The Pitfalls of Assumptions

Put it into your own words, a regular refrain in classrooms throughout the country!

But how to do it? I learnt that clarity is really very important when asking students to do this.

A level 2 student who struggled had handed in a piece of work which was copied straight out the textbook, a lovely piece of printed coursework which was so obviously plagiarised. As a relatively new teacher this frustrated me, why isn’t she getting this! So, I explained that she needed to put it into her own words. I gave her 4 or 5 days to do this. I then received a handwritten piece of paper with exactly the same words on it, well it was in her own words now I suppose.

Ok, maybe I needed to explain in much more detail. I then discovered that she had never been shown how to take in information and then translate it onto the page in her own words. We do make so many assumptions about our students, which sets them up to fail and make them lose interest in education.