English with Action Research

new projects, new interests

2006-05-08T11:50:00.000+08:00

From ENglish with Action Research, I want to move on to teaching Religious and moral education.
This subject is difficult to teach but with the Diploma in Religious Education course that I am attending, I am getting ideas on how to reach out to young people. I will be putting up thoughts on my modules and lessons learnt.
I hope to find out more about myself and to even start a blog conversation with my pupils.

teaching vocabulary

2005-08-11T15:32:00.000+08:00

Now, I am teaching vocabulary to help Patricians score better. I am sourcing for all kinds of vocabulary related to what they need - colours, words for feelings, words for moods, words for walking etc to help them. Next is the issue of how to make them remember the words and how to use it in the right context. I tried this out with 5N2, the kids seem to enjoy writing a paragraph with the words. This was done in groups, each pupil had to write a sentence with a new word, and the next student continues the story with his new word. I am waiting to see if they remember the words they had to use.
Overall, I enjoyed this lesson too. Hope it is useful for the students.

The results !

2005-07-27T15:34:00.001+08:00

I am glad that pupils are posting comments about what they have learnt. It is indeed surprising to learn that many of you have not been taught this. Could it be because you were not paying attention in class while the teacher was teaching? Could it also be because the teacher did not explicitly use these vocabulary like contextual clues?
Anyway the results are startling to say the least. Pupils have not improved much in their performance because of several things. Patricians do not take classwork seriously preferring to fool around until the examination proper. In addition, because they do not read voraciously, their vocabulary is limited - just refer to the comments and you will understand. Guys don't feel upset here - I am just analysing the problem. Finally, I have also noticed a propensity to not think. In summary, the pupils do not read the question carefully, nor do they extract the points, nor do they summarize the details. So in addition to teaching these package of skills, we must also teach vocabulary and make it part of their everyday language as well as force ( can we?) pupils to explain answers fully. Comments please.

New entries

2005-07-19T08:05:00.001+08:00

WEll, after a haitus I am back. Life is fast paced now with so many things going on at the same time. I really have to multi-task. I have asked some students to post comments on my blog about this package so I can gather some more feedback. I am glad so far that most comments are positive and glad also that Shaun and others have posted really important pointers for what they would like to see more of in their lessons. This blog might become an important feedback tool for many teachers.
I see Jerel Lai has posted some more comments on my blog but he has gone MIA. Jerel, pls come back to class. Don't get stressed that the Os are round the corner. You'll make it no fears. Just come back!.
I will be posting comments on this action research once I can get all the results processed but we are almost there. In the meantime, keep posting comments.

discoveries from teaching contextual clues

2005-04-22T10:13:00.000+08:00

When I taught the students contextual clues I discovered a new problem faced by them. The problem was one of wide vocabulary to rephrase the new vocabulary learnt. I had given them three worksheets to practise contextual clues. The powerpoint slides were simple enough. The worksheets which I took from the Macmillian English Dictionary workbook was a little tough. They gave nice new vocabulary to our Patricians who devoured them. However, they had problems generating new possibilities - how do you replace words like ubiquitous in a sentence ? Somehow the replacement lacked the finess that the original word had. Another problem was that they found it hard to define the word class or what is more commonly known as the parts of speech for that particular word learnt. So I had to re-teach ( or teach?) what is a noun, verb, adjective and adverb. All in, we learnt a lot both they and I.

contextual clues

2005-04-16T15:46:00.000+08:00

This morning blogspot was very slow. I typed in twice before but could not publish and I lost everything. Here I am re-typing everything but somehow the words won't be the same because I am tired.

what is contextual clues?

