Next year at Hillhouse High School I will be teaching a course entitled “A Course in Basic Skills.” Offered to sophomores who have not completely mastered the freshman minimum standards this school year, the course purports to teach a mastery of these standards. Ranging from the knowledge of the alphabet to the ability to write complete sentences in an expository paragraph, the standards cover much territory. Students enrolled in the class will be taking the course in addition to the English class all sophomores will be taking. And while many of these students have been recommended by their freshman teacher because of a skills deficiency, some others, I understand, have voluntarily enrolled in the course.
Each September, no matter what kind of class I am about to teach, I find that I must set the ground rules concerning classroom behavior and responsibility. Not unlike Annie Sullivan in her initial confrontation with Helen Keller, I find that students must know how I expect them to behave. Nothing can be learned, I tell them, by either them or me if no one is listening. At times they may work with others, and then, of course, talking will be encouraged; but they must realize the difference between discussion and mere chatter. I demand orderly behavior and consideration for others at all times. I have found that a good “pep talk” at the beginning of the year usually suffices, and only occasionally will I be required to remind the students of their classroom behavior.
In addition, to reinforce the idea of personal responsibility I often tell students that I require them to bring daily to class an English notebook, pen or pencil, and the book currently being studied in class. If students become a little careless in this area, I have found that temporarily instituting a point system often works well. For example, points would be given the student if certain requirements are met; points would be taken away if they are not. Hillhouse teachers Mr. Gadsden and Mrs. Baljevic have both successfully used the point system in their classes as an alternative grading system; and after a year or so of teaching the basic skills course, perhaps I will feel confident enough to employ it also. This system requires, first of all, an almost uncanny sense of estimating the possible number of points students can expect to make in any one marking period for an “A,” “B,” etc.
Another feature that I strongly advise is the use of writing folders, which will be kept on file in the classroom. All corrected papers will be filed in them when returned. I have found that when the outside of the manila folder is decorated by the students, it becomes their “own”; on the inside cover a list of commonly used transitional words and phrases or a graph or two showing student progress could be written. The folder would be a useful tool for the student. Moreover, 1 find that papers are very rarely lost if student files are kept in the room. If a question arises as to whether or not the student has taken a certain test, the folder could be produced at a moment’s notice for verification.
One point that the realist haunts me with is the low caliber of student I will undoubtedly have in my classes. Several weeks ago one of the reading aides showed me student evaluations of the reading course they had just completed. Many of these students will be in my class next year, and 1 was interested in knowing how they viewed their course. All felt that the course helped them in some way and were happy with what it offered them. Many felt that it bettered their reading speed, comprehension, vocabulary, pronunciation, and spelling. What astounded me, however, was that many of the answers on the evaluation sheet were either illegible or incomprehensible. My work next year, to be sure, is clear. The students, the romantic in me says, are going to be able to write clear, concise, and correct paragraphs by the time they complete my course. The realist in me says, however, that they may feel better about writing or about themselves when they finish—perhaps not even that.
I do know that students are influenced by their peers, and I hope to capitalize on that fact. When my students write, I plan for them to prewrite, whether they do it by the Limone approach—where the form is given the students and they fill in the blanks—or a more heuristic approach—where questions like who, when, where, and why govern the writing. Prewriting, I believe, is essential to the actual composition, for it is here that students come to grips with what they know. I agree with the “Steps Approach” in this respect.
Moreover, since editing groups are a critical feature of the “Steps Approach,” I also plan to implement such groups in my classes. After the students prewrite, they will be randomly grouped so that three students edit their papers. Each student will co-jointly edit his own paper and two others. (See analysis sheet below.) I hope students will sharpen each other’s perceptions and writing skills and that everyone will agree to volunteer editing, for I would prefer not to grade their efforts; but I may have to rethink this point later on. The Limone method, of course, will all but eliminate the need for any real editing by the students, and grading should hardly be a problem.
