Benjamin Middle School teacher gets young writers to 'focus on the details'
Bill Wadman teaches English/language arts at Benjamin Middle School. He spent four years in the U.S. Air Force and 24 years working at Xerox Corporation. This is his 13th year as a teacher, all spent at the school near West Chicago.
Q. Eighth grade is sort of a transition year from elementary education to high school. How do you help students mature with their writing and their literacy skills to get them ready for the expectations of a high school English class?
A. Probably the one writing strategy I employ most often is limiting my students' use of overused words. We eliminate common words and phrases such as big, good, bad, a lot, thing, things, get, and got.
The reasoning behind this strategy is to cause the student to identify these words, and then pause and think about what they are writing. How else could a sentence be crafted to avoid the boring, common word, and upgrade to something more sophisticated? Writing improves when we focus on the details.
As for reading and literacy, I ask all my students to read for 30 minutes per school day. They are then required to complete a "Reader/Writer" log entry in a composition notebook. The log entry must provide evidence of what they've read along with a personal response. So, the students read, respond, and then reflect.
I also run a fairly extensive Greek and Latin program. Students are tasked to memorize Greek and Latin roots, prefixes, and suffixes continuously throughout the year to improve their ability to understand the meaning of unknown or unfamiliar words.
Q. Reading and writing tend to be more solitary activities, but there's so much buzz these days about student collaboration. How has an English/language arts class changed since your students' parents were in school? And how do you appeal to the high-tech generation?
A. The generational difference between today's kids and their parents is the quick and easy access to the Internet. I'd guess that the parents' middle school computing experience revolved around one computer in every classroom - maybe less.
Here at Benjamin, we have one-to-one computing. Students are more engaged when using their connected devices. A world of information is continually at their fingertips. Not only do we use Google, but we always encourage scholarly investigations using World Book Online and Britannica Online.
Q. If you could remove one tried-and-true piece of required reading from the curriculum, what would you take out and what would you replace it with? Why?
A. Every teacher has only so many days in a year to teach. The simple fact of the matter is that if I wish to try something new, then something else has to go.
For example, this year we read an abridged version of "Flowers for Algernon," a selection from our literature book. However, to do so meant that I had to eliminate "Raymond's Run" by Toni Cade Bambara and "In Trouble" by Gary Paulsen, two excellent stories.
Why did I want to read "Flowers?" I love the discussions that arise from a well-written piece, and "Flowers" is just such a story, which I hoped would benefit this year's class.