In my previous article, I looked at the problems learners with dyslexia might face in the English classroom. In this blog, I will share some teaching strategies which can help these learners in the key areas of sound/letter recognition, working memory and confidence. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Teaching techniques
Dyslexia – A Problem or a Gift?
What do Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and Muhammed Ali have in common? They all found school and teachers difficult. Thomas Edison’s teacher sent a note home when Thomas was 6, which said: “He is too stupid to learn”. These successful people had dyslexia. Their teachers didn’t know much about dyslexia. They labelled them lazy and stupid. Continue reading
Critical Thinking – Teaching Tips from Around the World
Following his webinar on Teaching Critical Thinking in EAP, Louis Rogers looks back at the participants’ tips and ideas on the subject.
In my recent webinars on critical thinking in EAP I asked participants to write in the chat box any definitions of critical thinking and any teaching tips they had. The aim was to then analyse the definitions and to try and pick out any commonalities. I also asked everyone to share teaching tips for encouraging students to think critically.
With around three hundred participants across the two sessions I did wonder what I had let myself in for, but it seemed like too good an opportunity to miss with such a diverse range of cultures involved. One of the great things about these sessions is that they bring together people from all over the world in one forum to discuss issues relevant to all of us in our teaching contexts. Whether it was six in the morning for some people or midnight for others it certainly did not stop the ideas flowing. In all, there were just under one hundred definitions and a whole host of ideas. So what ideas stood out?
Before moving on I should probably point out that this was not the most scientific collection method or analysis and I certainly won’t be awarded a PhD on the basis of it; however, hopefully it will prove of interest.
One of the first things I decided to do was to look at the frequency of individual words in the definitions. I was about to cut out function words and look at the content words when fortunately the alphabet intervened. The first word I noticed in the alphabetical list was the final word: ‘you’. When I highlighted this along with other pronouns and words related to the concept of ‘self’, one thing that stood out strongly was the interaction of the person with many other things. As we might expect there were a lot related to the interaction of the reader with the ideas in the text, but also the interaction of the individual with concepts such as society, culture and our own past influences. Other words that had a particularly high frequency were; think, inform, critic, analyse, evaluate, culture, difference.
One other thing that stood out quite strongly as a feature of the definitions was that I felt many could be categorised in two ways. One set could be perhaps defined as ‘interpretation of information’. These tended to focus on analysis, evaluation, interpretation and challenging ideas. The second set could perhaps be defined as ‘using information’. These tended to contain more concepts along the lines of synthesising, organising, using and applying.
In terms of teaching ideas many people seemed to feel that the ideas of self-reflection, peer evaluation and the use of video work well in encouraging critical reflection. For recording and sharing presentations for peer review one participant suggested the use of www.mybrainshark.com
Another suggestion was that The CRAAP test would help many students as a useful set of transferable questions. These focus students with questions related to issues of:
Currency: the timeliness of the information
Relevance: the importance of the information for your needs
Authority: the source of the information
Accuracy: the reliability, truthfulness, and correctness of the content
Purpose: the reason the information exists
Many examples of the test can be found online.
Other ideas included using definitions as a discussion tool as they are often open to debate. For low language levels, ideas that were suggested were the analysis of images and the different meanings of a word.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading the chat room transcript afterwards. As a presenter you try to follow and join in with the lively discussions but you’re often too preoccupied remembering the points you want to make so it’s really beneficial to be able to take time to analyse the contributions after the event.
Effective Classroom Management Ideas For a New School Year
Every start to the new school year creates stress to any teacher worth their salt. Each year entails preparation of teaching material, the new curriculum and consideration of the students’ needs. There is one thing that can make a teacher’s life a bit easier and that is Classroom Management and Organization (CMaO). For some, these words could prove to be quite intimidating, the sheer thought on trying to manage children fresh from summer vacation could be quite frightening, nonetheless it would help in the long run.
Classroom Management made simple
As challenging a task as it might be, CMaO can be interesting and fun for teachers and students. The key ingredients are effective teacher preparation and student involvement.
When a teacher sets up their classroom, it helps to view it as an environment where language learners are supported and can feel comfortable and content. As an educator looks around their classroom from this perspective, they should think about:
- The written language (posters, word walls, charts)
- A reading area-are there books that would help develop students’ reading skills?
- The spaces for learning – are desks and other areas set up in a way that children could collaborate?
