Teaching practice.

At the end of this sesión I will be able to…

Give clear directions Model Monitor effectively Be sensitive to students needs Use the board effectively Use visual aids Cue effectively Elicit effectively Check comprehension Error correct effectively

•What is the main responsibility of an ESL Teacher?

• How would you describe yourself as a Teacher?

•What would you say are your strenghts and weaknesses as an ESL Teacher?

Giving clear directions/modeling if necessary.

When beginning a new activity, students need to have a clear understanding of what to do and what is expected of them. Don’t assume that because you’ve read the directions students automatically understand what to do. Reinforce written directions by explaining exactly what students have to do and why. Communicate your expectations clearly before they begin working. Ask if students have any questions before moving on. Once students have started working on the task, it will be very difficult for you to get their attention to explain further.

For beginners, keep directions simple and use non-verbal communication (body language). In higher levels, you can adjust the language of instructions accordingly. Finally, a key to giving good directions and explanations rests on the teacher really understanding and assimilating the purpose and procedure of each activity chosen.

Modeling

Modeling means personally demonstrating the behavior you want students to perform. For example, if you want students to practice an aspect of pronunciation, such as intonation in questions, you simply demonstrate the correct intonation so that they can hear how it should sound. If you want students to exhibit a certain kind of behavior, such as working back-to-back with a partner, you can bring a volunteer to the front of the class and demonstrate how you want the activity to be conducted by sitting back-to-back with the volunteer. Modeling is a very economical way to facilitate activities when verbal explanation breaks down.

MonitoringMonitoring refers to the act of circulating during individual, pair and group work activities to check that students are on task and to facilitate their learning.

This is your chance to: give individualized attention. assess levels of accuracy and fluency (informally). answer questions . give praise, encouragement and support. keep the students in the target language tactfully regulate participation in a discussion where you find some students are dominant

and others silent. generally, be present and involved in the learning process so as to decide how to proceed

with the lesson.

Sensitive to students’ needs.

It is the difference between perceiving that someone needs help and stopping to help them, or “carrying on regardless.” There is nothing more important in any class than student learning. If learning is impeded for any reason, it is the teacher’s responsibility first to notice that there is a problem, then to respond accordingly, even if it means deviating from the planned trajectory of the class. There is no point in following a lesson plan that one or more students are unable to complete due to confusion, boredom, or lack of understanding. The timing and pace of any class should be determined not by a lesson plan but the needs of each group of learners.

Students rarely communicate how they are feeling verbally. They might say they understood something even if they did not, out of politeness or unwillingness to lose face. In these cases, teachers have to become aware of how students communicate their feelings non-verbally. For example, students might shrug their shoulders, roll their eyes, or start whispering to their partners.

Board useThe board might be one of the teacher’s best allies in the classroom if used appropriately, or become students’ worst nightmare if not. Use the board to illustrate new vocabulary, spelling, show structures, drawing or displaying pictures, etc. There should be two main areas on the board :

• Permanent information. It helps students build up their notes (new structures, vocabulary, patterns, etc.).

• Erasable information. Does not contribute to students’ notes, such as scores from a competition or examples that help set the scene.

The following chart of “Dos and Don’ts” will help you develop good board usage habits:

Teacher uses visual aidsVisual aids are pictures that help learners understand or help the teacher convey meaning or set the scene in an introductory activity. Visuals should be small enough for one person to hold and large enough to be seen easily by all students in the class.

Mountain Freckles

Cueing effectivelyCueing (also called prompting) is when we help learners think of ideas, or remember a word or phrase, by giving a visual or verbal prompt (cue). For example, with a storytelling activity we can use a picture to help students begin, or if a learner can’t remember a word we can give them the first sound, such as “com” for “competition.” Cueing does not mean leaving every sentence unfinished, hoping that students will finish it. Teachers who cue effectively plan to use appropriate visual and verbal cues at appropriate times in the lesson to encourage the formation of ideas and stimulate the independent creation of language.

Eliciting effectivelyEliciting is similar to “fishing” for information about topics or language from our learners rather than simply supplying it to them. Examples of eliciting are asking students to tell us what they see in a picture, or asking them to give us general information, such as what a certain animal eats. Like prompting, eliciting stimulates the formation of ideas and language. By contributing to the content of the lesson in this way, students take an active rather than passive role in the learning process.

Checking comprehensionThere are many ways to check comprehension. Sometimes a simple “Does everyone understand?” after giving directions to an activity is sufficient to raise questions. To check comprehension of new material, we can use concept questions such as: “Can anyone give me a sentence using this word?” Asking students to do something that demonstrates their understanding, such as paraphrasing in their own words, or providing further illustrations of their own, will also help you assess their level of comprehension. Students often won’t communicate confusion verbally. You must learn how to “read” students’ non-verbal communication (facial expressions and body language)..

Error correcting effectivelyIn all error correction situations, you must be extremely careful not to embarrass, humiliate, or otherwise put students “on the spot.” But at the same time, realize that students want and expect this important feedback on their performance and progress.

Two features of appropriate error correction are 1) knowing when an error has occurred and 2) deciding if and how to correct it.

As a general rule, when students are engaged in an activity to enhance fluency, it is better not to interrupt communication on the spot for error correction. However, when the purpose of the activity is accuracy, you should correct to avoid the repetition or reinforcement of the error.

Here are some error correction techniques:

Teacher correction Oral correctionSelf-correction Written correctionPeer-correction

Providing appropriate and effective feedbackFeedback is the information you give students in response to their performance on a particular task. It can be objective (from an assessment) or subjective (your personal opinion). Feedback that provides the right solution is typically required after reviews.

When giving objective feedback, you need to make sure that students have answered correctly or, if they haven’t, that they understand why not. Do not just simply read the right answers. Have students peer-review, elicit answers, and spend time explaining why wrong answers are wrong and right answers are right. The “sandwich” method is helpful. This simply means that you “sandwich” your negative feedback between two examples of positive feedback.

Thank you!