Verbs... TrIcKy TrIcKy VeRbS

One strategy used in the classroom that I love is their writing journals. They are writing every night about what they are reading or an open ended question from the teacher. They are finishing up their space unit and finalizing their moon journals. Every night over the first semester they were asked to look at the moon and write about their experience, what they saw, what they felt, where they where and so on. Then they were asked to sketch the moon and do some scientific observations such as where the moon was in the sky and other numerical representations for the science aspect of the class.
The teacher said she chose this project because the children were having trouble writing in complete sentences. They were able to understand subject easy enough but it was the predicate that they were having trouble with. Mrs. L told me that children have an easier time understanding active verbs, so this practice was designed to help them in writing in an active voice. They also did activities where they would come up with active verbs, dissect sentence structure and even did some linguistic trees. The students have come a long way in making their sentences interesting by using varied word choice, but they are having issues translating their skills into passive voice for their creation myth stories.
Mrs. L also told me that it is important to revisit key topics such as sentence and paragraph structure throughout the year in various different situations. Being creative is an exciting part of being a teacher, and instrumental in how well the children will learn. At the moment they are concentrating on passive voice and transitions sentences to connect paragraphs and give a better flow to their writing. The most challenging part of teaching English, according to Mrs. L, is knowing when to stop and how much to correct. She says it is hard not to correct everything about a child’s writing and it is important to make sure that even through all the suggestions you may have as a teacher that you let the child’s voice remain in their writing. I did notice that if you give a child a suggestion on how to word something or ask them what they mean and how they could say that differently that they often times take your words and do not try to use there own.
Expectations are challenging for me to pin point because everyone appears to be on slightly different levels. I think that everyone is expected to be capable of forming complete sentences, formulating paragraphs and also asking questions when they are confused. One thing I noticed is that their final drafts were done via word processor and the children were using the spell check feature! Ok I know this is hypocritical but it worries me that they depend on the feature instead of learning how to spell the word.