Make some changes
Establishing the appropriate layout for the language classroom can be a demanding task; however, it can determine the style of the lesson and subconsciously prepares the students for a logical and organised setting. Moving desks around in a circle, U-shape or group formation can open up communication and create a welcoming environment, as opposed to desks in rows. Imagine how your students would feel after enjoying a fun summer to walk into a classroom where the desks are in rows facing the teacher, without any encouragement of interaction. Desks formed in a way that insinuates teacher-student and student-student interaction can motivate language learners and even improve the teacher’s rapport with the students since children can immediately be aware that the teacher supports their need to cooperate with their peers and feel safe in the environment created for them.
Set the tone
After the teacher has decided on the layout of the room, the location of materials and displays the children need to be involved in the Classroom Management and Organization process, meaning that the teacher must introduce students to the resources and explain their use, draw their attention to the displays on the wall and the seating. This will help the language learners understand and appreciate the purpose of the specific setting and the importance of the CMaO plans. The threat of misbehaviour can be dealt with by instituting rules from the very start. Rules establish the behavioural context of the classroom by specifying what is expected, what behaviours will be reinforced and the consequences of inappropriate behaviour.
Get your students involved
In my experience, what helped ensure positive behaviour and avoid misunderstandings was to draw up ‘Behaviour Contracts’. These contracts declared what the teacher expected of the students in the cooperative setting, the awards of positive behaviour and the consequences of negative behaviour. The award for positive behaviour would be left blank for the students to fill in which was fun and gave them a chance to be part of the Classroom Management and Organization planning. Once the contracts were completed, I would read what students would fill in out loud to the entire class which was anything from ‘the teacher would bring us cake’ to ‘the teacher would be very happy’. This helped lighten the mood, made children laugh and excitingly anticipate the lessons to come.
Young learners are highly aware of how their direct surroundings form their learning experience once its importance and benefits are brought to their attention. When a teacher adopts a consultative approach to the design of the classroom, it could lead to many desirable outcomes and increase. This could give the teacher the freedom to teach and the student’s the freedom to learn (Pollard, 2008). So don’t fret, manage and organise!
Pollard, A (2008) Reflective Teaching. Continuum International Publishing Group
Christina Giannikas is a published writer and has extensive experience in language teaching. Her career history spans from primary and adult language teaching and ESOL examinations in the UK and Greece. Additionally, she has worked as a seminar tutor and guest lecturer for London Metropolitan University and has conducted empirical research for the ELLiE project. For her PhD she conducted a two-year case study in primary state schools and private language schools in Greece, in order to collect data regarding early language learning within a Greek regional context.
Once upon a time, in the language classroom…
Christina Giannikas owns a chain of private language schools in Southern Greece. Here she talks about teaching through stories.
There are many techniques that language teachers can use to keep young language learners interested and motivated. Storytelling has been described as an ‘ideal method of influencing a child to associate listening with pleasure of increasing a child’s attention span and retention capacity’ (Cooper, 1989:3). In a fun way, young learners see themselves in a motivating and challenging environment which develops and enhances a positive attitude towards the foreign language.
Outcomes of my own research showed that students of a young age are especially interested and drawn to stories where they are given the opportunity to become personally involved and take responsibility for their own language learning. This imaginative experience helps them identify with the characters of the story and build up their own creative powers. One example of this is a lesson with a beginners’ class who were new to story-telling in a foreign language context. Before the story was told, I pre-taught some of the vocabulary which was done by writing the unknown lexical items on the board and eliciting their meaning by miming or placing the words in context. The children were involved and felt great delight when they correctly estimated the meaning of the word.
After the unknown vocabulary was clarified, the children were asked to sit in a circle whereas I was seated in the centre of the network. The students were comfortable and excited since this was new for them. Because of the fact that they were eager to hear the story, I had their undivided attention. The story was taken from Vanessa Reilly and Sheila M. Ward’s ‘Very Young Learners’, a resource book for teachers. The story was called ‘Why do Rabbits Have Long Ears?’ and the aim of the story was to enhance students’ listening, enrich vocabulary by introducing names of animals and the phrases I am a… You are a…before telling the story, I told students that rabbits did not always have long ears and that they were going to discover how rabbits changed. Students were involved in the story-telling process where they were encouraged to mime and pretend to be different animals and elicit names of animals, which made the plot interesting and challenging since their participation was carried out in English.
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