[etni] Response to letters by Miriam Greif and Aviva Shapiro

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Sitting on the Junior High sidelines, I have been watching (reading?) the 
current NBA debate with more than a passing interest. Miriam Greif?s comment 
only confirmed my worries about the drop in the level of language awareness: 
?Preparing for the different modules should not encourage "practicing unseens". 
 It should encourage reading and using the language.  The more a pupil reads, 
the richer his/her language will be.  Isn't that true for first language as 
well?!  The same goes for writing.  The more a pupil writes, the better his/her 
writing will be.?
 

Yes, yes, yes! I would add, however, that good reading and writing habits need 
to be instilled in elementary school, if not in English, then at least in L1. 
How many of us have received pupils in 7th grade who don?t know the difference 
between a newspaper article and a text from an encyclopaedia, who don?t know 
how to use a dictionary IN HEBREW and who still don?t know the difference 
between a noun and an adjective? 

 

You can teach grammar until you are blue in the face, but do the kids know HOW 
to use it? Can they write a simple sentence in 7th grade? Can they express an 
opinion as to whether they like something and why? From my experience, I can 
say emphatically NO.  At risk of raising the hackles of elementary school 
teachers, I say that many children come into 7th grade without ever having 
practiced writing because teachers simply don?t have time to check the work 
(and with 40 kids in the class, who can blame them ? but I digress). And I am 
talking about L1 here, not English.

 

It is here that I would also like to respond to Aviva Shapiro?s comment that it 
?means starting early (let's say 8th and 9th grade) and teaching the skills 
needed like skimming, scanning and how to write in their own words?. We do, we 
really do!

 

Let?s put it this way: I spend much of my time teaching 7th grade pupils all 
the skills that they should have acquired in the two or three years previous to 
their arrival in Junior High. It?s extremely frustrating and it slows me down 
and sometimes I get the feeling that if I don?t do it, nobody else will. Then, 
in between trying to make up what was lost previously, we (at least in my 
school) are trying to get the children up to some sort of standard when they 
enter 10th grade. Not easy to juggle between the two, you will agree. 

 

That?s where performance tasks and even mini-projects come in. Even for us JH 
teachers they?re extra work, but I don?t complain because I believe they 
instill those very skills that Aviva and Miriam are talking about. In addition, 
the kids enjoy them and take time over them, and to tell the truth I prefer 
marking them to checking depressing quizzes ad infinitum where the blanks have 
been filled in with the wrong form of the past simple. 

 

It is clear, though, that all this would be much easier for the pupils if they 
were used to doing it properly in L1 and they quite clearly are not. Is there 
anyone from the Ministry reading this who has any influence with Hebrew 
curriculum designers? I hope so but somehow doubt it. The outlook, my friends, 
is bleak.

 

Laura Shashua 





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