Saturday, October 18, 2008

Journal entry

Since we were on the topic of teaching English, I thought I'd show an example of a journal entry. This was one written by Lesley-Anne last year.

Bunk Bed

I got a new bunk bed yesterday and since I was older, I got the top bunk.

How interesting it is to be able to see my room from a birds eye-view. It was exciting thinking about all the things I can do up there.

Only there is 1 disadvantage. I may knock my head on the ceiling. My brother has the same disadvantage. That is knocking his head on the wooden block holding my materess!

Journal entries are typically very short as they're written in a small notebook (you know, the small blue one all Singapore schools have been using for decades). It's just for the kids to express their thoughts or views on anything under the sun. As mentioned, grammar and spelling errors are not corrected and the teacher just writes a comment at the end of the entry.

In this instance, her teacher wrote this:

I think the casual tone and friendly interaction takes away the formality and usual stresses of writing, say a composition. This teacher gave particularly good comments, I felt, very personal and sometimes even constructive advice when sought.

2 comments:

Lilian said...

Not just casual and friendly, green ink too! :) Sounds like a sweet teacher. Lucky Lesley-Anne, every kid wants to sleep on the top part of a bunk bed.

Speaking of journals, I have been trying for years to get Brian to write in his journal but ZILCH...he can't think of anything to write. He's just not someone who dwells on things, or reflects on anything that happened.

The toughest task you can give him is get him to write about his thoughts and feelings. His class was reading Louis Sachar's There's a boy in the girls' bathroom, and the kids were asked to think of incidents when they, like the book's character, were blamed by someone they trusted for something they didn't do.

He spent ALL weekend thinking and thinking, and couldn't come up with anything. Maybe he's so oblivious about things around him that he doesn't even realise when people are being mean to him. Or maybe a coping mechanism for surviving through so many changes of schools.

monlim said...

Maybe it's just personality, Brian sounds like he's not the reflective type of child, very pragmatic and straightforward. Which has its plus points cos he's less likely to brood and mope over issues. Like you say, with you guys moving so much, this could be a great coping mechanism.

Lesley-Anne is the opposite - overthink and brood over everything!!

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