1) Daily journal entries will be corrected.
2) Students orally present a recap or Week In Review report
3) Initial goal is to get students to loosen up.
4) By week 4, the focus is on pronunciation and sentence structure.
I think the program for ELL students has been too much on text book instruction. I expect an improvement in oral skills to be followed by an improvement in writing skills.
Comments
Hi Philip, Thanks for posting this outline of the class you are teaching. Could you tell us a bit more about your class? What level are you working with? How often does your class meet and for how long? For the journal writing, do you provide a prompt? What does the recap/week in review entail?
Looking forward to hearing more about your class!
Cheers, Susan Finn Miller
Moderator, English Language Acquisition CoP
Hello Susan, I teach an ELL 2 class and we meet Mon. - Thur., 8:30 - 11:00. I have always given writing exercises but Iʻve never given it in a daily journal format. The topics were usually assigned based on the current lesson. For example for shopping, the topic would be "What is your favorite store at the Ala Moana Center/" and if you donʻt like shopping, "Why Donʻt You Like to Go To The Mall?" Iʻve had students take the easy way out by responding that they donʻt like shopping. Actually those were usually the brighter ones that were clever enough to come up with that answer. I think the Daily Journal format, I would have a more standardized base to assess their work especially at the start. They would be required at the start to come up with 3 sentences about something they did that morning...even as simple as " I ate a piece of toast for breakfast." The weekly recap might go something like "I eat before I go to school. Then I catch the bus with my friend. After school I go to work." I collect the journals and correct and return each day. By week 4 I should be able to see the entries getting a little lengthier and I should be able to assess their levels. At this time, I will also start randomly selecting students to give an oral presentation of their weekly recap. During this period I may have to provide a prompt to some if their writing gets stagnant because they feel thatʻs all they do every day, eat, go to school and work. I will also be able to see which students are more creative and probably the better writers. This format is a new for me and trying out new formats to instruct is one of the reasons I enjoy teaching ELL. I tried learning Japanese and Chinese and can appreciate the challenges they face.
Hi Philip and all, Thanks for adding these details about how you use journal writing in your beginning level class. I have used dialogue journals a lot in my practice. For those who may not be familiar with it, dialogue journaling is like a conversation in writing between a student and the teacher. For the initial prompt, I might ask students to tell me about their family or a friend. I collect the journals, which is simply lined paper in a pocket folder, and write a response. My response also includes another question for the students to respond to. We keep this dialogue going each day. I often start a class with this activity, which motivates students to come on time, so they don't lose the opportunity to write.
It would be great to hear how other teachers are using journaling.
Cheers, Susan Finn Miller
Moderator, English Language Acquisition