The curriculum required in tutoring, in contrast to the curriculum in high schools, required the deconstruction (i.e. breaking down) of every single task that students may engage with at school. This meant that I needed to create activities that developed the "bare essential" skills, such as the grammar and punctuation required in writing an effective paragraph, to the elements required to write a well-argued essay. Each activity would scaffold the knowledge and skills required of students to be able to write in the genre themselves. I still use this curriculum today and continually improve and refine it, as well as my craft.
One of the advantages, among many, of being a tutor is learning how to deconstruct a piece of writing, regardless of its genre, to its bare essentials. Unlike many teachers in a classroom, who will often be focused more on the basic structure of a task and the content (I know this is a generalisation and I believe this is mostly due to time constraints and the dynamics of the classroom environment), a tutor will need, and has the time, to illustrate to his or her student all of the elements, from the structure of the task to the specific words in each sentence and the grammar and punctuation that is required throughout. The more a tutor does this the more they become effective in scaffolding the knowledge and skills required in their students.
Bigum and Rowan (2013) outlined a study where a tutor, in contrast to a teacher in a formal education system, has the time to allow his or her students to make "[m]istakes," and provide them with the opportunity to learn how to write a particular way, rather than glossing over what is required and guessing. Like Bigum and Rowan assert, "[t]aking the time to work with each student to track down mistakes, errors or accidents is simply not feasible" in formal education, if only because of the large class sizes and the sheer magnitude of what is required to be learnt in each subject area.
What I do want to emphasise is that there are many very effective teachers in formal education environments but, to no fault of their own, cannot ensure that they scaffold the learning of every single student. It is unrealistic as every student has vary levels of knowledge and experience with each genre, and needs varying levels of intervention.
What my experiences as a tutor has illustrated is the importance of intrinsic motivation. Although a student may come to me to help them write an assignment or improve their writing skills, what I have found is that in order to teach them how to acquire the knowledge and tools to become effective writers, I need to base the learning on their needs and interests. If I were merely to approach the task as a series of steps that the student needs to be trained in, I am most likely going to have a student who will learn some skills but will not really be engaged in the learning, and will be quite passive, often not developing the skills themselves, and certainly not becoming life-long learners.
It is the harnessing of a student's intrinsic drive to learn that is what enables them to be pursue learning in the future. I have also noticed that my shear enjoyment of writing and sharing what I ave learnt is infectious, and many of my students begin to want to know about a style of writing or subject that they previously believed was not interesting or worth knowing about.
The subject NGL, a subject that I am currently studying as part of my Masters, illustrates the importance of students learning about things that they themselves want to know. I, like my students, will be taught by a network of teachers on the web on how to write a novel. I will then teach a network of on-line learners, as well as any budding writers who may come to me, on how to write a novel, from the very beginning of constructing a dynamic plot to the very end, editing and polishing a complete novel. This process will teach me more about the elements of effective teaching, elements that I, and anyone wanting to be effective in their craft, can only learn through the practice of being a learner.
References:
What I do want to emphasise is that there are many very effective teachers in formal education environments but, to no fault of their own, cannot ensure that they scaffold the learning of every single student. It is unrealistic as every student has vary levels of knowledge and experience with each genre, and needs varying levels of intervention.
What my experiences as a tutor has illustrated is the importance of intrinsic motivation. Although a student may come to me to help them write an assignment or improve their writing skills, what I have found is that in order to teach them how to acquire the knowledge and tools to become effective writers, I need to base the learning on their needs and interests. If I were merely to approach the task as a series of steps that the student needs to be trained in, I am most likely going to have a student who will learn some skills but will not really be engaged in the learning, and will be quite passive, often not developing the skills themselves, and certainly not becoming life-long learners.
It is the harnessing of a student's intrinsic drive to learn that is what enables them to be pursue learning in the future. I have also noticed that my shear enjoyment of writing and sharing what I ave learnt is infectious, and many of my students begin to want to know about a style of writing or subject that they previously believed was not interesting or worth knowing about.
The subject NGL, a subject that I am currently studying as part of my Masters, illustrates the importance of students learning about things that they themselves want to know. I, like my students, will be taught by a network of teachers on the web on how to write a novel. I will then teach a network of on-line learners, as well as any budding writers who may come to me, on how to write a novel, from the very beginning of constructing a dynamic plot to the very end, editing and polishing a complete novel. This process will teach me more about the elements of effective teaching, elements that I, and anyone wanting to be effective in their craft, can only learn through the practice of being a learner.
References:
No comments:
Post a Comment