(I still came late... Came in during someone’s session… Man, gotta come earlier next week)
The title’s basically my poetic way to say that things are much more endurable this week. I still yawn here and there, but it’s only because I’m not getting enough sleep the other night. But then again, just because some people are performing well doesn’t mean that the whole class’ performance is getting better. But yeah, hopefully, with enough exposure to great teaching performance, many of us could learn to be better teachers ourselves.
Anyways, there are still some things that are bothering me and I really think we gotta talk about them before the next ‘performance’ starts.
First, I still think the audience are portraying senior high school kids who are waaaay too smart, and that’s a problem. High school students are NOT smart. Most of them DON’T know the generic structure of the narrative, or recount, and most of them don’t understand what ‘generic structure’ means anyway (heck, even I didn’t know what ‘generic structure’ until my CMD class with Mr. Mukarto). Therefore, starting the class with, “okay, so who can tell me what is the generic structure of narrative texts?” is really not a good move. What a good teacher should do is explain to the students what a narrative text is all about and why in the world they should be concerned with it. THEN, they can talk about the parts of narratives and how to analyze a narrative text.
HOWEVER, since we ‘students’ are too smart, too earnest in answering each and every question, and since we give such accurate answers, the teacher would no longer feel it important to explain anything in fun and creative ways anymore - which is dangerous when what you really want to achieve in a microteaching session is to develop ways to engage your students better.
We smart students have, in a nutshell, robbed the teachers their opportunity to grow.
Therefore it’s best, I think, for us audience to just play dumb and for the teachers to start with the assumption that their students don’t know much - I may try to discuss this with the rest of the class next week... That way, teachers would have the opportunity to not only learn new ways to explain and demonstrate ideas, but also to develop a good eye for gauging students’ learning progress.
Seriously, even though it’s stated in the 25 classroom management tips that we ought to develop good questioning skills for gauging students understanding, I haven’t seen any of the teachers - not even those who are doing well - practice any good evaluative questioning at the end of the lessons or during the teaching session. When they do ask questions however, they mostly ask the most OBVIOUS (and therefore UNNECESSARY) ones.
It’s important to mention also that the audience’s jobs aren’t only to portray themselves as senior high schoolers, but also to observe our friends’ performances. I don’t think we’ll be able to do the latter job well if we’re too engrossed in our ‘discussions’ or ‘narrative writing’ or whatever. Sure, it’s good to participate in the activities and make the class lively, but we need to keep in mind that we also have to analyze the teachers’ performance. “Why do they do this?”, “how do they do that?”, “how effective is this particular strategy?”, I think we need to be aware of whatever is going on in the classroom and constantly ask ourselves those questions.
Seriously, even if it’s not our turn to teach yet, we can learn a lot from a friend’s teaching session.
The next problem is the handouts. I think I’ve mentioned this on my previous post, but I honestly feel the need to give extra emphasis on this because, by the look of things this week, there might be more teachers who would rely too much on their handouts’ structure and content. I’ve seen this a couple of times in a real lecture - a teacher answering a student’s question by telling them, “just look at the handout”. I don’t know about you, but that’s just weak. Handouts are reliable guides, containing notes that students can refer to from time to time - but handouts shouldn’t restrain teachers. Teacher should be able to respond to students with information that are just as accurate as a handout, but in ways and techniques that are far more inspirational and impressive.
Ok then, onward to personal notes.
Student 1 - Stiff Gal. I came late on her turn. She was being gracious, as everybody are, but really, not to act the ingrate or anything, shouldn’t she actually ask me what’s going on, like “why are you late again for the millionth time?” I mean, isn’t that good classroom management?
Anyways, she repeated the ‘what is the generic structure of narrative’ routine and it’s really a pain to go through. I hope everybody else could see by now that it’s not working and try different ways to explain text genres.
She isn’t really responding well to what her students are giving her: I gave her a story and she could’ve used the narrative story as a basis for the rest of the classroom to dissect and analyze. “Hm, interesting story. Okay, so how did StonedTypist open his story? And then what happened? And how did the story end?” and she’d have got herself a more interesting way to explain the structure of narrative texts. She just let the story disappear, however, and I absolutely didn’t feel like I’d contributed anything to her teaching.
If I were a student, I’d have felt a little bit unappreciated.
There was a lot of focus on the narrative genre, which was her part, but then she gave us exercises on the Past-Tense near the end of the lesson. For me, this creates an incoherency, especially since she hadn’t explained a lot about the past-tense. 30 minutes is not a long time and if you really want to do it right, I think keeping the focus on just one material will be the most effective. If you want your students to be good in analyzing narrative texts, then just give them narrative texts to work with. If you want your students to be good in the past tense, then give them exercises on the past-tense.
And seriously, if she’d really wanted to teach about the past-tense (and she actually got herself a FANTASTIC exercise material for past-tense drilling - which didn’t get enough attention, IMHO) there are so many things that she should touch on. The existence of different verb types (V1, V2, V3) in English, for example, or the different time-framing in English, the list of regular and irregular verbs, etc - and why not? Seriously, rather than listening to people explaining text genres to death, it’d be good to have something different for a change.
Student 2 - AllSmiles. Did an AWESOME job, as far as I’m concerned. He had a great set opening, which, sadly, ended too quickly and unsuccessfully when he didn’t get the kind of response that he wanted. The set closure officially killed itself when he declared, “okay, today we’re going to discuss narratives”, and blew off all mystery. It’s really too bad since he started so well…
He went into the sin of structurally elaborating the generic structure, but did a better job than the others by actually getting the class to discuss what a good orientation, complication and resolution should be. He could use more elaboration on the Past-Tense, but well, I guess he deliberately didn’t want to go into the tenses… a wise choice since it kept us focused on the narratives.
I noticed he explained one difficult word, “lumberjack”, by approaching the student who’d asked the question with a dictionary and looked up the word on the students’ table. I think it’d be better if he’d thrown the question back to the rest of the classroom and see if any of the students could contribute an answer - I think this is included in the Classroom Management list somewhere. And while we’re at it, I think it’s far better if he’d had the students skim thru the passage and discuss difficult words first before having them read the passage intensively.
