I need to ensure that the seedlings will blossom to form part of the vast canopy in the forest.
Wouldn’t you know? I just learnt how to create a table in Markdown yesterday! Let me apply what I learnt.
Literacy CoachEnglish Teacher
1. Follows Scope & Sequence. e.g., magic e ruleFollows Table of Specification
2. Uses assistive technologyUses gamification to instill good learning habits
3. Getting students to read and spell Dolch Word ListClarifying common misconceptions for high-frequency words
4. Focuses on syllabication (decoding & blending)Work on Work Attack Strategies (deducing meaning of unfamiliar words)
5. Get students to apply immediately after “I Do”Use Gradual Release of Responsibility (I Do, We Do, You Do)
I’m confused, Sensei
As you should be. Take point 2 for example. I don’t mean to suggest that I shouldn’t use gamification to help my literacy coaching students instil good learning habits. However, given that my time with them is limited, I need to prioritise. My duty to them is to make sure that they at least know how to use the Spell Check for Microsoft Word.
I should then move on to other assistive technology tools:
Expounding on point 3, it takes a lot of effort for weakest-progress students to learn seemingly simple words from the Dolch Word List. So much so that I decided to use my son’s coloured letters to help them memorise these words. I’m talking about 14-year-old teenagers not knowing how to spell the, how and are.
This means that for these students, I simply don’t have the space to teach them the difference between when and went or want and one. I mean, I try but it’s honestly not a priority.
In regard to point 4, the literacy coaching students have not mastered the art of dividing a word into its constituent syllables. This means that I may not have the bandwidth to get them to deduce the meaning of an unfamiliar word from its affixes.
Don’t get me wrong. Sometimes I come into class, with guns blazing, because I want them to learn the meaning of selected suffixes. Take for instance this list of words:
mindfully soulfully healthfully
As for the last point, I have learnt that the tried-and-tested GRR model doesn’t work for these weakest-progress students. What I find works for them is fast iterations coupled with spaced repetition. This means that I taught them the first three lines of an informal email:
Dear X
How are you? I’m fine.
I was disappointed.
Seriously, I just got them to churn out these three lines during the first writing lesson. Subsequently, during the next week, I added one more sentence to their cognitive load:
Dear X
How are you? I’m fine.
I was disappointed. A bad thing happened to me.
I do this consistently every week until we reach the end of the email.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @DesertDave 16 Apr
This must be a sign... Thanks for the post sensei.
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