Shannon may refuse to write, but it seems like her behavior needs an adjustment. How many days is this belligerent, angry child allowed to go off on other students? She has to participate. It’s my job to get her to somehow. Even if I allow her to dictate while I type or write, sometime she has to make a start. Otherwise she is truly being shortchanged, and the teacher is remiss. Just as Delpit described motivating the class with lessons revolving around hair, hair history, hair tessellations, and all the other related ideas, something is going to turn Shannon on, and we have to find it. How about picking pictures out of a hat and describing them? This way, kids can’t fault her for her word choice. How about sentence starters? How about blindfolded sensory descriptions? Memories? Wishes? Something is going to get that girl started writing. And then she’s hooked!
Annie Croon
Comments (3)
I like the different ideas that you came up with for Shannon. I think that one of these strategies is bound to help her connect to literacy. I wondered while I read what would happen if she was paired with another student to write on a topic that they chose together. Or what if she worked one-on-one with an assistant away from the critical eyes of other students? What motivation does this child need? What would happen if the teacher just took a few moments to just sit with the student and find out likes and dislikes and then re-worked her instruction to reach out to this particular student. Surely there has to be a connection and an interest level somewhere.
Posted by Erica Spicer | June 12, 2009 3:55 PM
Posted on June 12, 2009 15:55
Annie: You posed some pretty good suggestions to offer someone like Shannon ideas in order to get her writing started. However at the beginning of your posting, you stated that this student’s “behavior needs an adjustment”. By no means do I tolerant anyone being mean, insubordinate, or rude to anyone else, but we do not know the whole story behind Shannon’s reluctance to write. Maybe you’re right…just getting her started to help build her confidence is the boost she needs. Or, she may have some holes in her learning when it comes to constructing sentences properly. Or one could infer that she doesn’t like sitting at the table with the three other white children. In the article Shannon did make reference to the other students allows picking one little boy’s sentences. Maybe she felt like it didn’t matter what she wrote; she thought that her peers sitting at that table wouldn’t choose her sentence.
Posted by Toni Wheeler | June 12, 2009 4:02 PM
Posted on June 12, 2009 16:02
Shannon does need some sort of help and you discussed many ways you could work with her academically. As Toni suggested, behavior is something that needs to be addressed as well. Or, for another thought, what the focus should be on right now is how to improve the teachers teaching techniques. If she is letting Shannon get by with this behavior, who else in the classroom is getting away with these types of antics. The teacher should not let children just pick somebody's sentence, but allow students to pick their favorite sentence and write it. It could be their own, or another students, but at least they'll have the opportunity to pick the one they want, and it does not have to be discussed which one they are writing, but rather something that is just done.
Posted by Barbara Terauds | June 12, 2009 4:24 PM
Posted on June 12, 2009 16:24