infinitive instead of gerund), Ag the determiner/article + noun dont agree in number (e.g. Follow the pen/keyboard. A teacher can express interest in the writing and refer to the ideas which are particularly well expressed. Youll find these ideas explained in more detail if you look at the lesson plan associated with this article. Perhaps the best approach is to ask learners to decide the level of correction that they would like, and ask them to write this in their journal (as suggested in the lesson plan). Writing a reflective journal requires not only that you describe a learning experience, but also that you analyze the topics covered and articulate your feelings and opinions about the subject matter. Weve gathered five fun creative writing activities you can assign to spark a love for writing. YouTube is a great resource for instrumental or classical music, as much as it is for songs. The teacher highlights the error, using the code, and later the student reads back over his/her journal entry and tries to make the corrections. It forms part of building the writing habit. The journal, therefore, is not used for any one, specific purpose. What, then, is the point of the journal? If you often start a course by writing a personal letter to the students, they could read your letter at this point, and write a reply to it in their journal. This diary entry for class 10 wil surely help you to gain better marks. I allow a full class period or more for students to follow these instructions. How to Teach Writing, Jeremy Harmer, Longman 2004, British Council, 10 Spring Gardens, London SW1A 2BN, UK Useful guideline to A level Coursework with useful Vocabulary, Expressions and a suggested structure for Writing Skills. It is meant to record certain significant events and feelings of the writer. You might want to take it in turns: in the first class, you choose the music; in the next class, a nominated student can choose it. Let me first start by defining what I mean by a journal in this lesson plan. What, then, is the point of the journal? Nick Peachey has written in TeachingEnglish about using learner diaries in this way. For other people, keeping a diary is a way to stay emotionally healthy. How do you respond to the journal writing? Students can be introduced to this code right from the beginning of the course, and can write it in the front or back of the journal to refer to. Start writing and keep writing. Many adolescents wrestle with critical reflection and therefore may need more individual help or modeling. Each teacher needs to decide, therefore, what the best approach is going to be to respond to the class journals. BBC World Service, Bush House, Strand, London WC2B 4PH, UK, the lesson plan associated with this article, Creative writing for language learners (and teachers), How to maximise the language learning of senior learners, Education exchange: Schools reopening - pupil well-being, Take a survey on teaching speaking in online environments. I told her that just because Im hanging out with Jane, it doesnt change anything about our Set students a personalised writing task. Good for Writing about Opinions and developing Arguments. Keep in mind that this diary writing format has been designed focusing on English CBSE class 10. Even a personal blog is a kind of journal, and can thus become a learning journal if the blogging is done in order to promote, deepen, or extend learning of some kind.. T Time yourself. Here is an example of a typical correction code: WF wrong word form (e.g. Some learners may be happy with this kind of response and may prefer not to receive much or any explicit correction. Otherwise, it can take a while for every student to bring some kind of journal notebook to class of their own accord! Instead, the activities encourage creativity, It is also a similar idea to teacher-student journals, where students will write their ideas, and the teacher will make some sort of comment. Learning journals are often named for a specific purpose and/or formata creative writing journal, for example. Another disadvantage with using a correction code is that it might generate a lot of work for the teacher, particularly if the class is a large one! If correction on a regular basis is going to prove difficult, the teacher could always set up an appointments schedule, and arrange to take in and correct different diaries every week. Format: Date/day Salutation Dear Diary Heading of the entry Contents of the diary entry Signature Points to remember: Creativity, imagination and expression in diary writing are tested. This might be related to the activity. I would argue that it encourages the teacher to include a greater number of writing tasks in the class Encouraging students to write freely, about a range of topics, often concerning how they feel about a topic or what their thoughts are regarding their learning, will help them to become more fluent writers. This could be used for personal diary also but in a personal diary it completely depends on your own wish how to write a diary. Why is this so? 1. In that way, the teacher is on hand to help confirm the students hypotheses about the correct form and also to give the correct form if the student has no idea what the error is. If students specifically request that their writing is corrected, one way to correct writing is to use a correction code and to encourage students to correct their own mistakes. Its one of the saddest pieces I know! It can be a good idea to put on some background music while students are writing. It serves as the students writing space, and the type of writing will change depending on the activity. I texted Sarah last night asking if she wanted to have lunch with me today, just the two of us, and she said sure. Youll notice that none of the activities focuses on the technical aspects