After each student has edited his paper, he will then improve it in as many ways as he can. This time he must proofread on his own before reading it aloud to the class. This idea is taken from the 1970 Weehawken project, and 1 plan to institute some of the suggestions in my classroom. The two that 1 especially like are forms much like those Paul Limone gave us. One is the creative writing form, which follows:
A very funny animal, the _____, who lives in _____ in the _____, has fun _____. When he _____, the _____ and everyone _____. Then, after _____, is friends _____ ly because _____.
However, I do not expect to do much creative writing
per se
in my class unless it serves to teach an important basic skill. My point is that if students enroll in the Writing Workshop II class, they will receive more instruction in creative writing as an art form. In fact, I sometimes suspect I may be asking too much of the basic skills students if we tackle anything other than expository writing. Paragraphs of description, narration, and combinations of these might be better left to Mrs. Baljevic’s course. I may have to rethink this topic, however, once I know the students’ capabilities and desires.
The other Weehawken idea I particularly like is a book report form, which would be used after the class reads a novel or short story. The form is as follows:
The lesson that (name of book or story) teaches about _____ is that _____ . In this novel/story _____ , a _____ , is shown _____ ing _____. On account of _____ , he/she/it must _____.
I approve/disapprove of the ending of “ _____ because _____. The only change I might want to make in the story is that _____ so that _____ _____.
Naturally, the above form could be as difficult as the students would want to make it; but in time they should increase from words to sentences in a relatively short period of time. At first I expect simple words to be filled in; later, when students feel more comfortable in voicing their opinions, I expect longer phrases, clauses, and even self-initiated sentences to be added to the form.
In reference to grading, I find that giving two separate grades has worked best for me. The top grade will reflect content and organization; the bottom grade is reserved for grammar and neatness. However, I may from time to time dispense with the two-grade formula if I want to teach an important concept and have students employ that particular concept in their writing. For example, if I have just taught a lesson on transition, I may want to grade only that aspect of the paper. Of course, the students would be told beforehand of my intentions.
Naturally, I would not expect students to find all their own or others’ grammatical errors in a composition, and, as the mechanical errors manifest themselves, I will cover them in classroom assignments. (See Sample Lesson Plan for teaching the alphabet.) For example, if there are many errors in subject-verb agreement, I would perhaps choose to use a book called
English Made Easier
, where rather basic concepts are taught. For more sophisticated exercises I would use our sophomore grammar book,
Usage File of American English
. These books are fine for students whose skills need refreshing, but what about the students who have serious problems with decoding skills?
A series of books I find particularly useful in teaching decoding skills is the Troubleshooter series. In Book One,
Spelling Skills
, students learn such basics as beginning consonants, ending consonants, and consonant combinations. Book Two,
Spelling Action
, covers vowels, spelling rules, and noun plurals. Up to this point several students may still not know the entire alphabet by rote. If this is true, Book Three,
Word Attack
, which covers dictionary skills (with exercises on the alphabet), prefixes, suffixes, and roots, could be used to advantage. (See Sample Lesson Plan below.)
This year I had fair success in having my students in a high freshman cluster go on a library scavenger hunt. (See attached sheet below.) The previous night I had prepared about forty questions like, “What animal is found on p. 52 of
The Animal Husbandry Handbook
?,” “Whose picture is hanging on the far northern wall?,” and “How many drawers in the card catalog?” I do know students had a good time in the library that day, and our librarian had a great time, too. Next year I may use the same approach, but with easier questions of the same sort or questions dealing only with the card catalog. This way the students could be learning about the library and the alphabet at the same time. Moreover, I could conceivably work out such a scavenger hunt with a set of classroom dictionaries to reinforce their knowledge of the alphabet.
Book Four in the Troubleshooter series,
Word Mastery
, covers homonyms, synonyms, antonyms, and word sets (analogies); this book would be a good follow-up to the dictionary/library exercises. Admittedly, throughout the four books, the students have not yet begun the task of writing correct sentences; they have only been taught decoding and other basic skills. It is not until the fifth book,
Sentence
Str
ength
, that students learn predicates, subjects, and complete sentences. Both the sixth book,
Punctuation Power
, and the seventh,
English Achievement
, could fit into the curriculum.