One problem though: with so many reading passages that he gave the students, did he manage to go through each one of them thoroughly? I don’t know since I had to answer the call of nature halfway through his session, but I doubt it. Seriously, keep the amount of materials low and classroom activities high.
It was a fun and interactive session, and he left a really strong impression of a really nice English teacher - the strongest impression of the day, I think. The rest of the class could really learn a thing or two from this guy.
Student 3 - Rad Grill. This guy really got me concerned. I’ve done peer teaching with him, I’ve done group teaching with him and his problem’s really still the same: he’s really sticking it with the handouts. And this is extra problematic because his handout’s kinda difficult and he’s not making it easier by explaining it or anything. If he were teaching a real class, he’d really get the students demotivated. Talking about demotivation, I think he could use some motivation himself since he’s not transmitting any ‘excitement’ to the classroom at all. Not much on set opener and closure, and I really can’t say anything here because he wasn’t giving me anything to talk about. The guy needs to cultivate lots of stuff: enthusiasm, eloquence, charisma, interaction, etc, if he wants his lessons to mean anything to his students.
Student 4 - Rendra. This guy actually has some serious problems. First of all, for someone who’s teaching listening, he’s not explaining enough. After giving us this classic fill-the-missing-words exercise, he simply told us to go to the second page and “do it”. Wait, do WHAT again? You really can’t just give us a set of questions and expect your students to immediately get what you want them to do. You’d really just confuse them.
And it’s really unclear what he’s trying to achieve. He gives us a narrative text to listen to, but he’s not explaining what’s going on with the conversation within the text. There are terms that he really needs to explain but didn’t, and really, after we managed to fill in the difficult words, then what? What do you want yours students to learn by having them fill in the missing words? There’s gotta be more than just that, right? Unfortunately, whatever that is, I guess we will never know.
Student 5 - Return of Evey. I was actually looking forward to this one. She’d done a great job two weeks ago and I was really excited to see what she’d prepared for us this time.
She did an AWESOME set opener! I mean, really, this is how set-openers should be: nice, clear, and engaging. After her set opener, each one on us was really on our toes to see how she’d explain giving orders and asking for directions.
…Actually, her set opener’s so strangely smooth that I think it’s staged. I mean, she wanted to talk about giving orders, but her question was “who do you admire the most?” to which her friend/possible-accomplice answered “my mom”, which worked. But what if people answered Einstein or Jesus or some random singer? Then her set opener would have gotten nowhere near giving orders or asking for directions. Anyways, it doesn’t matter whether it’s staged or not anymore now. But the rest of us should really keep in mind to stay spontaneous and still engaging.
Her lesson is the most clean-cut and focused of the five. She kept her lessons close to her handouts but her actually elaborated more on her own, which is great. She should have discussed some of the more important parts in greater detail however. On imperatives, for example, a crucial element in giving orders. She could have explained more on that rather than just telling us that it’s a V1. She could try using real-life errors: “Mohon MEMATIKAN lampu setelah selesai” => “Please TURNING OFF after you finish”
She actually did a great job interacting with her students which made the class even more interesting. Her only problem, I think, would be her time management. She was still looking for students to read out their set of instructions five minutes before her time was up.
Still, she gives us a truly great experience. So, salute.
Hmm, I guess that’s about it then. My reflections just get longer and longer..
Tah-tah…
07 - March - 2009
(041214007)
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
The Teaching...
I thought ‘The Teaching’ would give out the same creepy vibe as ‘The Shining’. I guess it didn’t, not even after I’ve added three periods after the word.
The point is: the teaching that happened today was really creeping me out.
Yeah, there were ghost stories being tossed around at one point of the teaching, but that’s not really what I meant. I was completely creeped out at how well I adapted with playing a high-schooler.
Anyways, here’s what happened. Five of us had to teach for the whole session, each given 30 minutes to perform whatever teaching skills they have to the rest of the class. We’ve all drawn lots the previous meeting so it’s not really something surprising - I got lot no 19, which meant that I was going to be teaching around the 20th of March (still about a month away, so no sweat).
The five had a week to prepare themselves, which was a lot of time, so we expected them to be ready and to be pretty confident with whatever they’ll be teaching. Most of them were ready, anyway, except a dude who’d lost his listening files to some virus.
The plan was SIMPLE: they’ll play the role of teachers, and we’ll play the role of pain-in-the-butt high-schoolers.
Turns out the teaching session was SIMPLY EXCRUCIATING/PAINFUL/A TORTURE to endure.
Everybody gave pretty much the same sort of performance, which isn’t a problem, really. Skills can be sharpened. But how the hell did all of them end up teaching THE SAME THING, The same stuff over and over again for two and a half hour??I mean, yeah, sure, reinforcement, right? Repetition will enhance memorization. But two and a half hour!
I mean, sure, they were bound with the same syllabus, that they had to teach RECOUNT using four different skill approaches (listening, speaking, reading, writing) but honestly, they could have really developed their students’ skill of recounting if they’d given them different angles, not just, “okay, so you’ve learnt recounting via listening passages. Okay, now it’s time to learn recounting from reading passages!
Wow, exciting.
How about using biographies of some famous people? How about going a little bit more mysterious and talk about people who could remember their past lives? How about recounts of brave firefighters? How about recounts of the World War II? How about recounts of famous places? How about having students practice recount by using fictional (though authentic) situations? How about explaining what the hell recount really means besides that it utilizes the past tense and that it has three parts in general???
And what’s really difficult to enjoy from all the sessions was the lack on the teachers’ part to detect the students’ boredom. What’s more, there’s no creative solution to uplift the atmosphere, they just droned on and on, until time was up, and then that’s it. Seriously, even with all my SPD training, I found it extremely difficult to suppress my yawns that day - and I think I yawned lots of times back then. Not that it would matter, I could have yawned a gazillion times and none of the teachers would have noticed.
And that’s what’s creeping me out, that I felt myself being drawn back to my school years back in Batam: Doodling, rocking my chair raw as the non-attentive teachers droned on and on about things that may or may not be important to our lives. And that’s really the crime, you know, that the teacher could have really been teaching an important subject for us that was killed in a frenzy of rigid classroom teaching.
I truly felt like a teenage high-schooler again: bOrED oUT Of mY SkuLL!!
