Keystone Magazine Learning the Keystone Way 2015-2016 EN | Page 15

S
tudents from grade
1 in Emma Folo’s,
primary school
E n g l i s h te a c h e r,
class gather on
their cozy learning
spot on the carpet for a pop
quiz, ‘Is that a character or a ti-
tle?’ Ms. Folo put up sentences,
phrases or pictures, and stu-
dents had to say whether they
were titles of, or characters in
a book. With each screen, stu-
dents shouted out in chorus,
“Title!” “Character!” And then,
on one screen appeared Mo
Willems – a children’s book
writer. The students giggled
and said, “Ms. Folo, he’s an au-
thor!”
With a wink and a smile, Ms.
Folo said, “There is no tricking
all of you!” She was definitely
most pleased with her class
who are now learning about
text structures, and how to
apply them. This means that
students know the different
elements of a story: how it
flows – the plot – the charac-
ters, the author, and they can
even look for information in
the illustrations in the book.
Understanding and applying
text structure is one of the
assessment criteria in English
Language Development (ELD).
All eight classes of grade 1 are
having fun with this lesson.
One such fun activity involved
each student picking two or
more of their favorite books,
and writing or drawing about
them. One grade 1 student,
Peter holding three books said,
“All my books are about Lego.
I love Lego!” Peter’s classmate,
Amy picked Creepy Carrots
because, “It is so funny,” she
laughed. Austen also picked
a funny book, Lost at the Fun
Park. Understanding humor
is not easy, and it is definitely
indicative of cognitive and cul-
tural development that must
go hand-in-hand with increas-
ing linguistic capacity.
Teachers plan several such
lessons that help students
progress and achieve learning
goals in language develop-
ment with fun, passion and
an understanding that is both
linguistic and cultural. Some-
times, it might be through
shared reading with their
grade 5 peers. Here, students
also discuss the book with
each other through guid-
ing questions provided by
the teachers. They also share
books with each other in the
class (usually in pairs), which
helps students to support
each other. Spelling pyramids
are another exercise that helps
students strengthen their vo-
cabulary that in turn makes
reading and understanding
text structures more mean-
ingful. Students also worked
in groups on a project called
story mapping. They created
a map of the well-known fairy
tale, Goldilocks and The Three
Bears through art and crafts.
This helped them reflect on
the storyline, the characters,
and meaning of the tale in
teams.
Language development is not
only about a growing vocabu-
lary, or the number of words
learned in a day, or the num-
ber of books read in a day. It is
a carefully planned roadmap
to comprehension from the
lowest grade levels.
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