Learning to Teach Better

Hello! where can I find the slides about the 1st session? thank you in advance!

Sorry for joining a week late but very happy to be here now. The 1st week session looked excellent and it really helped to blow out some cobwebs, remind me of various things about teaching, and add new ideas. 1. Here's something I'd like to contribute on storytelling: DEEP IMPACT (SPLIT) STORYTELLING About 10 years ago, I first got introduced to split storytelling, basically telling part of a story at the beginning of a class then pausing on a cliffhanger to be returned to at the end of the class. Besides all the benefits of regular storytelling, it also helps to arouse curiosity and put students in a positive state for learning. It can also allow for greater engagement as students ponder and discuss what might happen next then share with each other. One of the most successful stories I've used was one that was split into 1-2 minute episodes and spread over a couple of classes. Since I was teaching a women's university class on research, discussion and debate in which w...

STORYTELLING I have been a huge fan of storytelling for a long time (it sounds weird but I tells stories in English better than in any other language). I used to be reluctant to talk about my own experiences or tell anecdotes and jokes because of the pressure the idea of limited TTT put on me, but one of my colleagues said – and I completely agree with her – that when you are telling a story, you are providing students with valuable input besides other things. So, this week I told stories as usual, but I would like to share two cases with you. First was with a reluctant-to-ask-questions student. We read a story about a satnav failure and did some work with linkers. Then I decided to share my experience with satnav (a true and ridiculously funny story), but I tricked the student into asking questions by stopping and pretending to try to remember how things went. She was full of questions and enthusiasm, which later transformed into her telling me a great story about herself. (I sneaked ...

The first session was really interesting, suggested points made me think about how I approach my students and how they benefit from activities during the lesson.I have been teaching for many years and being reminded about the basic principles is always helpful. I work with adults and most of my courses are individual so I spent the week after the presentation thinking and evaluating how much my students learn and what added value they take from every lesson. Listening is usually quite challenging for many students, they struggle in many ways. What seems to be working with business adults is clear communication of goals of every activity. I explain the purpose, tell them about gist and detail listening tasks and they respond to justification well. Students feel they know what the expectations are form them as they are used to performance indicators at work. The theory behind communicated briefly makes their teacher a respected authority and students actually find how things are done fro...

...I feel a bit guilty that I did not post before but I needed time to reflect, see whether anything from Sunday "stuck" with me, and I wanted to see what sort of things everyone posted. I kept getting notifications from Google+ so I read most posts -sometimes I replied. It was very illuminating, fun. Part of my brain was observing how an online community forms ( I have done online courses before but the posting was obligatory ( University) or part if a MOOC (FutureLearn) and not as authentic and natural as this is. My takeaways from Sunday were: 1. Use time more deliberately and constructively (less waffle Claudie; you really need to plan better, give students more useful activities to discover/practice. I think I do too much "teaching in the moment" ...storytelling is good but I need to monitor for balance..students can tell stories too.) 2. Hmm, then, think about whether to preteach vocabulary, or not, before a listening. Some course book listening texts h...

First of all I'd like to thank Penny and everyone here for the great discussion! So far I haven't had the opportunity to try out the tips as the classes I taught the past week didn't cover listening skills. But many of the tips given were eye-opening for me! I haven't tried storytelling at all in my classes so far, because I mostly taught listening for academic purposes, using IELTS and TOEFL iBt practice tests and even TED Talks. But I'd love to try storytelling in my General English classes. I usually just use the listening materials already included in the coursebook, which are mainly about daily conversations. I hope to see positive results after trying this out later. Another major take-away for me is to not pre-teach the vocabulary used in the listening. I had thought that it would be an effective way to learn the language, when it actually isn't. It's more about understanding the context, taking away the gist, and so on. I think this is something th...

Principle 2 is the best principle of all 3. In Malaysia, we are working on CEFR thus teachers are asked to go on to many courses. There is a course on materials adaptation. We are suggested to give different tasks to students of different levels. This then raises the issue of time. Teachers do not have time. It is interesting when Penny suggests a list of techniques for questioning. It really helps. It makes differentiation be very easy to be done in lessons!

Takeaways for me: Storytelling, Use class time effectively, and never ask Ss to do what you can’t. I did a ton of storytelling this week and it has proven effective. I’ve even been able to get the students to tell their own stories and relate back to the text we are reading. I am usually so focused on getting through the lesson that I don’t allow for tangents like storytelling. But I realize I may be too much of the other extreme in my classes. I’m trying so hard to keep the students “learning” and my teacher talk time down that I am not giving the Ss mental breaks to digest their learning. In terms of realistic ‘asks’ I need to do a better job of this although sometimes my students have better talents than I do. Sometimes I like to throw in a unique task and see what they do with it. If they struggle, I always have a plan B.

