Mentor Teachers Rock: How Good Advice Can Impact a Lesson
A report from SYP teacher, Caroline H.
The goal of my SYP teaching team (Dharani and I) was to help our students master the writing of introduction paragraphs. We taught the three basic parts of the paragraph (Hook, Line, and Linker) and played scavenger hunt games in the Martha Bennett Gallery to reinforce our lesson. During a recent SYP, we instructed our students to write an introduction paragraph for an essay persuading students to apply to Learning Works. We let them write while we observed.
Two students easily finished their paragraphs in about five minutes, while two others struggled with the assignment. As teachers, this was a new situation for us. How do you teach a lesson to a class where some students have had previous exposure to the skills you’re trying to teach, and some have not? After SYP we got advice from our teaching mentor, Shelly. She suggested that for the next SYP we introduce an “extra challenge activity” to the students who’d finished early, so that they might continue to stay engaged.
At the next SYP we followed her advice. Again, certain students finished early so we approached them and inquired about their favorite and least favorite classes in school. We then instructed them to write an introduction paragraph for an essay about why their least favorite class is the best subject in school. By having these students support an opinion different from their own, our “extra challenge activity” helped them apply their writing skills in a new way. It worked great. The advice we received from Shelley greatly improved our lesson, and taught us a teaching skill neither of us will ever forget.
