Literacy Students Need Structure

You would think I would have learned by now. But no. Once again, I watched as my Literacy students couldn’t figure out what to do. Their puzzlement wasn’t their fault. It was all on me. I had asked them to make a chart. On the whiteboard, I wrote the heading ‘4 Seasons’. Below that title, I wrote the names of the four seasons across the board. I told the students to copy what I had written on the board into their notebooks. When I checked their work, only one of the ten students had copied the chart correctly.

Copying. Easy, right?

Every Literacy teacher I’ve spoken to has encountered students who have difficulty copying exactly what we’ve written on the board. It’s not just copying from the board, either. Students struggle with copying from handouts into their notebooks, and even on the same handout. Every time I see a student unable to copy four simple words as headings across the page, for instance, I wonder:  What are they seeing?

We all have students who lose their bearings on a handout. For example, all they need to do is copy a word onto the line below it, but they may copy the word beside it, or write above the line, below the line, or even in a different place on the paper, such as at the top. If I don’t provide structure for them, some students will be lost, so I point to the word and then to the line below it. “Copy,” I repeat several times. And even then, there’s no guarantee the student will be able to complete the task.

Through Student Eyes

I say ‘simple’ because it is simple to us as teachers. To the students, though, an activity can be as challenging as solving a complex mathematical equation is for us. Ideally, teachers would see their lessons from their students’ perspective. How many of us create material or print something off from a website with the students always in mind? Or, do we sometimes find ourselves scrambling for something – anything – to use?  I’m not saying we do it all the time, but when we do, we run into situations where students are lost. Such moments are sharp wake-up calls for teachers that for Literacy students the English language is complex and befuddling. So too can be the activities we get them to do.

What I constantly need to remind myself is that Literacy classes are complex, with many moving parts. We are not just teaching English, we are also helping students develop academic skills, such as copying. Further, just because students sailed through the previous activity doesn’t mean that the next activity will go swimmingly. Ideally, we want to build on the previous activity, from building skills to using them, but the reality can be sharply different.

Assume Nothing

One mistake with the copying activity at the beginning of this post is that it was a free activity. I’d also erred in assuming that the learners didn’t need structure. After all, what I wanted them to do seemed obvious to me. It was right there on the board.

As a corrective, I projected lined paper similar to the paper in their notebooks on the whiteboard, wrote the heading ‘4 Seasons’ at the top of the page, and added the names of the seasons across the page on the line below. However, that caused even more confusion. I wanted to scream. Instead, I went to each student and showed them exactly what to do. One teacher plus ten students equals one exhausted teacher.

For Literacy teachers, it’s important to remember that our learners need constant support, instruction, and guided practice. They need a highly structured learning environment and clearly structured activities. We should also assume nothing and be prepared for anything.