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Everything English
A Teaching Blog By: Danielle Sisson
Welcome to Longwood Blogs. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!
I completely agree with your interpretation of how SOLs should be imcorporated into classrooms. Your post makes me think of when our Education 473 professor said that we should aim to “teach through, not to, the SOLs.” I think that SOLs are a great way to gauge the minimum skills that students in each grade should be able to perform, but that does not mean that they should be the only content covered, nor should they drive the way that material is caught. By “teaching through” the SOLs, teachers can cover the material necessary to pass the SOL, while also going beyond the basic memorization and rigid formatting associated with SOL tests. I’m thinking about the writing SOL test in particular, which tends to make some teachers feel restricted to overemphasizing the five paragraph essay in order for students to pass. If teachers teach through the five paragraph essay, just presenting it as one genre of writing and also exposing students to other genres of writing, they will be familiar enough with the format of the five paragraph essay to perform well on the test and will be able to gain the writing skills they need to perform well from a variety of genres. Not only would this enable students to be able to pass in a much more pedagogically-sound way, but it would also teach students to write in genres that they will actually use in writing beyond the SOL test without inhibiting their ability to perform well.
Danielle, very interesting topic that you bring up with the SOLs. I never know much about private schools, or the fact if they taught SOLs or not. Now I know. That’s so weird though because you figure that MOST schools, regardless if their are private or not, would teacher standards of learning because of the state tests each year. Though are SOLs mandatory for all schools in the country?
I agree that SOLs aren’t necessarily evil, but rather a good that can be taught well in the hands of a creative teacher. I dreaded when the SOLs came in my middle and high school. (I attended Swift Creek middle school and Manchester High School). I don’t know if my teachers necessarily taught straight from the SOLs, or incorporated the materials into the curriculum…then again it’s all a huge blur with huge writing and reading assignments that we had to do both in school and over summer break. Who came up with summer reading anyway? However, I will say that when it came to push and shove, I wound up with great teachers and more knowledge than what I came in with. It’s hard at first, but I believe that we all can shape the SOLs in our favor as teachers to have those curriculum’s really soak into our students minds not just as knowledge, but also as references in their near future.