About Diaries

Most classes at our English academy keep diaries.  They generally write in them once a week--during the weekend--and the teacher corrects some of the writing.

Clearly, beginners--those at phonics and book 1 levels--don't have enough English skills to write diary entries.  Also, we have found that middle school students simply are too overworked and thus don't have the motivation/energy to maintain a diary.

However, all other students do keep a diary, which means grade 2 through grade 6.

It's interesting to read some of them; teachers can get a chance to see the personal side of students' lives.    Students also get an opportunity to practice English outside the confines of textbooks, and perhaps to talk about personal interests. On the other hand, some students put very little effort into diary writing, so the activity can be a drain on teachers.  As with most things in life, there is a good and a bad side to assigning diary writing for homework.

To motivate some students, if they write more than a page I will tape a piece of candy into the diary.  This "carrot" approach works very well in some cases.

One class (3rd grade?) that I have been teaching for about 2 years is very good; they are ahead of the curve on their textbooks, and whereas almost all other classes only do 1 or 2 texts a semester this class is doing 3.

And they are great.  They haven't complained when I have given them 3 or 4 different homework assignments.  (And let's be very clear here about homework--I am only one of their teachers.  Some students may have 5 or more teachers through the course of a week since they attend both their regular public school and private academies like mine, and all of those teachers give them homework.  Korean kids have a lot of homework, and I do not assign it lightly since I know this.)

Anyway, yesterday, Friday, at the end of class, I assigned homework as I normally do.

To start:

     ET SB 62 LR 3X (English Time student book page 62 listen/repeat 3 times)

They know this and they say it as I am writing it on the whiteboard and they are copying it onto their homework sheets. (Remember, we have been together for 2 years.)

Next line:

     WB 61 (do workbook page 61)

Next:

     SR 6-8 LR 2X (Success Reading book pages 6-8 listen/read 2 times) (They have cd's to listen to for most of their books)

Finally, 4th line:

     Diary (write in the diary 1 time)

At this point they groaned a little bit--but good-naturedly--and someone said, "I don't like diary writing"

Click!  This is the preliminary alarm bell, because any 1 student's voice can affect the whole class.

I said, "I love diaries!  I like to read about your weekends."

One girl, very smart and honest, said (in her wonderful English), "Teacher, only you like diaries!"

Click! (That was great English and cute but . . .)

(I thought to myself, "They have no knowledge about what I do with other classes, but now is clearly the time to start with them.)

"Do you know," I said, as they were lining up at the door to leave, "That in my other classes I give candy to the students who write good diaries?"

Lightbulbs.  Clearly, there was some mental processing going on.  (Remember, they're in 3rd grade.)

I'm interested to see what happens, which is most likely that I will reward the top 1 or 2 diary writers and the rest will improve.

That's my hope, anyway.

This is one of the many interesting things about teaching--you're never quite sure how things are going to be received by students.