English Teacher Phoebe Chiang

  A wreath on the door, bright lights in the house, baking sounds from the big kitchen, sweet and brown cookies in the oven, everything seems to be so crispy and toasty. All these sensational attractions come from an article in the grade three Reading Street textbook entitled “Baking with Aunt Millie.” The author of the article writes about why and how much he/she likes when baking with his/her aunt. From this article, our students learn how to use main ideas and supporting details to make a descriptive article alive. They try to infer the writer’s feelings when he/she visits Aunt Millie. They are even encouraged to illustrate what Aunt Millie looks like after reading the article.

  To connect the reading to our student’s lives, our teachers then ask the students if there is anyone in their life that they share warm memories with. When asked, “Who’s your favorite person?” our kids can’t wait to share about their favorite people. Some talk about their friends, some talk about their siblings, and most of them talk about their mom and dad. Then, to guide the students to focus on sharing the memories, the teacher gives each of them a blank mind map on which they are asked to freely write down all the activities they’ve been experienced with their favorite people and the details of those activities. During this process, the students are all very quiet and so engaged in recalling the happy memories. When it’s time for them to present their mind maps, almost all the kids share their memories with a cute smile. Also, they are all attentive while listening to other students’ sharing. They help one another dig out more details from the activities they share. In this way, the students can come up with more materials to write about for their assignment.

  With this writing assignment, our students have advanced their writing skills because they know how to introduce their favorite person and their memories with good main ideas and the supporting details. What’s more, through this assignment, the teachers and the students have built up a closer relationship between each other because they finally have a chance to explore each other’s life.