of writing. A diary entry is a very personal kind of writing. Of course, it is important that they learn this kind of writing (which is usually essential for exam success), but it doesnt always encourage them to write for the sake of writing, and to get used to writing in a more relaxed and creative way. Useful for Exams skills and Revision. I would argue that it encourages the teacher to include a greater number of writing tasks in the class than he/she might normally do. There is no set structure for writing a reflective journal, as the diary is meant for your own use. These include ideas such as: fast writing the teacher plays some music and students write down how it makes them feel; character writing students read a story, then imagine that they are a character in the story and then they write the story from their own point of view; discussion sentence stems the teacher dictates some sentence stems, students complete them and then discuss the propositions. If you're like many journalers, you enjoy learning about different tools and resources you can use to strengthen your journaling practice. However, there may be learners who would definitely like more detailed feedback on errors. Ideally a students journal will be a fairly thin, lightweight notebook. You can ask them to include similar information to you. singular article but plural noun). Re-read what youve already written and continue writing. One disadvantage with using a correction code is that students may not actually know how to correct the mistake and may simply leave the error as it is, without feeling any the wiser about the error. Essentially, the journal I describe here includes both of the above ideas, as well as others. If you get stuck or run out of juice, close your eyes and re-center yourself. Students often write in their English classes, following a specific genre in order to do so: the informal email; a job application letter, etc. Writing in a safe space can help you process past experiences. Writing for its own sake is a goal to pursue. Over time, this becomes a bit like a dialogue that takes place between student and teacher, and can help both student and teacher to learn more about each other (which usually has a good effect on motivation and learning). Personally I would avoid music with lyrics, because I think it would be distracting, but the music could be contemporary music rather than classical music. If you are introducing the journals later in the course This lesson will guide you through taking a closer look at the different kinds of journaling, journals, writing utensils, paper, online journals, and software programs that can enrich your writing. As Jeremy Harmer says Journal writing contributes to a students general writing improvement in the same way as training enhances an athletes performance: it makes them fit. It can also be an enjoyable activity for many people. However, that is also an option. It helped the students to focus on the mood. The writing process is entirely free-form. The aim of this lesson plan is to introduce the writing journal into the class, as a different kind of class writing activity, which can become an additional tool in order to help students develop their writing skills. It serves as the students writing space, and the type of writing will change depending on the activity. Write the start time and the projected end time at the top of the page. This is a similar idea to a learner diary, where students regularly reflect on what they have learnt in classes, and the way that activities in class have helped them to learn. The purpose of the writing tasks may be to produce something that can be read by other students (by swapping over journals), but it doesnt have to be. Write for 5-15 minutes. Our hope is that these activities will create a workshop-like environment that fosters feedback and collaboration in your writing classroom. Basically writing, like reading, is a skill that we get better at; the more that we practise it, the more fluent we will become. For this reason, it is a good idea to use time in class for students to go back through their writing and to try to identify the errors. Obviously there is no end to the kind of music that you could play in the background while students are writing. This could be an extra activity in the lesson every two or three weeks: students look back over all their writing from that period and try to correct their mistakes. What is the goal of journal writing? We are often encouraging personal reflection and response when we set a journal writing activity, and consequently the most valid response to this kind of writing might be to focus on its content and to respond primarily to this aspect of the writing. Other classical music is lively and happy Schuberts piano music, for example, can be nice! For example, one day when I wanted students to imagine that they were a regretful character, writing from a prison cell, I put Adagio for Strings on in the background. Dear Diary, Today was a little better. I think youll find that it encourages them to view writing in a more positive way, and that you will enjoy finding out some things that you didnt know about your students. In this way, if the teacher wants to collect in a set to look at, he/she wont find that they are too heavy to carry. Here are some suggested activities: I hope you enjoy setting up class journals with your students. The advantage of providing students with journals yourself is that you may want students to start writing in them from the start of the course. March 4, 2012. Writing in a diary can help spark new ideas or develop thoughts. Journals for younger students, who will typically write less, may just be some folded sheets of A4 with a colourful card cover which the teacher makes (or gets the students to make in the first lesson).