I will plan a support strategy that is aimed at helping two of my students with different levels of writing. I have noticed that these students are always lagging behind the others in their writing skills. I was determined to investigate what might be the problem and realized that, both students are not English speaking and they come from different countries. Being a bilingual teacher, I belief I am in a position to help these students in the development of their writing skills. I have taught as a bilingual teacher during my vocation period and I recognize very well the difficulties these students encounter in their studies.
My strategy will incorporate both students although I plan to assess them using different methods of to make sure that, they both acquire the necessary skills. I will use a teaching model known as language experience approach (LEA). This is a strategy to reading instruction which is founded on actions and stories built up from personal understanding of the learner. I will write up stories about personal experience, let the two students read them together until they are able to associate the spoken word with the written. I will then request the students to write up their own stories and read them to me each at a time. The purpose of this strategy is to help the students learn how to read as well as to write.
To assess whether the students have learnt from that experience, I will dictate notes to them and ask them to write. Through dictation, students are able to write what the teacher reads out and this improves their listening and writing skills. It is common that, since these students are at different levels of writing, they will respond differently and may not produce the same results. To avoid discrimination, I will separate the students after the first phase of learning and put them in different rooms. In their different rooms, I will dictate the same stories (including the ones they wrote down) to each student and ask them to write down. I will then go through the written work and revise it together with the each student. In case of any miss spelt word, I read it out loud and ask the student to write it up again, in case he experiences difficulties writing it down, I will help him at the same time ask him to pronounce it. LEA helps students to learn about language, writing and reading. It also expands on the student’s ability to tell stories through writing. LEA helps students to write what the say or even think.
The second strategy will be the use of differentiated instruction. This is a learning strategy where I will allow the students to learn depending on their differences. Differentiated instruction helps students to learn and understand concepts according to their abilities. I will take a step to understand what works best for each student and that which will motivate them to work harder and also raise their self-esteem. I have learnt that, most students perform poorly not because they are unable to perform better, but because the teachers often neglect them with the perspective that they can never improve. I will use this opportunity to know the students better through individual conversations, group discussions, student’s work, and observation. What I will learn becomes a means for crafting instruction in ways that help each student to make use of his potential and talents.
Through experience, I have realized that spelling, grammar, and punctuations are some of the difficulties encountered by students when they are learning writing skills. To help my students, I will use a large print or piece of paper and then ask one student to spell some words while the other one writes them down, and then alternate. We will then look at the words together to check the ones that have been spelt wrongly. I will then give the correct spelling and ask the students to repeat the process. For grammar, I will ask my students to read aloud certain sentences (some without grammar mistakes and others with grammar mistake) word by word to establish whether there are any grammar mistakes. After establishing the grammar mistakes, we will collectively correct the sentences and then repeat the process with other sentences. The same applies to punctuation.
I will then use a cloze test to assess the writing skills development on both students. A cloze test is a kind of exam which contains some omitted words which have to be inserted by the student. By doing so, the students improve their writing and speaking skills. However, I will use different exams for each student since they are at different levels. After completing the short-term project, I will give the students their portfolios. This is a record of the students’ achievements and progress which help them to see their improvement in the development of writing skills.