Essential Ideas (26 - 31)

Teaching English, How To....
Essential Ideas (26 - 31)

26. Literature: Involving Students in Reading Short Stories. Students are plunged into the story by reading one sentence a page or column from beginning to end. They raise questions. Students read one paragraph a page or column from beginning to end. They raise questions. Finally, students read the first sentence of each paragraph from beginning to end and again raise questions. Students now read to answer questions not already answered during the preview.

27. Literature: Discussion. Students raise questions from reading literary works. Discussion should begin with their questions, their suggested answers and their tentative conclusions. Teachers should not ask and answer their own questions unless they truly are not sure of the answers. After discussing, the students' questions, teachers and students should check the questions at the end of the chapter not brought up by the students, or the teachers should raise questions not brought up by the students. Finally, give students the opportunity to read critical reviews of the literary works they have read and compare their questions and answers with those provided by the critics.

28. Literature: Censorship. Write rationales for literary works to be required reading. Suggested guidelines for rationales can be found in my book or at http://www.ncte.org. As a department, prepare questionnaires for parents and others who object to the literary work. Sample questionnaire will also be found at ncte.org. Form a committee to discuss and to make recommendations for material that is challenged. In my opinion, writing rationales for required controversial reading is essential to dealing with censorship.

29. Language: Having Fun with Language. Develop with the students projects that explore dialects and other uses of language. Encourage reading books about words. Encourage students to complete word games like crossword puzzles. People love to play with words.

30. Vocabulary. Help students develop an extensive vocabulary by pre-teaching unfamiliar words before reading assignments in all subjects. Students should learn roots, prefixes and suffixes and the many words related to them: egoist, egotist, ego, egocentric, alter ego, etc. Have students collect unfamiliar words that they meet in their reading and listening on 3 x 5 index cards, with the pronunciation and concise one-, two-, or three-word meanings. The shorter and more concise the meanings, the better students will be able to remember both
words and meanings.

31. Supervision: The first rule of supervision is to listen. Inservice: use with teachers the skills you want teachers to use with their students. Change should begin by involving teachers, parents, administrators and students who identify problems. Change should not be initiated from the top simply because of prevailing enthusiasms or fads in education. Supervisors are most successful when they have no authority to make changes, but must rely on creative activities in workshops, demonstration lessons and consulting with individual teachers.