Reflection 3

Lecture three began on Monday, 9^th September and continued on Wednesday, 11^th September, 2019. The lecture on Monday was focused on the best practices to teach writing to students. There were numerous best practices that were mentioned, however, specific product goals and sentence combining stood out to us most. The lecturer reiterated that specific product goals must be clear, concise and attainable by our students. As future educators, we must keep in mind the abilities of our students; therefore, the goals set must be realistic and attainable.  The inability to set realistic goals will lead to frustration, which may result in students feeling pressured or uncomfortable when tasks are being given to complete. Additionally, during the discussion on sentence combining, it was highlighted that students experience issues with constructing sentences even in the simplest form. Therefore, as teachers we must understand the importance of teaching students about the types of sentences, how to construct and differentiate between each type of sentence. Failure on our behalf to teach the aforementioned will result in students who lack the capability to produce well thought out and structured pieces.

Wednesday’s lecture focused solely on the writing process. Although we were exposed to the writing process in previous lectures, it was refreshing to review the content. The lecturer not only reviewed the content but provided us with insightful information about issues that both teachers and students face in the classroom with regards to writing. During the lecture, the writing process was modelled step by step to ensure that we understood how it should be taught. The act of the lecturer modelling the writing process gave us an insight of how it should be done in the classroom. At that very moment, it became clear to us that regardless of your students’ age,  modelling is an effective teaching strategy that must be applied in order to establish understanding among students. We were also reminded that the writing process cannot be taught in one sitting, and as such it should be continuously taught to aid students through the process.

At the end of the lecture, we were provided with the opportunity to display our understanding of the previous content that was taught on Monday. The independent practice gave us a realistic feel of the task we had to teach. The opportunity to express our understanding and creativity reinforced the importance of giving students independent practice. It was also a learning experience as the various groups that presented had different ways to deliver their presentation, especially the groups who taught the class on the writing strategies POW and TREE. The exposure given on these strategies gave us ideas of the multiple ways we can utilize the strategies in our very own classroom. The presentations in all gave us the opportunity to reflect on our own understanding and appreciate other groups’ perspectives.