I can teach both English and Science, but I’d much rather teach English because I love writing. I’m a consummate workhorse when it comes to imparting writing skills.
Before my colleague presented to the school at 7.50am, I had already told Student A who wrote the most beautiful piece about the need to put a comma before ‘so’. He used it as a coordinating conjunction, not an adverb.
That was not all. I sat Student B beside me and guided him in his planning. He had erroneously written me an informal email instead of the personal recount I wanted.
Wait! Sensei was not done yet. I sat Student C beside me and asked him questions to help him plan his personal recount. He had erroneously copied the sample essay I had kindly given the class as a scaffolding material.
Yes, when you teach weak-progress students, these are just the mishaps that will confront you. But Sensei has set aside buffer to address these irregularities.
After assembly, I got Student D to stand beside me. On our way to class, I told him that he had spelt when instead of went. This must be one of the most common mistakes plaguing students’ writing nowdays.
Subsequently, I told Student E that I am not interested to know the gifts his entire village had bought his sister. But he needed to elaborate more about the gift he bought his sister.
During the English lesson, Student A wasn’t performing at his peak concentration level, but no matter. I signalled for him to wake up and asked him what punctuation mark he needed to put before writing “so”. He could answer “comma” without missing a beat. Now, the entire class benefitted from my intervention because I forced them to write down this writing tip.
The same thing went for my other English class. This class was reminded that the past tense of “go” is “went”, not “when”. And finally, I pulled out all the stops. I have been drumming into their heads this entire year that unique = special, so I got them to apply this word in my modelling. Specifically, Last week, I decided to buy a unique gift for my mother.
And while I was having lunch, I painstakingly asked Student F guiding questions that elicited some Show, Not Tell phrases. It was a working lunch, to say the least, because I then did likewise with Student B. I am rather proud of my move because usually I would zero in on their grammar and punctuation errors but refrained from doing so this time round. I gotta teach them how to be more expressive in their writing.
And as a conclusion, I texted Student D to suggest that he could write She was thrilled, and a grin lit up her face in the future. Instead of resorting to the perfunctory She was very very happy.
Now, I’m sure you will agree that teaching writing is a thankless and laborious task. But Sensei has got all this well under control. I’m gonna teach these kiddos how to use novel next. Wish me luck!