…anyways, all five preformed okay. None of them explained what type of class they were going to teach and, since none of them had proper set inductions, I found it really difficult to foresee what we would be learning and what Ideas we should prepare beforehand. I think, obviously, we all learn how important it is to have a thorough set induction.
Didn’t think Student A should have told us his ‘I lost my listening file last night and I went out to have fun until I found a great listening material on the net this morning’ story. It’s really depressing to know that your teacher wasn’t prepared and was giving you some random material he plucked off the net just a couple of hours ago. It went okay, I think, standard listening session, really awesome material, I think. Was really impressed with media player’s ability manipulate the speed of a sound file.
Oh yeah, and he should have ironed his shirt.
Student B was also doing okay, except I don’t think she’s responding to her students very well. If she asked a question and a student answered wrongly, she wouldn’t discuss the mistake and the student in question would not understand what went wrong. She’d simply say “next!” which is kind of depressing if the student had actually tried his best to come up with his answer. I think she should be more appreciative of the creative process that the students go through to produce an answer.
She also did a mistake which I find very disturbing: she tested the students’ knowledge of the ‘recount’ genre before even teaching about it. I mean, sure, if you’re absolutely sure that your students are knowledgeable regarding one thing, you can go ahead and skip the whole teaching process. But what if your students DON’T understand ‘recount’, hadn’t even heard about it? Making ‘recall’ questions isn’t going to produce anything and would in fact pressurize the students.
Student C wasn’t doing any better than the previous two in that even though he seems more confident and in control, he is, in fact, not contributing much to the learning of the classroom. He gives out handouts and explains simply that the answers to any questions regarding the material are already included in the handouts. Seriously, I mean, well, if all students need is handbooks, then what’s the whole point of teaching them in the first place??
We should always keep in mind that even though handbooks are helpful, but they will never be as effective in helping students understand materials as a teacher’s eloquent explanations and demonstrations.
And I wish he’s just skip explaining about the elements of ‘recount’ - which had been discussed by Kristen - and simply do a review about it if he really felt that it was necessary.
Student D was doing okay, except there’s not enough individual/group/classroom text deconstruction. She explained that “well, this part is the orientation, this part is the..” without really explaining what an orientation should really contain, what its purpose is, and how to make a good orientation (or a thesis statement).
More time is spent on students’ text production than it is on her teaching session... it really should have been the other way around, really: More emphasis on teacher performance than on text production. Just because your students are great writers doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ve did a great job teaching them writing, you know.
The Last girl, needs a confidence boost and a new recording tool (to avoid creating more goddawful recording materials) and a grammar check for her listening material. She focused more on only one part of the class and barely made an eye contact to the rest of the class.
None of the guys paid attention to the rule ‘give explicit instructions’. None of the students knew what to do with Ramdhani’s material before he finally explained that we had to ‘turn to the second page and answer the questions’. He forgot to mention, however, that it’s a fill-the-blanks-with-the-words-provided exercise and some of us actually anticipated a second listening material from him. I think it’s best if we can stick to this principal of classroom management: be as explicit as possible.
…I guess that’s all I have to say. I've probably hurt someone’s feelings, but, well, I gotta do what I gotta do. All I can say is, I really meant all I said, and I really think a lot of improvements need to be taken if we’re ever going to be excellent teachers.
God bless you all, and see you on my next reflection..
29 - 2 - 09
The point is: the teaching that happened today was really creeping me out.
Yeah, there were ghost stories being tossed around at one point of the teaching, but that’s not really what I meant. I was completely creeped out at how well I adapted with playing a high-schooler.
Anyways, here’s what happened. Five of us had to teach for the whole session, each given 30 minutes to perform whatever teaching skills they have to the rest of the class. We’ve all drawn lots the previous meeting so it’s not really something surprising - I got lot no 19, which meant that I was going to be teaching around the 20th of March (still about a month away, so no sweat).
The five had a week to prepare themselves, which was a lot of time, so we expected them to be ready and to be pretty confident with whatever they’ll be teaching. Most of them were ready, anyway, except a dude who’d lost his listening files to some virus.
The plan was SIMPLE: they’ll play the role of teachers, and we’ll play the role of pain-in-the-butt high-schoolers.
Turns out the teaching session was SIMPLY EXCRUCIATING/PAINFUL/A TORTURE to endure.
Everybody gave pretty much the same sort of performance, which isn’t a problem, really. Skills can be sharpened. But how the hell did all of them end up teaching THE SAME THING, The same stuff over and over again for two and a half hour??I mean, yeah, sure, reinforcement, right? Repetition will enhance memorization. But two and a half hour!
I mean, sure, they were bound with the same syllabus, that they had to teach RECOUNT using four different skill approaches (listening, speaking, reading, writing) but honestly, they could have really developed their students’ skill of recounting if they’d given them different angles, not just, “okay, so you’ve learnt recounting via listening passages. Okay, now it’s time to learn recounting from reading passages!
Wow, exciting.
How about using biographies of some famous people? How about going a little bit more mysterious and talk about people who could remember their past lives? How about recounts of brave firefighters? How about recounts of the World War II? How about recounts of famous places? How about having students practice recount by using fictional (though authentic) situations? How about explaining what the hell recount really means besides that it utilizes the past tense and that it has three parts in general???
And what’s really difficult to enjoy from all the sessions was the lack on the teachers’ part to detect the students’ boredom. What’s more, there’s no creative solution to uplift the atmosphere, they just droned on and on, until time was up, and then that’s it. Seriously, even with all my SPD training, I found it extremely difficult to suppress my yawns that day - and I think I yawned lots of times back then. Not that it would matter, I could have yawned a gazillion times and none of the teachers would have noticed.
And that’s what’s creeping me out, that I felt myself being drawn back to my school years back in Batam: Doodling, rocking my chair raw as the non-attentive teachers droned on and on about things that may or may not be important to our lives. And that’s really the crime, you know, that the teacher could have really been teaching an important subject for us that was killed in a frenzy of rigid classroom teaching.
I truly felt like a teenage high-schooler again: bOrED oUT Of mY SkuLL!!
…anyways, all five preformed okay. None of them explained what type of class they were going to teach and, since none of them had proper set inductions, I found it really difficult to foresee what we would be learning and what Ideas we should prepare beforehand. I think, obviously, we all learn how important it is to have a thorough set induction.
