#TeacherBlogger: How I Develop Writing Skills in Students – By, Virginia Isaac, IGCSE and Middle School English teacher, Ekya Byrathi
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“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.” – Robert Frost
English is used in the world as a lingua franca among people from different cultures, ethnicities, and social backgrounds across the world. As a teacher, guiding students to write effectively, being the major component in teaching English, has always been a herculean and challenging task for me.
Thankfully, there are a plethora of ideas, activities, and tools which can be adopted to improve children’s writing skills. Creating a blended learning environment to teach languages online, often involves utilizing various tools and pedagogical approaches. Teaching online has its own set of challenges and hurdles but with the easily accessible technology, for me, as an English language teacher, it has turned out to be an effortless task. However, using these applications can create technical, administrative, and pedagogical challenges unless the right application is used and the right culture is created in the online classes for students, especially skills that require writing.
Prior to this pandemic, my classroom teaching involved direct teaching, guiding, and encouraging writing skills with the add-ons like Powerpoint presentations and Youtube videos, which played a secondary role in encouraging writing. But during this extraordinary situation of virtual schooling, and the uncertainty looming with regard to offline classes, all these technological sources became the primary source and not just add-ons.
One of the best ways to help children strengthen their English writing is to ensure that they master the art of reading as it is the stepping stone to better writing. Since time immemorial, this is one fruitful skill, which is used in classes across the sphere. Inspired by this. I have been using this technique in my regular classes not only to instill a habit of reading but also to enhance their visual as well as auditory senses and concentrate on the pronunciations, punctuations, literary elements, and devices to increase their ability to understand and reproduce them when penning down their writing assignments.
As online classes are in full swing, using the break-out rooms to have small discussions, supporting peer-review, and giving feedback on their writing skills is another tool which I make use of, to develop confidence and avoid anxiety in children when they are putting words on the paper.
Over and above, introducing new words to build vocabulary, encouraging letter writing, which has become a bit of a lost art, journaling, creating story prompts, stressing the importance of clear, thoughtful writing, assigning brief writing exercises, classroom writing competitions, allowing learner autonomy so as to help students identify the common errors and rectify them and last but not the least is to making writing fun is what I always adopt in my teaching of this language.
Applying and incorporating innovative writing tools and collaborating with other faculty members to integrate and to make writing more effective in their subjects, is an innovative technique which we use in Ekya Byrathi, encouraged by our HOS, so as to build and boost the skill of writing in varied subjects and topics.
We, as adults, and teachers can write to explain and elaborate our ideas through our writing, to the world out there. But a student can take years to develop that skill and it is my earnest desire and aim to help them progress and succeed in this language. Writing is a fine skill and it is an apprehended state of education.
I believe that my students are my vital assets, wanting and waiting to be challenged and encouraged in this online journey. Enabling and equipping them using this online forum to the best of my ability, is my goal.
Students, on the other hand, during the classes are a great help in guiding me when I get stuck and helping me handle any technological hitch that I face. This role reversal does enhance my own learning skills of this virtual world and this also becomes a source of good communication and vocabulary for the students, which boosts my enthusiasm and theirs as well. As the quote goes ‘ A teacher is always a learner’ is so relevant, more so in my case, as it took me a few months to learn and appreciate this virtual teaching and learning.
It is my commitment to teach, advise and apprise students that, it is only when one learns to write, they can fix their official signature. Numerous teaching and learning skills are out there to grasp and there are many that I have to master, but my journey of learning will never cease. Finally, as an English teacher, I can never call it a day as I will continue to learn, develop and motivate myself to impart the writing and reading skills of this amazing language and develop the skill and love for writing in students.
By, Virginia Isaac, IGCSE and Middle School English teacher, Ekya Byrathi
#StudentBlogger: Express Yourself Creatively – By, Ritam Reddy, Grade 9 IGCSE Ekya School, Byrathi
There’s a common misconception that expressing one's creativity can only be done through art and other visual means. Although taking a deeper look into the very essence of creativity, we find that it simply isn’t true. Creativity is expressing your individuality and characteristics through various types of work and ideas. That being said, it isn’t limited to only visual arts and crafts, is it? Essentially, any type of distinctiveness based on your imagination qualifies as creativity. That can range from a painting with your toes to a series of original novels written by yourself.
