Language for Academic Writing and Practicum Observations
My experiences during the short practicum were on the whole very positive. I was excited and nervous with the opportunity of teaching a Spanish 11 course. The importance of scaffolding became apparent early on, as everybody in the class was new with the language and ultimately fairly unaware of how to use it properly. Also of importance were the uses of cognates, which helped the students to get a grasp of the meaning of the Spanish words in English. Fortunately with Spanish, the cognates work well with the English language and are easily incorporated into a lesson with little initial preparation necessary.
In regards to chapter eight on language for academic writing, many useful activities were presented which can be incorporated into both my social studies and Spanish classes. I was particularly fond of the written recap activity, which allows students a few minutes at the end of class to write down what they have learned during the lesson. These few minutes are usually unproductive, as the students have crossed their threshold of focus. This allows students to think about and process what they have learned in class. It also; however, allows the teacher the ability to know if the students really understood the material that was presented during the lesson. I do feel that the use of a few prompts such as “I learned that…, I do not agree with…, etc.” are necessary to get students to really think about their responses. Perhaps also as a modification to this recap activity could be changing the questions to:
- I know that…
- I still need to learn that…