Didn’t think Student A should have told us his ‘I lost my listening file last night and I went out to have fun until I found a great listening material on the net this morning’ story. It’s really depressing to know that your teacher wasn’t prepared and was giving you some random material he plucked off the net just a couple of hours ago. It went okay, I think, standard listening session, really awesome material, I think. Was really impressed with media player’s ability manipulate the speed of a sound file.
Oh yeah, and he should have ironed his shirt.
Student B was also doing okay, except I don’t think she’s responding to her students very well. If she asked a question and a student answered wrongly, she wouldn’t discuss the mistake and the student in question would not understand what went wrong. She’d simply say “next!” which is kind of depressing if the student had actually tried his best to come up with his answer. I think she should be more appreciative of the creative process that the students go through to produce an answer.
She also did a mistake which I find very disturbing: she tested the students’ knowledge of the ‘recount’ genre before even teaching about it. I mean, sure, if you’re absolutely sure that your students are knowledgeable regarding one thing, you can go ahead and skip the whole teaching process. But what if your students DON’T understand ‘recount’, hadn’t even heard about it? Making ‘recall’ questions isn’t going to produce anything and would in fact pressurize the students.
Student C wasn’t doing any better than the previous two in that even though he seems more confident and in control, he is, in fact, not contributing much to the learning of the classroom. He gives out handouts and explains simply that the answers to any questions regarding the material are already included in the handouts. Seriously, I mean, well, if all students need is handbooks, then what’s the whole point of teaching them in the first place??
We should always keep in mind that even though handbooks are helpful, but they will never be as effective in helping students understand materials as a teacher’s eloquent explanations and demonstrations.
And I wish he’s just skip explaining about the elements of ‘recount’ - which had been discussed by Kristen - and simply do a review about it if he really felt that it was necessary.
Student D was doing okay, except there’s not enough individual/group/classroom text deconstruction. She explained that “well, this part is the orientation, this part is the..” without really explaining what an orientation should really contain, what its purpose is, and how to make a good orientation (or a thesis statement).
More time is spent on students’ text production than it is on her teaching session... it really should have been the other way around, really: More emphasis on teacher performance than on text production. Just because your students are great writers doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ve did a great job teaching them writing, you know.
The Last girl, needs a confidence boost and a new recording tool (to avoid creating more goddawful recording materials) and a grammar check for her listening material. She focused more on only one part of the class and barely made an eye contact to the rest of the class.
None of the guys paid attention to the rule ‘give explicit instructions’. None of the students knew what to do with Ramdhani’s material before he finally explained that we had to ‘turn to the second page and answer the questions’. He forgot to mention, however, that it’s a fill-the-blanks-with-the-words-provided exercise and some of us actually anticipated a second listening material from him. I think it’s best if we can stick to this principal of classroom management: be as explicit as possible.
…I guess that’s all I have to say. I've probably hurt someone’s feelings, but, well, I gotta do what I gotta do. All I can say is, I really meant all I said, and I really think a lot of improvements need to be taken if we’re ever going to be excellent teachers.
God bless you all, and see you on my next reflection..
29 - 2 - 09
Classroom Management and General Tips
Taken From ‘Practical Techniques for Language Teaching’ by Thomson & Heinle
There are 25 tips that should be integrated into any teacher’s ‘teaching repertoire’, some are self-explanatory, and some may require further explanation:
1. Arrange the seating to help
2. Stand up when you’re directing activity
3. Look at the students
4. Use your hands to encourage and direct students
5. Use the back of your hand to point
6. Use pauses to punctuate what you say
7. Vary your voice
8. Keep your language to a minimum when students are doing something
9. Don’t commentate
10. Don’t be afraid of silence
11. Don’t be afraid of noise
12. Use pair work to increase students’ talking time – even if it seems chaos
13. Use group work to increase students’ talking time
14. Be explicit
15. Don’t ask “do you understand?”
16. Don’t go ’round the class’ if individual can prepare particular example
17. Admit your ignorance
18. Consult colleagues
19. Consult students
20. Demonstrate, rather than explain, new activities
21. Exploit real events
22. Divide the blackboard
23. Use the overhead projector to control what students see
24. Machinery will not solve all your problems
25. Expand, don’t clutter
Those that need further elaboration are those that I thought help pretty important insight into the classroom teaching management, and those are:
1. Arrange the seating to help
…So students can interact with each other more easily, preventing the teachers from constantly becoming the center of attention.
2. Vary your voice
…To make your language easier to understand.
3. Keep your language to a minimum when students are doing something
Using voice to direct students may distract students
4. Don’t be afraid of silence
Silence is particularly desirable:
a. When students are doing something individually. Speech will break students’ concentration
b. An individual is hesitating during an exercise, or looking for a word. Jumping in will make the students lazy. The silent struggle to understand or recall is a natural part of language learning
c. In discussions, the students sometimes need time to formulate their thoughts.
d. Sometimes there should be silence for the sake of silence: there is to be a change in activities, or students need to get out a new book. A moment or two of silence means the teacher can return with renewed concentration to the activity which follows.
5. Don’t be afraid of noise
Techniques must be used to increase Students’ Talking Time. Anyone who is serious effort about teaching oral English must be regularly using choral work, pair work, and group work. The reason there is noise is because there is more constructive activity going on.
Carefully arranged noise does not mean disorder or that time is being wasted
6. (…therefore) Use pair work to increase students’ talking time – even if it seems chaos
Your pair work will be most effective if you:
- Divide the groups yourself, and that the students know who they are working with and what role they are going to take.
- Make sure everyone is clear about what they are meant to be doing
- Go around, listen, check that they’re doing it
- Stop the activity when it is clear that everyone is finished.
- Follow up the pair work with a demonstration of a summary from one of the pairs.
- Make it a habit
7. Be explicit
“Work in pairs now with the person sitting next to you please” is better than “can you work in pairs now please?”
8. Don’t ask “do you understand?”
Keep a regular eye contact to gauge students’ understanding level. If it IS necessary to ask, this should be done by asking specific questions that are short and require linguistically simple answers.
