Writing

  In this blog entry, I would like to share with you about two English lessons that I helped my mentor teacher to conduct. Lessons were conducted in grade four and were about writing an email from holidays. For this kids, it was the first time they wrote an email. 

The first hour we started with a brainstorm, we asked children questions connected with writing, and we wrote their answers on the board. The questions were:

1. What can we write?

2. When do we write them?

3. What words can we use for greetings and goodbyes? 

     After the brainstorm, we gave children handouts with two emails. Children needed to read them and highlight sentences with present simple and present continuous. They already knew these two grammatical tenses, so the task was to remind them of their form and the time in which we use them. Next, after that exercise, they needed to decide if sentences were true or false according to those two emails that they read. Then, we checked their answers, and we gave them another activity. They had a task in which they needed to fill the gaps in the email with the appropriate words. First, the teacher explained to them all the words using gestures and definitions only in English. Children did not have any problem with understanding. 

     On the second hour of English lesson, the teacher asked kids to write an email to a friend about their summer holidays. She told them what they need to include in emails and gave them a list with all points. While the teacher was explaining to the children what they need to do, they were all very focused and listened to her carefully.  However, when she finished, children still had a lot of questions. They had a problem with choosing the person to which they could write. They asked if they could write to Michael Jackson and whether the place from which they write must be true. When they finished, they approached the teacher and showed her their works. The teacher read emails and gave children feedback. She told them what is good and what they need to correct. After that children got back to their sits and were correcting mistakes. In this lesson, they were making only a draft of the email. The final version they needed to send to their teacher by email. The teacher likes to see a draft before the official version because sometimes, at home, parents write children's homework instead of them, so this helps the teacher to see if kids wrote their work independently. 

     Writing is a very important skill when it comes to learning a language. Good writing skills allow you to communicate your message with clarity and ease to a far larger audience than through face-to-face or telephone conversations. On lessons that I described the teacher remembered to conduct all stages like for example pre-writing. Children saw examples of emails and thanks to that they knew how the email should be constructed. Writing something new is easier when you know how to do it. On these lessons, children were also involved in a task because the teacher allowed them to choose a place and the person to whom they write, thanks to that it became more interesting for them. Motivation plays a crucial role when it comes to writing. We cannot tell kids to write for example something connected with politics because they do not know anything about it. Learning should be fun for them not boring.