Hello!
Welcome back to the teaching practice 2021 series!
Today I would like to share with you some thoughts about errors and how the pupils react to being corrected. I am also going to write a few words about the teacher's feedback on pupils' errors during the lesson I have observed in the 1st grade. It was mainly about the vocabulary connected to rooms which we can find in the house.
During the lesson, the teacher was showing students cards with the written names of the rooms in the house. Their task was to read the name and answer a few easy questions. Kids were asked to do so one by one. Firstly a girl tried to read "dining room" but she said "diving" instead of "dining". The teacher asked her if she was sure that it was read correctly. She answered she was not sure and her peers read it aloud once again for her. She also repeated the phrase "dining room" and everything seemed to be fine. After a few good readings, another mistake appeared. This time it was a boy who has read "living room" correctly but was not able to answer the teacher's question: "Do you cook in the living room?". My mentor teacher asked the same question to the whole class but no one seemed to know to answer. I think she got angry at this point and decided to show children a card with a written Polish name for "living room" - "salon". They repeated this phrase in English together a few times to remember it better.
In my opinion, the teacher got a bit angry and felt disappointed because they were reading and revising these rooms at the beginning of most of the lessons. At that point, my mentor thought children should remember what do these words mean and how to read them. She used students' first language to correct the error. I think it was not necessary at all. As teachers, we have to be very patient and aware of our students' moods and feelings. A good idea would be to revise the vocabulary once again and elicit it by showing different pictures. I have to add that I really liked peer corrections and help from other kids. It was very nice and "the reader" did not feel disturbed.
Correcting pupils' errors is not an easy task for a teacher. There are situations when students should not be corrected immediately but here the correct version was needed in order to do the task.
What do you think about error corrections? Should they be immediate?
Zuzanna
Dear Zuzia,
ReplyDeleteThank you for telling us about that interesting incident you observed.
Correcting students' mistakes is not an easy task for the teacher, as you rightly observed.
And it can get pretty frustrating when you put in a lot of effort to make students learn certain things, and then the next day they seem to remember almost nothing.
But as you said, in situations like that, we should try to remain calm and composed. And perhaps, instead of blaming our students for failing to learn something, we should reconsider our own teaching: Is it as effective as it could be? If it's not, then perhaps some changes need to be made to what we are doing in the classroom, which could benefit everyone involved - students and the teacher.