9. Don’t go ’round the class’ if individual can prepare particular example
- If students are using a guidebook in which questions are listed, they can calculate when their turns are going to be and which questions they need to answer. In preparing their answers, they may ignore completely the answers of the previous questions. Therefore, go random around the class so students can engage in spontaneous Q&A.
- For some types of work, like language games, it is easier to follow a pattern. Just keep this in mind: if the emphasis is on speed and students will remain involved because of the pace, it is more often to do it the “obvious” mind.
10. Consult your colleagues.
Admit your ignorance, and consult your colleagues rather than sticking your head into a pile of books.
(Checking up with online references is another good option).
11. Consult students
To see how much they enjoyed the lesson and whether or not there are practical problems with your materials (the tape recorder, etc)
12. Exploit real events
Say “Bless You” when somebody sneezes, and “many happy returns” when its’ somebody’s birthday. The point it to use spontaneous events to give more information and insight regarding the language you’re teaching.
13. Divide the blackboard
Use the Left for new words, Center for the main material, and the Right blackboard for scribbles.
14. Use the overhead projector to control what students see
- It’s easier to write on a transparency and they can be prepared in advance
- Important transparencies can be re-used
- Can be revealed slowly
Warnings:
- text size: keep them readable
15. Machinery will not solve all your problems
They’re expensive and may be difficult to master AND teachers must still develop their teaching skills: machinery can’t smile to students.
16. Expand, don’t clutter
Remember, the focus of the teaching-learning activity is not to give the most materials to students, but to take a material and use different teaching techniques to develop the material in interesting, varied, and effective ways to help students understand the material more.
There are 25 tips that should be integrated into any teacher’s ‘teaching repertoire’, some are self-explanatory, and some may require further explanation:
1. Arrange the seating to help
2. Stand up when you’re directing activity
3. Look at the students
4. Use your hands to encourage and direct students
5. Use the back of your hand to point
6. Use pauses to punctuate what you say
7. Vary your voice
8. Keep your language to a minimum when students are doing something
9. Don’t commentate
10. Don’t be afraid of silence
11. Don’t be afraid of noise
12. Use pair work to increase students’ talking time – even if it seems chaos
13. Use group work to increase students’ talking time
14. Be explicit
15. Don’t ask “do you understand?”
16. Don’t go ’round the class’ if individual can prepare particular example
17. Admit your ignorance
18. Consult colleagues
19. Consult students
20. Demonstrate, rather than explain, new activities
21. Exploit real events
22. Divide the blackboard
23. Use the overhead projector to control what students see
24. Machinery will not solve all your problems
25. Expand, don’t clutter
Those that need further elaboration are those that I thought help pretty important insight into the classroom teaching management, and those are:
1. Arrange the seating to help
…So students can interact with each other more easily, preventing the teachers from constantly becoming the center of attention.
2. Vary your voice
…To make your language easier to understand.
3. Keep your language to a minimum when students are doing something
Using voice to direct students may distract students
4. Don’t be afraid of silence
Silence is particularly desirable:
a. When students are doing something individually. Speech will break students’ concentration
b. An individual is hesitating during an exercise, or looking for a word. Jumping in will make the students lazy. The silent struggle to understand or recall is a natural part of language learning
c. In discussions, the students sometimes need time to formulate their thoughts.
d. Sometimes there should be silence for the sake of silence: there is to be a change in activities, or students need to get out a new book. A moment or two of silence means the teacher can return with renewed concentration to the activity which follows.
5. Don’t be afraid of noise
Techniques must be used to increase Students’ Talking Time. Anyone who is serious effort about teaching oral English must be regularly using choral work, pair work, and group work. The reason there is noise is because there is more constructive activity going on.
Carefully arranged noise does not mean disorder or that time is being wasted
6. (…therefore) Use pair work to increase students’ talking time – even if it seems chaos
Your pair work will be most effective if you:
- Divide the groups yourself, and that the students know who they are working with and what role they are going to take.
- Make sure everyone is clear about what they are meant to be doing
- Go around, listen, check that they’re doing it
- Stop the activity when it is clear that everyone is finished.
- Follow up the pair work with a demonstration of a summary from one of the pairs.
- Make it a habit
7. Be explicit
“Work in pairs now with the person sitting next to you please” is better than “can you work in pairs now please?”
8. Don’t ask “do you understand?”
Keep a regular eye contact to gauge students’ understanding level. If it IS necessary to ask, this should be done by asking specific questions that are short and require linguistically simple answers.
9. Don’t go ’round the class’ if individual can prepare particular example
- If students are using a guidebook in which questions are listed, they can calculate when their turns are going to be and which questions they need to answer. In preparing their answers, they may ignore completely the answers of the previous questions. Therefore, go random around the class so students can engage in spontaneous Q&A.
- For some types of work, like language games, it is easier to follow a pattern. Just keep this in mind: if the emphasis is on speed and students will remain involved because of the pace, it is more often to do it the “obvious” mind.
10. Consult your colleagues.
Admit your ignorance, and consult your colleagues rather than sticking your head into a pile of books.
(Checking up with online references is another good option).
11. Consult students
To see how much they enjoyed the lesson and whether or not there are practical problems with your materials (the tape recorder, etc)
12. Exploit real events
Say “Bless You” when somebody sneezes, and “many happy returns” when its’ somebody’s birthday. The point it to use spontaneous events to give more information and insight regarding the language you’re teaching.
13. Divide the blackboard
Use the Left for new words, Center for the main material, and the Right blackboard for scribbles.
14. Use the overhead projector to control what students see
- It’s easier to write on a transparency and they can be prepared in advance
- Important transparencies can be re-used
- Can be revealed slowly
Warnings:
- text size: keep them readable
15. Machinery will not solve all your problems
They’re expensive and may be difficult to master AND teachers must still develop their teaching skills: machinery can’t smile to students.
16. Expand, don’t clutter
Remember, the focus of the teaching-learning activity is not to give the most materials to students, but to take a material and use different teaching techniques to develop the material in interesting, varied, and effective ways to help students understand the material more.
Maria and Evey (...not real names)
The class felt a little bit tense today - but well, wasn’t every microteaching class tense? But it really got especially tense today, since we all knew that one of us was going to be teaching the rest of the class, I guess..
