Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Reading and Writing in the classroom
Research has shown that students generally do not like to write and when they do it is just a few lines to meet the criteria given by the teacher or to take notes.When they read it is because it is in their interest to do so.They are not motivated to read content area and basal texts. However there is 1.5 million of blog posts every day (Richardson,2009). Children connect everyday with their friends and peers about popular culture( movies, music, videos and so on). They are hardpressed to remove themselves from infront of the laptop or computer. They are the hyper text generation who does not think in the linear fashion like we do. As such we teachers are compelled to redesign our teaching strategies to reach this generation. We are mandated to motivate the ones who are disengaged in their reading and writing. Our task is not an easy one but the level of illiteracy in our land constrains us to be pro active and reach out with every bit of knowledge that we have gained thus far and make little ripples in our own small spaces.
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The statistics on the number of blog posts daily was indeed staggering. I must note the the idea that our students blog because it is in their interest to do so. As educators we need to make our classroom accessible and allow our students to present their assessments in other forms of the Web-2.0 format. They are in many instances more familiar with the technology than us, as such when creating assessment strategies, we must provide alternative methods for their writing skills to be developed. I am sure that many of the teachers in this Reading Programme did not anticipate the types of assessments which we have had to submit, but the creativity that has emerged in the group sessions have allowed us to be more sensitive when assigning writing assignments.We were forced to come out of the essay mentality and we are now able to connect to the same networks with our students.
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