Getting to grips with the English language
Phil Harvey from ABA Oman School describes a teaching model he devised to help students improve their English writing.
Picture this: your Grade 11 students have all chosen to attempt English A1 as part of their IB diploma. Many use English as their second language: most feel ready for the challenging ascent to the literary heights, but there is a sizeable minority for whom writing about literature feels more like an unassailable mountain. The obvious response? Offer these students some support with their writing skills.
We turned to our colleague in the ESL (English as a Second Language) department and worked out a plan to withdraw certain students once a week from regular classes to work on some fundamental commentary writing skills. Every one or two weeks our students completed a commentary on a new passage, discussed this in class, created a plan and then wrote a draft at home. The students in the support group worked on exactly the same material as the other students, but at a slightly slower pace and with more of a focus on structures of writing and vocabulary development. The programme was dubbed English for Academic Support and ran as a six-week trial. The support group students appreciated the individual attention and started to grasp the frameworks.
We then brought the two classes together to work in small groups. One lesson was given to silent writing on the commentary and the following lesson involved students sharing their writing and ideas. They looked at each other’s plans, read aloud each other’s introductions and identified examples of good writing from among their peers. Towards the end of each small group session, students selected and read aloud the best work to both classes.
A booklet was drawn up, mainly by the students, to act as a ‘toolkit’ for writing commentaries, containing useful advice, phrases and sentence openers. We are now considering how to adapt this collaborative model for the teaching of other writing skills.
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English-speaking success
