Learning Teaching

Starting a lesson
Do you get your class's attention before getting started? How?
In general I strongly believe that getting our class' attention is crucial, otherwise how can we guarantee their attention along the lesson? If we don't try to catch our students' attention since the very first moment in which we enter the classroom, how will they find it interesting?Therefore, if they don't feel involved with lesson, they won't find it interesting, and so if they don't find it interesting, most probably they won't pay attention to it what do you think?

Rapport with your audience
Who do you look at while teaching? What do you look like? (tense? smiling?)
I think that eye contact is what enables students to feel part of the class. Sometimes we, teachers, forget about it, and keep on looking only at those students who usually participate in class and forget about the rest!!(terrible mistake) When we don't make eye contact with our students is like ignoring them, so imagine how our poor students may feel when we don't look at them!
I usually show an I'm interested in listening to you - face (or at least I try to do so!), sometimes I also look smiling, but I prefer to show that I'm eager to pay attention to what they want to say, since I believe that it is nice to feel that someone wants to listen to you.

Discussion topics and projects (Hedge)

4-How important are the explicit teaching of grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary in your own classes?

They are very important! I can not rely all the time on textbooks, they are just a kind of guide, it isn’t that students follow the book and learn without any kind of intervention of the teacher, on the contrary, most of the time they feel rather lost with certain books, that’s why depending on the book, teacher’s participation is crucial. I remember having worked with a book which had a lot of very interesting topics and activities to work with, but as regards the cycle of learning it didn’t respect any step, it would jump from a very controlled activity to a very free one! Of course this perfectly shows that it is difficult to rely on textbooks and that teacher’s explicit teaching should always be there so as to clarify students’ understanding of the language
5-A group of teachers on an in-service training course listed the following as the most important qualities a teacher needs to have:
-sense of humour
-self- confidence
-sensitivity to learners as people
-ability to build rapport
-ability to be methodical
Do you agree that all these are important? Would you add any others?
Of course I do!! The most lovely one is the one that makes reference to sensitivity to learners as people, we should never forget that our students before being students are human beings, people, who have feelings and emotions. I think I would like to add one, I don’t know if it is a capacity or not, but anyway, I think we “teachers” should have the capacity to trust our students, to be always there, next to them walking along this path of learning, because if we do not trust them, how can we make them believe in themselves!

Observing

Excuse me, may I come in?Brainstorm the most important things you think you should mention to a teacher whose lesson you are going to observe.

• who I am (name/school/position) to identify myself to the teacher
• When I want to visit to clarify date, timetable conflicts
• To ask her/him where she/he would like me to be /sit down while she/he teaches in order not to disturb the class or her/him
• The purpose of my observation, if my plan is to observe the classroom’s external factors, then I should let the teacher now this, so that she/he does not feel completely pressured while giving her/his class.

Time out, take five

• How confident do you feel about observing?As regards observing, I have to confess that I’ve always used to believe that as a teacher trainee it was just a task to be done, I mean a simple assignment for Methods. Now let me say that If it hadn’t been for those “assignments” (as I wrongly used to called them) I would have never been able to notice the many different ways that “we” teachers have to handle a certain situations, to motivate our students, to do funny activities, etc
• How have your ideas about observation changed since you first read the tittle of this unit?Hmm mirror, mirror, on the wall, to be honest I think that tittle perfectly describes the role that observers and the observed should have, this idea of being a kind of mirror that reflects, or help you to see the action that takes place in the classroom more clearly. Because of this, I believe that from now onwards I will try to pay more attention to every single moment of the class; from a simple warm-up activity to a more complex one, so that I can see not only the teacher, but also the students on action!
• How confident do you feel about making observations?Well, actually after having observed a couple of times, I think I feel confident enough to keep on doing it and learning from it!
• What do you think you, personally, can learn from observing? A lot of things!! As I’ve mentioned before, through observations it is possible to learn how to make an activity more motivating, the different kind of games you can play so as to practise certain topics, how to handle certain difficult situations in the classroom, or at least to see how other teachers behave in certain situations, and then think how you would have behaved if that problem would have taken place in your class, etc

Welcome!!

Hello people!
First of all, welcome to my blog! I really

hope that all my reflections, as regards

observations, and some other topics be

read by each of you. Also, that we can

exchange ideas and discuss about

what we most like doing "Teaching"