2005-04-10T11:10:00.000+08:00

I must say at the outset that I have 3 English classes which is great as it affords me opportunity for experimentation. The lesson which followed from inference was contextual clue enabling students to guess meanings of words from understanding the context of the passage. I prepared a powerpoint presentation on what was context, how words meant different things in different contexts and did about 5 slides where students had to apply what was taught.
Next they were grouped in fours to do a worksheet on contextual clues. They had to come up with word class, what the word does, clues available and finally the meaning of unfamiliar words.
It was amazing that a student, Roderick , was so absorbed with the lesson that he forgot his ticks and fidgety behaviour. I was surprised and happy to have an attentive Roderick. He was happy that the lesson was useful to him. I commended him on his behaviour and he beamed. On Monday, Roderick will go through the lesson with the class because he has mastered the skill of understanding contextual clues.
Isn't that wonderful?

teaching of inference skills

2005-04-06T10:37:00.000+08:00

The next key reading skill I identified was inference skill. The students were not confident of this skill which was also useful for answering social studies questions. I prepared a powerpoint lesson on inference skill which explained what it was ,entailling what was involved. The ability to read between the line was important through understanding vocabulary used and being able to spot writer's tone and purpose. Next, students were given an exercise prepared for practice and to evaluate if they had absorbed what was taught. This was done in a group. All in, they had 7 short passages with 18 questions. I was quite heartened to see that about 30% had almost perfect scores , while 80% found the questions easy to answer. The 20% or less students who scored low marks did so because they did not complete their work nor took it seriously.
It was interesting to note that the context of the situation was critical in students' ability to infer. That shall be the next lesson!

Lesson 3 - more journalling

2005-04-02T13:43:00.000+08:00

I started the action research without discussing the collaboration needed. I had to inform my Principal about what I was doing first and when he agreed, I then went onto inform my students about my research. Some of them were keen to take part in this but as you can see from their comments, this did not interest them at all. Others said I was a 'cool' teacher who could blog! Anyway, I hope they will learn to write their reflection of my lessons in this blog and post comments positive and negative so I can improve.

My next lesson was a total disaster with 5N2. I got a student to read the summary question, elicit the key terms and had them written on the board. Then I got several students to read through line by line the passages indicated for summary. That bored them to tears. My purpose was to get them to categorize and be able to extract what was relevant to the question. Then they rephrased the summary in the required number of words and handed their work up . To my amazement, none of them got all 15 points in their summary. What went wrong? It was obvious, students found this way of teaching a pain. The pain index must have hit an all-time high. What I got back was as good as not having taught.
Would group work have been better? I was anxious not to waste time and thought this was good. Obviously it doesn't work. Boredom must be a factor in how students perform. Any comments on how this can be taught better please?

Action Research on teaching of comprehension skills

2005-03-30T13:11:00.000+08:00

St Patrick’s School – Action Research (journaling)

Outcome – to enhance students’ ability to answer comprehension questions

Actions – to conduct and evaluate in a participatory approach, coaching in reading skills

Objective – to identify key reading skills in comprehension.

Prediction from titles
Key words in questions
identifying main ideas,
topic sentences,
supporting evidence,
contextual clues,
inference,
extracting relevant points and paraphrasing

1 students were given comprehension pre test without any teaching at all

2 Scores were collated . (see annex) Pupils did not do well even though English was their first language. Scores range between 3 to 34 out of a maximum of 50. Pupils said that they were unable to understand what the questions asked for when it came to inference questions and contextual questions. Many did not attempt to the summary questions and those who did attempt it, could not pick out more than 5 – 6 points.

3 Lesson 1

I taught them prediction skills using headlines. The class discussed the properties of headlines through an example – Zouk up Singapore. Students were able to give the purpose of headlines – i.e. to sum up what the article was about. They also noted that headlines had to be short, interesting, and to the point. Students were given short articles for which they had to produce a headline. Class sharing was done. This lesson achieved its objective of getting students to focus on what is available to them through headlines to predict what the passage/ article was about. Prior knowledge was activated.

4 Lesson 2

Identifying main ideas and topic sentences. A lesson was prepared teaching students how to write expository paragraphs. They were show examples of topic sentences with controlling idea. Then I modelled a paragraph for pupils to show them how the rest of the paragraphs provided supporting evidence. Students were put in pairs to write a paragraph of supporting evidence given a topic sentence with a controlling idea. The teacher went around checking on students’ work and clarified doubts. Some pairs were called to share what they had written and students who had not mastered this were called upon to share what they had written as well. The purpose was to show the class what was supporting evidence and what was not. Some had written new ideas into the same paragraph.