…I was actually pretty excited at the thought, I mean, BRING IT ON!!!
I was really torn between wanting to stay low-profile and suppressing my desire to practice teaching…
Anyways, Mr. Prast began the class with this long list of classroom management tips which, ohmegosh, contained a lot of things I hadn’t thought of before?
I didn’t know, for example, that you shouldn’t ask the students whether or not they are understanding what you’re teaching them, that it’s being considered being “lazy”??? I mean, I thought it was considered “being thoughtful”? I mean, yeah, there are smarter ways to check up on students’ comprehension, like giving them tests or sort of, I just didn’t know that doing it straight-forward was being lazy.
But then again checking up on the students by testing them will improve my questioning skill, so yeah, I’d better use that more often…
There are about 25 points, which is quite a lot (though very interesting). Therefore, to save you readers from boredom, I’ll just post my summary of the classroom management tips up on the next post, so you can skip it altogether if you like.
Anyways, the time came when one of us had to practice teaching the class, and we were finally chosen randomly since nobody volunteered (duh… *rolls eyes*).
The first lucky person was Maria! I mean, yeah, for a random choice, it’s a really good choice. I doubt she’d agree that it’s a good thing, but, well, you know, I really thought she’s up to snuff. I’ve never actually seen Sarce teaching in class, but I’ve noticed that she was one of those people who’d catch on to things really quickly in the class, besides another girl whose name i'm going to withold…
Mr. Prast asked for two volunteers to accompany him into the… I really don’t know what they call it, but I’m just going to call it “the command center” (Since, you know, it sounds awesome)… and Zeek and me offered ourselves. I’ve seriously been curious about the room ever since the first microteaching class so there’s no way I’m not gonna volunteer. So a minute before Sarce had to begin teaching, the two of us entered the room and WOAH!
I knew there were cameras in the microteaching room, but I didn’t know they were working… I know, I’m stupid, whatever, move on... three cameras, all with different angles, all with working microphones which, my God, must be set on maximum coz I swear I could hear every whisper in the room through the headphones.
Anyways, Maria started, and she didn’t disappoint. Even thought she taught without any prior preparations, her only problem was that she was a little bit nervous when she began. She clapped her hands a lot and told a story which was dragging on a little bit. But the rest of the class went okay, and I think we all saw her potential. She could be fantastic with enough practice.
The second person that was randomly picked was Evey, which didn’t thrill her at all. She was much more anxious than Sarce, so I really couldn’t predict how things were going to turn out. But you know what, Evey was a bomb! She only had minor problems, but she really managed to get the whole class excited to learn things. It actually, and Mr. Prast seemed to agree to this, felt like a real class.
At the end of the day, I think we all went home feeling like we’ve been given a great performance by two really promising teachers.
I noticed something that was quite disturbing, however: Not a lot of English was being exchanged in the classroom neither Sarce’s or Evey’s sessions.
For me, it’s a really fatal problem. But then, after so many suggestions to use less English, I didn’t think I have a clue what the level of high-schoolers should be, so I just kept quiet.
But honestly, no matter how low the level of Yogyakarta high-schoolers is, I really think they should be made accustomed to practice English constantly. It’s because speaking English is not made a habit that their English level is so low, IMHO.
Of course, I really don’t know what effect it will have on students’ motivation, so… I think I’ll just attempt using English when I start teaching in schools.
…That about concludes this week’s reflection, I guess.
Take good care you all,
See you on the next reflection.
22 - 2 - 09
…I was actually pretty excited at the thought, I mean, BRING IT ON!!!
I was really torn between wanting to stay low-profile and suppressing my desire to practice teaching…
Anyways, Mr. Prast began the class with this long list of classroom management tips which, ohmegosh, contained a lot of things I hadn’t thought of before?
I didn’t know, for example, that you shouldn’t ask the students whether or not they are understanding what you’re teaching them, that it’s being considered being “lazy”??? I mean, I thought it was considered “being thoughtful”? I mean, yeah, there are smarter ways to check up on students’ comprehension, like giving them tests or sort of, I just didn’t know that doing it straight-forward was being lazy.
But then again checking up on the students by testing them will improve my questioning skill, so yeah, I’d better use that more often…
There are about 25 points, which is quite a lot (though very interesting). Therefore, to save you readers from boredom, I’ll just post my summary of the classroom management tips up on the next post, so you can skip it altogether if you like.
Anyways, the time came when one of us had to practice teaching the class, and we were finally chosen randomly since nobody volunteered (duh… *rolls eyes*).
The first lucky person was Maria! I mean, yeah, for a random choice, it’s a really good choice. I doubt she’d agree that it’s a good thing, but, well, you know, I really thought she’s up to snuff. I’ve never actually seen Sarce teaching in class, but I’ve noticed that she was one of those people who’d catch on to things really quickly in the class, besides another girl whose name i'm going to withold…
Mr. Prast asked for two volunteers to accompany him into the… I really don’t know what they call it, but I’m just going to call it “the command center” (Since, you know, it sounds awesome)… and Zeek and me offered ourselves. I’ve seriously been curious about the room ever since the first microteaching class so there’s no way I’m not gonna volunteer. So a minute before Sarce had to begin teaching, the two of us entered the room and WOAH!
I knew there were cameras in the microteaching room, but I didn’t know they were working… I know, I’m stupid, whatever, move on... three cameras, all with different angles, all with working microphones which, my God, must be set on maximum coz I swear I could hear every whisper in the room through the headphones.
Anyways, Maria started, and she didn’t disappoint. Even thought she taught without any prior preparations, her only problem was that she was a little bit nervous when she began. She clapped her hands a lot and told a story which was dragging on a little bit. But the rest of the class went okay, and I think we all saw her potential. She could be fantastic with enough practice.
The second person that was randomly picked was Evey, which didn’t thrill her at all. She was much more anxious than Sarce, so I really couldn’t predict how things were going to turn out. But you know what, Evey was a bomb! She only had minor problems, but she really managed to get the whole class excited to learn things. It actually, and Mr. Prast seemed to agree to this, felt like a real class.
At the end of the day, I think we all went home feeling like we’ve been given a great performance by two really promising teachers.
I noticed something that was quite disturbing, however: Not a lot of English was being exchanged in the classroom neither Sarce’s or Evey’s sessions.
