In almost every JHS and HS class I teach, there is at least one student whose writing ability is far beyond their classmates. Writing tasks that challenge their classmates are trivial for them. In the most extreme examples, I've seen students effortlessly churn out multiple pages of well-organized work while their friends struggle to put together sentences. But because Japanese schools don't tend to stream English classes by ability level, there is a limit to how far I can extend the task to make it challenging for the high achievers while still keeping it from intimidating everyone else.
I have a few tools in my kit for leveraging skilled students for the benefit of all, for example showing off good writing and drawing attention to things it does well or having students exchange papers to give feedback on each other's work at the rough draft stage of writing, but I feel like there must be better tools out there. Or at least, more nuanced and precise tools I can use for specific situations.
So what do you do to leverage the skill gap in your classes? I am especially interested in anything that rewards high-ability students while also lifting up the students below them to narrow the gap.
by PaxDramaticus
3 comments
My teachers (only JHS) don’t promote anything I do very much besides approving things or checking my Japanese. I offered a diary idea for students and I got one participant out of 200+ students and I was hoping for at least ten or so.
At this point I’ve tried half a dozen ideas and there is little to no support from teachers because they are too busy.
In general a collaborative work style is common in Japanese classrooms with lots of group activities etc. The issue is what is the level difference if it’s extreme then you are turning the student into another ALT. Obviously teaching someone else is a good way to solidify your own knowledge of a subject … but … is it really fair to the exceptional student to do this ALL the time.
If you have students that are wildly better than the average student then I’d suggest offering them something more challenging that they can do while waiting for the class to catch up. Why not suggest they enter an essay competition. Or try writing a news article, a letter to a newspaper, etc. etc. The caveat is that you need to ask the JTE if the particular student can have the leeway to do it in class after they’ve finished the class work. Also … it might be worth considering if they have a weakness in other areas of English or whether they could use English to study another subject in which they are weak.
I don’t showcase more proficient writers in my classrooms. It’s intimidating for the lower proficiency students especially when they can’t yet comprehend the text that the more proficient students produce.
And it really depends on what the learner needs and wants. I ask my speedy writers to either elaborate on the paragraphs or short essays they’ve written adding more details, or give them additional writing prompts appropriate to their levels.
Are the students you’re talking about domestic students, returnees, bilinguals/multilinguals?