Beginning in September and lasting throughout the school year, students will be reading high-interest stories and books from the available works for freshmen or sophomores. It is from these that our compositions will emerge. Writing out of context, I feel, is fine, but I will be striving mainly for reading-related topics. (See Sample Lessons below.) “Which character would you like to be?” and “Why would you not like to be _____?” are several examples that have been brought up in our Yale seminar meetings. Of course, discussion would precede the prewriting.
I was delighted to learn from last year’s freshmen’s evaluation forms that they enjoy reading aloud and feel that they should do more of it. A firm believer in oral reading, I find it gratifying that those students feel good enough to read aloud in class without fear of ridicule from their peers. This should make my job much easier. However, I also believe in silent reading, and perhaps once every two weeks students will be required to read silently in class and to complete study questions.
In their reading, students will come across vocabulary words that are unfamiliar to them. Until this year I have taught vocabulary out of context, with an occasional list of words added from books the students were currently reading in class. With the basic skills students, however, I plan to teach only vocabulary encountered in reading. The number of words each week will depend on the difficulty of the selection, of course, but I would like to have vocabulary quizzes on a weekly basis. I have found students like days set aside for vocabulary, and perhaps the basic skills students will be even more insistent upon it.
I expect the basic skills classes to approximate somewhat the other freshmen classes I will be teaching with one exception—the attention span of the students. The reading aide was kind enough to suggest that three different activities be incorporated in a forty-five minute period because of the low attention span. With my regular classes, I almost always plan two activities; but it may have taken me some time to recognize the difference in students’ concentration spans.
One activity that I am seriously considering is the use of the daily journal suggested in one of the Yale-New Haven teacher seminars. If the practice gets students to “settle down” at the beginning of the period, I may incorporate it in my classes. I have found that any kind of written work at the beginning of the class often does have a sobering effect, and then my teaching could begin. The journals will not be corrected, of course, although they will be read and commented upon. If students do not want others to read their journals, their right to privacy will be respected. As one of the members in the seminar mentioned, the students’ entries increased in length as time went on. I know that this is in itself a worthy goal to achieve.
Quite another activity I have often employed and found successful is the mandatory Christmas present. Early in October I tell the students that they must present me with a gift a week before leaving for Christmas vacation. I, in turn, will give each of them one. Their gift may be either an original poem, story, essay, drawing, or any article that they can make cheaply. Most students have responded well to this assignment, and several days are used in rather informal show-and-tell sessions as gifts come pouring in. Having such an assignment accomplishes many goals. It teaches the student that gifts are much more appreciated when they are made personally by the donor and done in the right spirit; gift-giving is an important custom we rarely reinforce in schools. In addition, and this is by no means a small consideration, it forces the student to give an informal speech, to use organization in planning it, and to utilize a visual aid when showing or explaining his gift. Naturally, when I present them with my usual Christmas Italian sonnet, there are moans and groans, but they are appreciative, I believe. Indeed, they wonder why I have not written each individual class member his own personal sonnet:
I would like to incorporate more field trips to the museum, park, or beach in the basic skills classes. Besides being valuable and inexpensive experiences in themselves, they could also provide good writing material. Moreover, if the two basic writing classes are back-to-back, longer and more meaningful field trips such as these could be undertaken with a minimum of effort, trouble, and lost time for the student. Doing things and going places as a class, then, might prove to be a valuable experience for everyone concerned.
I would also like to rely more heavily upon audio-visual aids in these classes. Using the overhead projector for vocabulary, grammar skills, and outlining might be a good idea, even if I have to supplement the material. A movie or a slide show may be equally rewarding in teaching basic concepts, and our resources at Hillhouse are almost limitless here. Even a tape recorder could be used to good advantage in teaching speech, outlining, or listening skills.