For me, it’s a really fatal problem. But then, after so many suggestions to use less English, I didn’t think I have a clue what the level of high-schoolers should be, so I just kept quiet.
But honestly, no matter how low the level of Yogyakarta high-schoolers is, I really think they should be made accustomed to practice English constantly. It’s because speaking English is not made a habit that their English level is so low, IMHO.
Of course, I really don’t know what effect it will have on students’ motivation, so… I think I’ll just attempt using English when I start teaching in schools.
…That about concludes this week’s reflection, I guess.
Take good care you all,
See you on the next reflection.
22 - 2 - 09
A fun 25 minutes
I came to this meeting late. Again. I think I’ve been coming to the meetings late ever since the first meeting and I think that’s a problem. Mr. Prast’s been gracious enough to allow me into the class but really, I have to do something about this. It really doesn’t make sense, really, that I could wake up at 5.30 a.m. for my SPD class and I couldn’t get to my afternoon class on-time. This is just wrong, totally. I’ve really got to put a stop to this whole coming late business.
And coming late really influences my performance during the class, I think. It was only last week, after a good chat with Sheilla that I decided to stop holding myself back for the microteaching class. But honestly, coming late to class has been really, REALLY dampening that whole enthusiasm. I was really too busy feeling embarrassed for me to be able to fully commit my whole self into the sessions. Wonder if I’ll do better the next meeting..
Anyway, group teaching. WOW, I’ve TOTALLY not gotten used to the whole “play teacher” thing. I mean, here we are, 4 students who already (kind of) know each other, pretending to not know each other, greeting each other like strangers, “teaching” materials we know nobody’s dying to learn… whoa. It’s really, really strange.
We took turns performing for 25 minutes for each other, and I think I handled my turn pretty well. 25 minutes is equivalent to the duration of a sitcom and that’s actually not a short time. But nobody yawned or got distracted during my turn, and we actually got a lot of laughs out of it, so it’s pretty awesome. I’m still using too much English, so I think I’ve not conditioned my brain enough: I’m still looking out for authentic responses. (…and I actually did receive a lot of authentic excitement^^)
Honestly though, that’s actually a good problem, isn’t it, that I actually care whether or not my students are learning anything? But yeah, no senior high school student is ever going to understand that level of English, so... I’ll do better next time.
But really, I’d actually made a real effort to keep my English simple. Maybe it’s not simple enough? Maybe I’m just speaking too fast? You know what, I think it’ll be better if we know the actual level of a senior high student. Maybe I’ll suggest to my partners to give me stronger responses when I’m speaking at a level that high schoolers would find too difficult. I mean, really, how else would I know, right?
One member of my group felt that I wasn’t giving enough positive reinforcement, which surprised me. I’ve always thought of myself as a pretty supportive teacher, so, waitaminute, not enough POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT?? Huge shock there. I think I gotta monitor myself better next time. Maybe I really haven’t been giving my students enough positive approval…
The only other problem in my group’s that two of us had similar materials, so it sort of felt like a drag listening to 50 minutes of the same thing. They did all right, I think, with the exception of one guy who I think stuck to his materials too tight. But yeah, he’ll be better in time, so no worries.
What else…. Hm…
Nope, I guess that’s it for this week’s reflection. I’ll see what happens the coming week.
God bless y’all.
Yogyakarta, 16 – 2 – 2009
(041214007)
And coming late really influences my performance during the class, I think. It was only last week, after a good chat with Sheilla that I decided to stop holding myself back for the microteaching class. But honestly, coming late to class has been really, REALLY dampening that whole enthusiasm. I was really too busy feeling embarrassed for me to be able to fully commit my whole self into the sessions. Wonder if I’ll do better the next meeting..
Anyway, group teaching. WOW, I’ve TOTALLY not gotten used to the whole “play teacher” thing. I mean, here we are, 4 students who already (kind of) know each other, pretending to not know each other, greeting each other like strangers, “teaching” materials we know nobody’s dying to learn… whoa. It’s really, really strange.
We took turns performing for 25 minutes for each other, and I think I handled my turn pretty well. 25 minutes is equivalent to the duration of a sitcom and that’s actually not a short time. But nobody yawned or got distracted during my turn, and we actually got a lot of laughs out of it, so it’s pretty awesome. I’m still using too much English, so I think I’ve not conditioned my brain enough: I’m still looking out for authentic responses. (…and I actually did receive a lot of authentic excitement^^)
Honestly though, that’s actually a good problem, isn’t it, that I actually care whether or not my students are learning anything? But yeah, no senior high school student is ever going to understand that level of English, so... I’ll do better next time.
But really, I’d actually made a real effort to keep my English simple. Maybe it’s not simple enough? Maybe I’m just speaking too fast? You know what, I think it’ll be better if we know the actual level of a senior high student. Maybe I’ll suggest to my partners to give me stronger responses when I’m speaking at a level that high schoolers would find too difficult. I mean, really, how else would I know, right?
One member of my group felt that I wasn’t giving enough positive reinforcement, which surprised me. I’ve always thought of myself as a pretty supportive teacher, so, waitaminute, not enough POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT?? Huge shock there. I think I gotta monitor myself better next time. Maybe I really haven’t been giving my students enough positive approval…
The only other problem in my group’s that two of us had similar materials, so it sort of felt like a drag listening to 50 minutes of the same thing. They did all right, I think, with the exception of one guy who I think stuck to his materials too tight. But yeah, he’ll be better in time, so no worries.
What else…. Hm…
Nope, I guess that’s it for this week’s reflection. I’ll see what happens the coming week.
God bless y’all.
Yogyakarta, 16 – 2 – 2009
(041214007)
Trial Run: 2nd Meeting
I think the problems regarding my peer teaching back in the microteaching class were two things:
1. The noise in the room, and
2. The fact that I’m faking my teaching.
The first problem’s really obvious: the noise is really disturbing. I mean really, with the soundproofed walls, and with the fact that everyone in the room’s talking at the same time during the 15 minutes allocated time… hmm. It’s like having everybody talking in my ears at the same time and it’s disconcerting. Really. Have the soundproofing backfired? Perhaps. And I’ve noticed one thing while I’m there: you can’t even whisper without it being heard by everybody else in the room. This may be why everyone’s really trying to keep things quiet in class. You really can’t help but be heard, even when you’re not trying to be noisy or anything. And when everybody “teaches” at the same time like that..