“You can’t use up creativity, the more you use, the greater you have” is an eye-opening quote by Maya Angelou. This quote imposes on us the fact that creativity is more than just an aptitude and is more of innate talent or power that everyone possesses, just in different ways. A real-life instance of that would be writing a story every so often, and each time your sense of vocabulary and range of words, that you have a command over, will expand. You get more imaginative and your stash of words will increase, allowing you to have a more flexible and creative way of expressing your sentiments.
The run-of-the-mill and stereotypical statement that, “Intelligent people are more creative”, has caused countless young people, who had extraordinary creativity but lagged in academics; to never explore opportunities and make a name for themselves in the creative fields. In fact, contrary to that statement, studies have proven that intelligence has no correlation to the creative ability of an individual, whatsoever.
In today’s modern society, digitalization and the fear of what others might think of you are what holds back one’s innovativeness and ability to solve problems. Letting ourselves get defeated by society's opinions and judgments could be the greatest downfall, as that prevents us from evolving as a species.
By, Ritam Reddy, Grade 9 IGCSE Ekya School, Byrathi
#TeacherBlogger: Developing Students’ Writing Skills in Hindi – By, Richa Saxena, IGCSE and Middle School Hindi teacher, Ekya School Byrathi
Writing is an effective way to express your feelings, thoughts, and ideas. As teachers, it is our responsibility to help students enhance their reading and writing skills. Keeping this in mind, we at Ekya School, Byrathi have introduced some exercises to improve and develop the creative writing skills of our students. These writing exercises not only help students improve their writing skills but also give them an opportunity to showcase their creativity. The way students think, their understanding of a topic or a concept, their perception, all this reflects in their writing. But sometimes they are not able to express themselves on a piece of paper. That’s why we have to encourage our students to practice reading & writing. Writing doesn’t have to be an essay or a big paragraph, even 3-5 lines can help a child improve his writing skills. This doesn’t happen immediately but it is a gradual process. I encourage my students to read a lot in Hindi, which will help improve their vocabulary and help in enhancing their writing.
I am a Hindi Teacher and teach grades 5-9. In my classroom, I use various tools to improve my students’ writing skills. Tools that involve writing are immensely helpful. I try to assign brief writing exercises to my class. For example, in Grade 5, I used a tool popularly known as ‘K-W-L’. This tool requires the students to write what they know about a topic, what they want to know, and what they learned and my grade 5 students enjoyed doing this activity. It was not a lengthy piece of writing but only a few sentences. There are other tools too, like 3-2-1, that can involve writing.
Once I asked my students to imagine that they have won a lottery of Rs. 10,000/- and I asked them what they would do with the lottery money? Some wrote that they will buy things for themselves while the others wrote that they would donate that money to an orphanage. Well, a few of them wrote that they would give it to their parents. Students enjoyed writing down their ideas. The students felt happy as they were imagining winning a lottery, which helped them to write those wonderful answers with so much enthusiasm.
I did this same activity in Grade 9. One wrote that he would organize a music concert, while the other child wrote that he was saving the money for his college education. Another student wrote that they would invest the money for the future, while yet another child wrote that she would use it to travel.
In grade 8, we read a story and understood what it was about, then I asked students what was ‘the one thing’ in the story that they would want to change. After the discussion, I asked them to write this down. We called this writing activity - Twist in a tale! The students enjoyed doing it and then peer-reviewing it. I ask my students to analyze each other’s work in class. This helps students to know that they have to write in order to think more clearly. It improves their basic writing skills.
‘Headlines’ is another writing exercise students enjoy. It can be used for any topic. Another example of writing exercises is - Photographic Writing prompts. We also conduct writing competitions in Hindi. In June 2021, we conducted a Vocabulary Competition where all students made sentences with the new Hindi words shared with them. Though writing requires a lot of patience and time these writing activities and competitions are a great way to encourage our students and build their confidence in their writing skills.
By, Richa Saxena, IGCSE and Middle School Hindi teacher, Ekya School Byrathi
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