Authentic Texts

Authenticity, authenticity, authenticity. That is the crux of teaching and having student engagement. Long gone are the days when the teacher stands in front of the class while the students merely take notes. Long gone are the days when rote memorization was the only way to learn. Now I am not saying that rote memorization or lecture do not have a place in the classroom, I am merely stating that teachers have other ways of reaching students; making their learning authentic. As Ashburn/Floden state, “Teachers need to be able to design learning tasks and performance assessments that make this work ‘real’ for the students” (p 17). That is a great point, but what does “make it real” actually mean. Students learn better and are more engaged when, for example, their writing pieces are published, either in a contest, magazine or even school newspaper. By writing for an audience, the writing piece now becomes authentic because there is a purpose behind it. Also, by using authentic texts, students are able to read personal narratives or stories that they may be able to connect to their own lives. Ashburn/Floden state that, “Lessons designed for authentic work require students to frame questions meaningful to them and to connect their personal experiences with the content to be learned” (p 16). With authentic texts, students are able to connect information to their own lives, which immediately and ultimately brings life and importance to the passage. The same principle applies to adults. How often do we actually read things that we are not interested in or how often do we write something that we are not interested in? We generally read or write because we are looking for information or to get a message across, again we are completing tasks with a purpose. Students are the same; they have a greater desire to learn when there is meaning behind the lesson, when it is purposeful to them and not just a meaningless task.
The last strong point that I will touch upon by Ashburn/Floden is for collaborative work. They state that collaborative work is when, “Small groups of students work collaboratively on common tasks to achieve their learning goals” (p 22). This style of learning aids in bringing different thought processes together and allows the students to interact while learning instead of sitting, listening and copying. Group work is great as long as it is done correctly. Too many times teachers create groups with mixed levels only to find that the higher level students are not being pushed and the lower level kids are struggling. Or teachers created homogeneous groups only to find that the groups are so similar that there is no exchanging of ideas. Teachers must always look out what is best for the student and organize the activity and group around that thought. Too many times educators create groups merely because they were told to, but they fail to consider how the groups will affect the students.