WHOO. The noise, brother.
…which isn’t something that can’t be solved with the right amount of concentration, so bleh. Just keep your head straight and your mind organized and after some time, you’ll manage to get over the noise. So really, it really isn’t a problem.
My main problem really is the fact that I’m faking the 15 minutes session. I mean really, you’re teaching, but you’re not really trying to teach. The main purpose of the whole exercise is not that you help your friend understand or learn something - heck, he might know the things that you’re going to “teach” him more than you do - but that you’d know how to ACT the way a teacher would that would, hopefully, stimulate a learning curiosity. (Which is a problem, since I usually operate best by utilizing my students’ curiosity.) When the curiosity’s not there, I’d usually check the students out: have they already mastered what I’m giving them, or do they feel like what I’m teaching them isn’t something they find important, and depending on their response, I may decide to modify my approach or skip the particular material altogether.
But when you’re bound to a particular material, you really don’t have that luxury of material-skipping. And since the whole session was never meant for my assigned peer to master the material I present him (he was really just there to gauge my performance) I really sort of feel like I’m losing the whole “teaching” sense of the whole thing. It really felt more like acting, with my material as my script.
Nevertheless, I don’t think I messed up too much back there. I’ve always been quite confident with my presentation skills and “performing” for my partner was really no problem. My only problem was that my brain kept telling me that that was not a real teaching session and that it’s really fake.
…Which was why I ended up trying to notice cues from my partner to see if I could actually get him to genuinely respond to my material. I actually ended up putting more effort trying to study my partner than trying to present my material. I noticed that he got really interested with the diverse application of conditional sentences and it really got me all focused on explaining the whole thing - which cost me the valuable time I needed to make a proper set closure. I covered the basics, yes. I gave the guy formative questions, I guided him through a concluding session, but that’s about it. I could have done better, like give him affective support or further learning suggestions or something, but I really was still distracted by the whole “play teacher” thing.
The only feedback that I got from my partner was that I’m using too much English. Well, I really couldn’t help it, could I? I guess I was so keen on making the session realistic that I actually saw him as a real student. It’s really not supposed to happen, I know. His role was really to play a class XII student - who he says would understand nothing that I was telling him throughout the 15 minutes. Yeah. I really need to do some brain conditioning before I go to my next micro-teaching class: my microteaching classmates are senior high students.
But really, I wish I could get into a real teaching session soon. I really need the authentic human interaction. Hmm… really can’t wait for my PPL2..
Anyways, the focus of this meeting is set-opening and set-closing. Messing up my set closure probably meant I didn’t reach the full standard of this particular class, huh? Oh well, there’s always next week.
Yogyakarta, 9 – 2 – 2009
(041214007)
1. The noise in the room, and
2. The fact that I’m faking my teaching.
The first problem’s really obvious: the noise is really disturbing. I mean really, with the soundproofed walls, and with the fact that everyone in the room’s talking at the same time during the 15 minutes allocated time… hmm. It’s like having everybody talking in my ears at the same time and it’s disconcerting. Really. Have the soundproofing backfired? Perhaps. And I’ve noticed one thing while I’m there: you can’t even whisper without it being heard by everybody else in the room. This may be why everyone’s really trying to keep things quiet in class. You really can’t help but be heard, even when you’re not trying to be noisy or anything. And when everybody “teaches” at the same time like that..
WHOO. The noise, brother.
…which isn’t something that can’t be solved with the right amount of concentration, so bleh. Just keep your head straight and your mind organized and after some time, you’ll manage to get over the noise. So really, it really isn’t a problem.
My main problem really is the fact that I’m faking the 15 minutes session. I mean really, you’re teaching, but you’re not really trying to teach. The main purpose of the whole exercise is not that you help your friend understand or learn something - heck, he might know the things that you’re going to “teach” him more than you do - but that you’d know how to ACT the way a teacher would that would, hopefully, stimulate a learning curiosity. (Which is a problem, since I usually operate best by utilizing my students’ curiosity.) When the curiosity’s not there, I’d usually check the students out: have they already mastered what I’m giving them, or do they feel like what I’m teaching them isn’t something they find important, and depending on their response, I may decide to modify my approach or skip the particular material altogether.
But when you’re bound to a particular material, you really don’t have that luxury of material-skipping. And since the whole session was never meant for my assigned peer to master the material I present him (he was really just there to gauge my performance) I really sort of feel like I’m losing the whole “teaching” sense of the whole thing. It really felt more like acting, with my material as my script.
Nevertheless, I don’t think I messed up too much back there. I’ve always been quite confident with my presentation skills and “performing” for my partner was really no problem. My only problem was that my brain kept telling me that that was not a real teaching session and that it’s really fake.
…Which was why I ended up trying to notice cues from my partner to see if I could actually get him to genuinely respond to my material. I actually ended up putting more effort trying to study my partner than trying to present my material. I noticed that he got really interested with the diverse application of conditional sentences and it really got me all focused on explaining the whole thing - which cost me the valuable time I needed to make a proper set closure. I covered the basics, yes. I gave the guy formative questions, I guided him through a concluding session, but that’s about it. I could have done better, like give him affective support or further learning suggestions or something, but I really was still distracted by the whole “play teacher” thing.
The only feedback that I got from my partner was that I’m using too much English. Well, I really couldn’t help it, could I? I guess I was so keen on making the session realistic that I actually saw him as a real student. It’s really not supposed to happen, I know. His role was really to play a class XII student - who he says would understand nothing that I was telling him throughout the 15 minutes. Yeah. I really need to do some brain conditioning before I go to my next micro-teaching class: my microteaching classmates are senior high students.
But really, I wish I could get into a real teaching session soon. I really need the authentic human interaction. Hmm… really can’t wait for my PPL2..
Anyways, the focus of this meeting is set-opening and set-closing. Messing up my set closure probably meant I didn’t reach the full standard of this particular class, huh? Oh well, there’s always next week.
Yogyakarta, 9 – 2 – 2009
(041214007)
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)