Teach Less Learn More

One of the advantages of living in China, and there are many, is the fact that if the New Year doesn’t quite begin the way you would like it to you can always do a do-over with Chinese New Year. This year Chinese New Year is January 23rd, very early, which means that we are back to school after Christmas but only have to teach for 13 days before we are off for another week’s holiday. It is nice though it is turning out to be a bit of a struggle to figure out what to teach my little darlings during this time as a number of families choose not to return until after Chinese New Year.

I decided to focus a bit more on blogging. Up to this point a student could only earn a blog if they met a certain set of standards but the problem with this was that I was driving myself insane trying to stay up to date with what is going on and who did what etc. Yesterday, when I only had eight students in my regular Literacy class because the rest were either away or in EAL, I decided to take them to the IT lab and gave all of them their own blogs. They were so excited. The great part about it was that once I started setting them up the two students who are part of the original blogging group moved around the class to support the new bloggers. It was great to see.

What I have learned so far in the past three months with my four bloggers is that it really works. They are becoming more comfortable writing and are starting to spread their wings in what they write about. At first I was, again, the control freak and insisted they write about school but that got old really fast so we decided as a group to expand the parameters and let them write about what they chose to write about but we also discussed what was acceptable and what was not acceptable. They are amazing at policing themselves.

The rest of the class has been hard at work writing good comments and I have been so happy with the results that I am seeing. They really do work hard to make sure that it is good grammar and correct spelling. the part that is a bit difficult is with my EAL students that want to participate and most of them do leave comments but often their English is lacking in certain areas. How hard on them do I need to be to have acceptable comments without making them feel like a failure because I won’t approve anything they write or they have to continually rewrite comments which as it happens hardly ever happens. Lately, I have been letting some comments go through that have weak English but I consider who has written the comment, usually my lower EAL students and weight it against the advantages they are receiving with seeing their comments published. Does anyone have any great suggestions?

Anyway, the experiment that began with trepidation has been overall a success and I am glad that I am going to have some real life experience to take with me to my next job. I can tell teachers legitimately that blogging really works.

One of the nice things that has happened is with one of my students Abi. She was part of the original group and not only is she developing into a great blogger but she has a real eye for the camera and is taking great pictures to go with her posts. This was a side benefit I didn’t expect. Emily, who is an amazing girl has created a very personal and authentic site that is exactly who she is in real life. Maja and Leo and also experimenting with their writing but do not contribute quite as much as the other two. Regardless, they would all love for you to visit their blogs.