Heidi Burnett (4) Copying the Board

Quote: "Some teachers write sentences and poems on the chalkboard for students to copy in the hope that this activity will develop writing fluency. Copying isn't very effective, though, because students are passively recording letters, not actively creating sentences, breaking the sentences into words, and spelling the words. In fact, sometimes students are copying sentences they can't even read, so the activity becomes little more than handwriting practice. It's much more worthwhile for students to write sentences to express their own ideas and to practice spelling the high-frequency words they're using" (Tompkins, pg. 215)

Comment: When I was younger and would play school, copying things off the chalkboard was a frequent occurrence. Even in the past few years when I look ahead to teaching in my future classroom, I think copying things off the board is always at least a little part of that. After reading this, however, I completely agree that copying off the board is not very effective. I've never thought about how it would be more handwriting practice than reading/writing practice, but it definitely is. Funny, how the image of my future classroom has changed just from reading this short paragraph.

Question: Did you ever imagine yourself teaching using a lesson that involves students copying off the board? If so, what are some more effective teaching tools you will use? If not, what do you think will be your main teaching tools?