One last point that this year’s students expressed in the reading evaluation forms was their need for more syllabification skills. Enter poetry: Even though poetry is a creative form, what better way to teach syllables than by writing haikus, cinquains, and limericks: I entirely agree with members of the seminar when they recommend that students be introduced to poetry and encouraged to write their own. Moreover, I am convinced that students can and do write poetry that can be enjoyed by others. One gimmick is to ask students to cut out backgrounds for their completed poems. They can use discarded wallpaper sample books which can be obtained from any wallpaper/paint store. After the students have written and edited their poems, they would then rewrite the poem on blank white paper, and paste it onto a wallpaper sample. One boy’s limerick, I recall, had to do with Mr. Colle’s “malodorous feet,” and he had cut out a hideous, green floral pattern in the shape of a sneaker for the background.:
My approach in the basic skills classes, then, will be an eclectic one, drawn heavily but not exclusively from the “Steps Approach” and the Limone method. Initiated by high interest reading material, the compositions will then determine where students’ weaknesses lie. With the help of well-chosen texts, workbooks, and a few gimmicks or activities, I plan to improve students’ basic skills. The approach, I hope, is one that will suit my students’ needs.
Sequence of Lessons for “A Course in Basic Skills”
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N.B. The imposition of a sequence upon the course may be misleading to the casual reader. Except for the first writing assignment, the majority of the writing will be based on the students’ reading, and students will be writing as often as possible. Reading students’ compositions will enable the teacher to diagnose skill deficiencies and to correct them. Finally, the classes themselves will determine how detailed the class exercises need be.
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I. The First Writing Assignment
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II. Returning the First Set of Themes Emphasizing:
-
____
A. Manuscript and Penmanship Essentials
-
____
B. Spelling Problem Words
-
____
C. Word Mastery
-
____
D. Possessives and Plurals
-
____
E. Capital Letters
-
____
F. End Punctuation
-
____
G. Prewriting as a Means to Combat Composition Errors
-
____
H. Need for Editing Groups
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III. Reading Short Stories, Chapters of Novels, to Provide Writing Material (see Sample Lesson)
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IV. Class Discussion of Selection
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V. Prewriting for Second Theme Based on Reading
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VI. The Second Writing Assignment
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VII. Editing Groups Work on Themes
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VIII. Returning the Second Set of Themes Emphasizing:
-
____
A. Manuscript and Penmanship Essentials
-
____
B. Spelling (Using
Troubleshooter
: Books 1 and 2)
-
____
____
1. Beginning Consonants
-
____
____
2. Ending Consonants
-
____
____
3. Consonant Combinations
-
____
____
4. Vowels
-
____
____
5. Rules of Spelling
-
____
C. Word Mastery (Using
Troubleshooter
: Book 4)
-
____
____
1. Alphabet
-
____
____
2. Dictionary Usage and Practice—Scavenger Hunt
-
____
____
3. Prefixes
-
____
____
4. Suffixes
-
____
____
5. Roots
-
____
____
6. Homonyms
-
____
____
7. Synonyms
-
____
____
8. Antonyms
-
____
____
9. Analogies
-
____
D. Possessives (Using
Troubleshooter
: Book 6) and Plurals (
Troubleshooter
: Book 2)
-
____
E. Capital Letters (Using
English Made Easier
)
-
____
F. Punctuation (Using
Troubleshooter
: Book 6)
-
____
____
1. End Punctuation
-
____
____
2. Commas
-
____
____
3. Quotation Marks
-
____
____
4. Apostrophes
-
____
G. Verbs
-
____
____
1. Action
-
____
____
2. Linking
-
____
____
3. Helping
-
____
____
4. Tense of
-
____
H. Subjects
-
____
____
1. Noun
-
____
____
2. Pronoun
-
____
I. Subject-Verb Agreement
-
____
J. Sentence Identification (
English Made Easier
)
-
____
K. Run-on Sentences (
English Made Easier
)
-
____
L. Reading and Writing Poetry
-
____
____
1. Haiku
-
____
____
2. Cinquain
-
____
____
3. Limerick
-
____
____
4. Syllabification (
The New Phonics We Use
, Book D)
-
____
____
____
a. identifying
-
____
____
____
b. dividing two- and three-syllable words
-
____
____
____
c. finding the accented syllable
-
____
____
5. Mandatory Christmas Gift
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IX. The Third Writing Assignment Based on Reading
The Outsiders
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X. The Fourth Writing Assignment Based on Reading
Your Bird Is Here
,
Tom Thompson
