Day : 4 - 13 October 2014 (Monday)
A. English Language Class (Engineering)
The fourth day started with a session conducted by Mr. Peter on ‘Teaching English for Engineering’. The centre focus of this session was on "Biometrics", an Engineering topic. Before instructing us to trace our own hand, Mr. Peter provided 3 sets of hand illustrations with different sets of lexical items from easy to hard. This is to help us with differentiated classrooms. We were so happy to draw a picture of our hand on the worksheet and labelled parts of the hand with relevant lexical items in English. It was an interesting activity as all of us needed to measure our hand. We compared the data among us and decided whether or not hand measurement could provide information that would be useful/ reliable and unique to each person. We continued the day being in the team of computer engineers to discuss if hand biometrics would be unique enough to serve as an element in a new security system for a museum. Mixed feedback gathered from each group as some agreed and some disagreed with reasonable justification.
 |
| Grouping activities in progress. Mr.Peter is sharing some thoughts with the participants. |
Impact / Reflection:
There are certainly many words that English teachers can use to describe thoughts and feelings. We may regard ourselves as language experts but as an English language teacher, never have we thought nor planned to teach the technical English i.e. English for Engineering. This thing might happen to us – whether or not we like it. When we try thinking of an Engineering sentence, it would definitely make us frightened. How could you possibly help students express ideas that you yourself don't understand? The teacher is supposed to be the expert isn't it? Anyway, thanks to the guidelines given by the WKC tutors, (in teaching Technical English) as we managed to make clear of what we need to do. It is not the matter of giving lectures to the students, but it is actually how we handle and use the technical contents and make them our resources in teaching language. By the way, teachers are smart, aren't they?
Our second session on Day 4 was also conducted by the Elvis-like tutor, Mr. Peter. What we have learnt so far is that planning a lesson or series of lesson is a part of teaching. Without lesson plan, an educator would not be able to carry out the lesson effectively. There are 10 headings to be included in a comprehensive lesson plan:-
The activities done in class today were enjoyable. We were exposed to strategies to prepare an interactive lesson plan. For the first activity, the learners were to work in pairs. We were asked to list down 10 headings for sections of a lesson plan. This is a good activity to recap our prior knowledge on how to prepare a lesson plan. We were to produce simple learning outcomes in the next activity. The tutor chose us randomly to share ideas. The best idea came from Ann's report. She shared one interesting lesson on the topic Describing Objects. In her lesson plan, the students were asked to pick pictures of shapes from a box. They were to combine the shapes to create superheroes and describe it using adjectives. Everyone found it so interesting and would love to try this lesson when they get back to their respective institutions.
B. Planning A Lesson Or Series Of Lessons
Our second session on Day 4 was also conducted by the Elvis-like tutor, Mr. Peter. What we have learnt so far is that planning a lesson or series of lesson is a part of teaching. Without lesson plan, an educator would not be able to carry out the lesson effectively. There are 10 headings to be included in a comprehensive lesson plan:-
1. Age
2. Aims
- Learning Outcomes
- Personal Aims
3. Prior Knowledge (Schemata)
4. Potential Problems & Solutions
- Linguistic
- Practical
5. Differential
6. Assessment
7. Teaching Aids
8. Syllabus Link
9. Procedures
- Warm up
- Activities
10. Plenary / Summary
Mr. Peter told us to focus on the learning outcomes of a lesson plan. Why? This is due to the fact that Learning Outcome is one of the important sections to be focused in a lesson plan. There is actually an acronym that goes along with the effective learning outcome and that would be S.M.A.R.T. We as teachers need to think S.M.A.R.T when preparing the learning outcomes!
But what is S.M.A.R.T?
S - Specific
M - Measurable A - Attainable
R - Relevant
T - Time Bound
Impact / Reflection :
The activities done in class today were enjoyable. We were exposed to strategies to prepare an interactive lesson plan. For the first activity, the learners were to work in pairs. We were asked to list down 10 headings for sections of a lesson plan. This is a good activity to recap our prior knowledge on how to prepare a lesson plan. We were to produce simple learning outcomes in the next activity. The tutor chose us randomly to share ideas. The best idea came from Ann's report. She shared one interesting lesson on the topic Describing Objects. In her lesson plan, the students were asked to pick pictures of shapes from a box. They were to combine the shapes to create superheroes and describe it using adjectives. Everyone found it so interesting and would love to try this lesson when they get back to their respective institutions.
C. Classroom Language & Higher Order questioning
When a teacher teaches a second language (in this context, English) often the goal of a teacher is to use as much target language as possible in order to 'totally immerse' and expose learners to the language learned. When a teacher teaches or reviews a day in the classroom, one of the most frequent ways that language is used is in the daily routines; and these are referred as classroom language. Teachers can take the opportunity of these daily routines to maximize their target language use and promote its use by students.
As mentioned by our tutor of the session, Andrew (or Andy), this concept of classroom language refers to any type of language use in any situations in the classroom. Some examples given by the fellow tutees are:-
- GREETING
- GIVING FEEDBACK
- RESPONDING
- INSTRUCTING
- MOTIVATING
Andy also stressed that the classroom language must also serve the following purposes:
- Activating prior knowledge
- Presenting new ideas
- Modeling content and language
- Explaining new concept
- Encouraging learners to ask questions
- Encouraging learners to make associations
- Encouraging learners to collaborate
ALL students require questioning skills that range from low to higher order. Andy, our tutor also emphasized on the importance of questioning in learning process. He quoted a saying from Robert Fisher and asked us, the tutees to discuss it in small groups.
'Questioning is at the heart of teaching'
Questioning is a key aspect of the teaching and learning process. Questions should draw students into the learning process as well as checking on acquisition of knowledge. When students ask questions this leads to more talk, higher level thinking and can result in academic and social benefits. The more questions we have in a learning process, the more dialogues will be involved. A number of purposes of questioning were also explained by Andy as to mark their equivalent importance such as:-
- To help the teacher to measure how effectively the students have learned.
- To give students the opportunity to talk about what they understand.
- To promote students to ask questions which can lead to a more sophisticated discussion.
- To encourage students to have an independent learning (autonomy).
- To lead students to 'meta-cognition'; to think or question their own thinking process.
 |
| Fun activities in Mr. Peter's lesson |
 |
| Facilitation by Mr Andrew |
No comments:
Post a Comment