How should one teach skills such that students can apply them in the right contexts and into the far future?

By Isabella Abigail Ow

And just like that, the marking season for the year is over. As I had colleagues quip about how my students wrote for their Composition pieces, and as I noticed some similarities across their scripts, I began reflecting about how I had taught them this year.

Their task was to write a Situational Writing piece. Hence, I had emphasised to them that they should visualise the context which they were writing about, and propose authentic and realistic suggestions and solutions. Quite a number of them did strive to do that. For some students, they did this to the best of their efforts. From their elaborations, it seemed that they enjoyed the process of completing the writing task.

However, on some level, I felt that they could be simply parroting the teacher. It suddenly dawned upon me that I might not have sufficiently encouraged them to exercise their own personal voice. As I rushed the delivery of the lessons and focused on driving home key learning points, I did not set aside sufficient time for my students to practise the skills and evaluate how they could improve. Space and time for them to apply the skills and reflect after were compromised. The results were reflected in their eventual Situational Writing pieces.

The 2nd thought and observation which I had was that some of their elaborations and explanations were not fully relevant to the writing task. Perhaps in some of my assurances to my students about how to perform well in Situational Writing tasks, I had robbed them of the opportunity to discern and learn for themselves. When a teacher hands students the keys, the opportunity for them to productively struggle through a task, which can foster greater learning, diminishes. Once again, in my haste to assist and at times “save”, I inadvertently reduced the opportunities my students had to apply and practise the skills on their own.

Skills learnt in silo, without a proper context for application; or with excess assistance, can cripple the student’s ability to discern the right and appropriate contextual applications. While students may on the surface be able to rehash the key learning points in the short term, their ability to do so further ahead in the future, and in a brand new context, are not assured.

As educators, it is important that we notice the subtle differences. We should design learning experiences that forge the most productive and long-lasting learnings.