Ruth W. Wilson
OBJECTIVES
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1. To recognize the relationship between ordinary speech and writing (talking on paper); 2) To become interested in writing one’s thoughts, and 3) To apply the basic punctuation rules learned in English classes to daily work.
To start the unit I will introduce the term “talking on paper.” Teacher will explain that this lesson will be the putting down of the spoken word. Encourage the students to choose a popular word such as “rapping” and then write what he or she thinks “rapping” means to them. Next give the same assignment, only now introduce the method of clustering or brainstorming. Have students cluster and from the clustering choose words and write a short paragraph on “rapping.” Students can now share their work and see their own ideas as individual ones. This activity will enable them to take pride in their original thoughts and in their ability to convey them.
Clustering is the art of free flowing ideas and letting oneself “just go with the flow.” Clustering or brainstorming will be introduced in all lessons as a way of helping students get in touch with their creative thoughts. Some subjects for clustering/brainstorming activities could be: An experience that taught you something important; What do you feel is the biggest problem in the neighborhood?; What would you like to change at school?; The proudest moment in your life; Describe a person who is your best friend; Some mistakes I’ll never make again; A trip I hope to make some day; What is the biggest problem in our school? These are just a few suggestions that the students may use.
Here are a few examples of clustering done with some remedial seventh graders who dislike writing using the conventional method of trying to organize their thoughts and then put them down logically on the page for the first time.
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One short paragraph that evolved around the word lunch is:
Lunchtime in the afternoon after morning school work, I eat
hotdog
, drink milk and eat a red apple at that time. The food
have
a lot of fat in it. I like to eat pizza too because it
have
cheese and the cheese tastes very good. (written by a remedial seventh grader from Vietnam)
You will notice the underlined words show problems of subject and verb agreement, which doesn’t exist in his language. Therefore an ongoing lesson on subject-verb agreement could be incorporated into this writing lesson.
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I like Hero Sandwiches with bologna, ham, cheese and mustard with mayonnaise to eat every night. And I won’t stop eating them until I fall out. I like to have cookouts so I can eat hamburgers, hotdogs, and steaks. I like to share the food with others, but I like the biggest piece for myself! I like to pig out. (written by a remedial student who is quite vocal but has difficulty expressing himself on paper).
One young lady wrote a poem:
Time to eat a fruit or meaty lunch bananas or apples-yummy, yum. Let’s go. I’m starving ’n need some food. Let’s go eat at MacDonalds or get some chicken. Right now-make it fast! I love lunch-let’s dig in!
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We’ll pizza is delicious way to get filled up. You know what? My mother can tell when I’ve been eating pizza because when I get home I’m always messy. Whenever pizza is mentioned I get very hungry. I like sausage pizza the best of all. (written by a Learning Center student who was mainstreamed to Remedial Reading. The student is of Haitian background).
The words lunch and pizza were specifically chosen because these two terms are in the realm of the class’s experience. Truthfully speaking, when the class began to go with the flow, ideas began to crystallize and they were eager to put their thoughts down on paper. Certain students still lacked the confidence to share their work but others were only happy to let others know they dared to try something new! These were major, prideful accomplishments for students who had given up on writing skills long ago.
During the brief writing lesson, my students really had a good feeling about what they had accomplished. There were smiles on their faces instead of the usual frowns. The smiles came from using imaginative words which came into their heads and then just jotting them down. Also, there was not the least bit of pressure put on them to do the written work the conventional way.
When I institute this unit next year, I shall use the same strategy that I used with my class this year. I tried clustering with this group just to see if it would work and I was pleased with the results. So I know it works! This type of loosely-structured brainstorming is great because there are no right or wrong answers. With very little pressure on the student, this makes for a lot of enjoyment, and students can open up and take off!
The above lesson is to be done in the student’s journal where students will have free access to them during remedial reading time. It really will be difficult to do an adequate job unless the teacher is willing to acknowledge that whatever is not covered in one class period will be continued in the next class meeting. Also Holistic Scoring will be used for grading. The scoring will be a bit lenient for the assignments since the students lack self-confidence, and they need a positive approach to have the courage to continue. Therefore, it is in the student’s best interest to score Holistically. This type of scoring will consist of a 4-Excellent, 3—Very Good, 2-potentially Good, 1More Effort Needed, 0-Special Category. With these categories, the first introduction to writing can be used as a diagnostic device to see the range of the classroom.