TEACHERS
inspire
TEACHERS
By Charmaine Rossouw, Teacher
‘What has always been or is currently your biggest concern regarding your learners’ academic progress?’
This is the question I pose to teachers during training sessions; the most common immediate responses
are: ‘My learners struggle to read with comprehension’ and ‘My learners are not interested and do not
want to participate in my lessons.’ I trust that after reading this article you may tackle this matter in a
different way.
How do I inspire learners to engage with the unseen
and unknown text? How do I motivate and inspire learners to actively
engage in my lessons?
I use reciprocal teaching to promote independent learning
in my class. According to Oczuks (on www.readingrockets.
org), ‘reciprocal teaching refers to an instructional activity
in which learners become the teacher in small group
reading sessions. Teachers model and then help learners
learn to guide group discussions using various strategies.’
These strategies are: predict, clarify, question, summarise,
visualise, prior knowledge, meta-cognition, skim, scan,
make connections and synthesise. I shift the focus away from the activity at hand by
summarising the work or reading out loud. Learners
feel like they are playing while actually applying skills
and consolidating a variety of concepts. Here are a few
methods I use to encourage learners to actively participate
in the classroom:
Learners initially make use of these strategies to interact
with the unknown text. At the beginning of the year I
introduce learners to the strategies, and their respective
definitions, by referring to the posters displayed on the
noticeboard in my class. Then, when reading a text to
learners they would say, ‘Stop, Ma’am! I want to …’ and
then name the strategy they wish to address, such as
‘predict’.
Learners are encouraged to answer each other’s questions.
If they cannot, the strategy is kept in mind until the text
provides the answer. Using these strategies, learners
actively engage orally with the text even before reading.
This form of reciprocal teaching of reading promotes
independent learning when interacting with the unknown
text.
At the start of a lesson, learners receive envelopes providing
them with different strategies. Each envelope contains a
monitor card identifying their strategy and a worksheet
that they would need to complete. After engaging with
the text, learners would complete the worksheets from
the perspective of their identified strategy and share
their answers with the group. My focus then shifts from
shared reading to guided reading. In this way learners
have a better comprehension of the text and its literal and
figurative meanings.
Reading strategies can be applied in all subjects and not
just languages. For example, in Mathematics you could
write ‘fraction’ on the board and ask learners to refer to
their prior knowledge to clarify the word displayed. In
Geography you could show a picture of tree logs bundled
up against the pillars of a bridge crossing a river and ask
leaners to infer the direction in which the river is flowing.
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• When learners struggle to read out loud, I give them
make-shift microphones. With their focus on the
microphone, they forget that they are reading out loud
to their peers.
• When practising the skill of summarising, learners call
friends or family members on ‘phones’ made of large
laminated images. They need to keep the call brief as
they may ‘run out of airtime’ and, therefore, need to
summarise their message.
• When delivering an oral or unprepared speech, learners
may use the three-step stage or television frame as a
prop. The props distract them from the anxiety of
delivering a speech.
Learners are rewarded for active participation, insightful
comments, or personal achievements in the following
ways:
• A continuous ‘SPEC-tacular’ theme rewards learners
with fun, over-sized spectacles to place on their desks.
Afrikaans teachers could translate that to a ‘BRIL-jante’
theme.
• Learners are rewarded with a stuffed toy teddy bear, as
their behaviour or progress made the teacher ‘beary’
happy.
• A gold spray-painted cup is given to learners who display
good conduct, whether individually or in a group. The
message is that their ‘cup runneth over’ due to good
behaviour.
• A tiara or crown is given to learners who excelled at the
day’s reading and speaking activities.
• The seven learners with the highest assessment results
receive a top hat to wear during class times, because
they were the ‘top’ seven.
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