In my last blog posting I wrote about my experience observing advanced English 20 at Walter Murray Collegiate. Well, last week I had the opportunity to view the other end of the ELA spectrum at Walter Murray.
I had the opportunity to observe and help a class at Walter Murray called "credit recovery". Students are placed in the class if they have been asked to discontinue their modified class. In credit recovery, the students are given a second chance to receive a credit by completing assignments given by the credit recovery teacher. At the end of the assignments, a mark is negotiated between the students and teacher.
While I was observing the class, I was instantly needed to help the students stay on task and complete their assignments. One of the students was assigned a short story to read, followed by a series of question to answer. I was drawn to this student as I noticed him not working on his assignment. I thought that if I worked with him, maybe he could finish his assignment.
While helping this student, I was thinking back to EDUC 498 and the readings to see if any strategy from class or readings could motivate the student to finish the assignment, or at least try working on it. To start, I quickly read the story so I would would know the answers to the questions. The student told me he had read the story as well, so together, we attempted the first question.
Who is the main character in the story?
I instantly thought back to EDUC 498 and how simple plot questions would not evoke deeper reading. As I found out from working on the questions, this student was unable to see the basic aspect of the short story. He didn't know the answer to question one. I was sure he didn't read it.
So I made him read the story again, and this time he could identify the main character. I would like to believe it was my second draft reading strategy that helped reach the answer, but I'm not sure.
I feel I did give him some valuable advice for completing plot based questions. Find the paragraph that relates to the question, reread it, and then find the exact sentence that answers the question. After I showed him a few examples, he was able to answer the remaining questions.
I have to be honest and say I enjoyed working with students who struggle with reading comprehension, rather than those who have already mastered it. I feel that by working with the students in credit recovery, I was having a larger impact in a student's life than I would facilitating a class conversation about detailed theme and metaphors. It was an eye opening experience.
Hey Brandon, I can relate to your experience with helping students (I’ve been paired with students one-on-one and have just walked around the class helping students if they have questions) and your student’s comprehension problem is not uncommon. Students ask me simple questions that should have been figured out in chapter one and most of the time they show me evidence of having read the book, but cannot come to the right answer. In one class numerous people asked about a question that asked to state something ironic that happened in the chapter and they had no idea how to go about it, or even what was being asked.
ReplyDeleteOn another note it is very frustrating that teachers are ONLY using plot based questions to teach their students. In two of the ELA classes I am sitting in on the students are required to read the text by themselves (during class or at home) and then do questions on each chapter. The students are not getting anything valuable out of this besides the surface level reading of the text at hand. They do not re-read and most of them have no motivation to even read the text – much like I assume your student you were helping felt like. This makes me want to get right in there and start applying the strategies we have been learning and it sounds like you feel the same way!