I want to share with you my experience with applying principle 2. from the begining of the academic year, my major concern was to encourage shy and "weak" students to participate more and be more engaged. So, I used the recall and share teachnique, with cardinal and ordinal numbers. I asked the students to do as much as they can do. it was a very enjoyable activity. the most importantly, that "weak" students were active :)

Hi Everyone, it’s been 6 days of lively and insightful discussions! Here are things that struck me from the first live session last week: 1. Not to pre-teach new vocabulary before listening. I have been pre-teaching new vocabulary (with visuals and word definitions, etc) quite often before a listening or reading activity, especially when these words are vital to the comprehension of what is being discussed. Doing this for a listening activity sometimes works (with minimum success) and many times doesn’t (especially with young learners). On the other hand, for a reading activity, that works most of the time. I didn’t really investigate this myself until I learned from Penny that “a single exposure to a vocabulary item won’t normally lead to retention”. This kind of gave me the answer, I think, it means that when students come across an unfamiliar word in a listening activity, the meaning is often not ready yet at their disposal and they don’t have enough time to relate and recall this ...

Hi everyone, Hi Prof. Steven , Hi Dear Penny , our inspired lecturer , At last , I've managed to get most of the 1st week's video and send my feedback . It seems that" Teaching better " is not a mere course for you , but a lifelong mission. I greatly appreciate your tips , and agree to all. Just I want to add that I like using multi -techniques. Sometimes I introduce pre-voc while discussing before listening to facilitate the task . On certain occasions , I tend to blind listening which works better on arousing Ss' imagination and improving their pronunciation ( according to my listen-to-speak approatch ).It is also useful to train them in phone conversations ..and so on.. In Egypt , teachers depend mostly on Longman voc. activites in the set books , ministry official courses, butvsome of them design their own flashcards , games , and definition charts for Ss' further practise in pairs or little workshops. Very soon , each classroom will have a sm...

I tried out the show and recall activity with a list of superlative and comparative adjectives in a number of forms as a short review. It went maybe too well as most of the kids were able to remember almost all. Then I had them take three of the words from the list and make three true sentences about themselves or a friend. Taking Penny's advice to have them do as much as they can, any students who finished quickly I had them change the adjective to one not from the list. It took about 12 minutes but was well worth it in how almost all the kids were working throughout the whole time. I hope to get some pictures from the kids notebooks after the weekend when I have them for two hours on Monday.

Some of the things that struck me from the first session: Making the best use of class time. This really hit home for me from this week's session. Our students have classes once a week for 45 or 50 or 60 minutes. During that time there are a lot of things we have to do. One of my boss's strategies that he has tried to train us all in is how to make transitions between activities learning time as well. This involves giving students jobs to do that teachers normally do, having students repeat instructions before doing them, and having students listen to a series of instructions, remember them, and then complete them. Personalizing activities. This just makes so much sense! I think sometimes it's a natural thing to do. Very young learners are not shy (or polite) about showing you when they're not interested in something. They just kind of crawl away. Personalization helps connect them to the material and keep them engaged. But one thing that I just thought of that hadn...

Hello everyone, There were two things that stuck with me from watching Week 1's video: 1. How important it is not to waste time and to make teaching more intentional 2. Alternative ways to make exercises more meaningful for students We are with our students for a short period of time, and so it's important to be more critical with what we decide to do with our students in the classroom. So, from watching the video, I need to think about why I am doing certain activities and what the learning value or purpose is that I want my students to take away from the activity. This will help in saving time and making learning more meaningful for the students. I tried one of the ideas and suggestions by Penny about letting the students rewrite some of the exercise questions. We are currently studying passive voice in my intermediate grammar class. The students have been struggling with describing why we should use passive voice instead of active voice in some suggestions. So, as part of a ...

Here’s a recall and share activity I have used with my classes. It’s from one of Penny’s books (Vocabulary Activities, CUP) 1. Write up on the board in a ‘scatter’ about 10-12 words that you want to review. Check they are all understood.Don’t let Ss copy them down. 2. Tell the Ss they have half a minute to ‘photograph’ the words in their minds, that you are going to erase them and they will need to write down as many as they can remember. Tell them how many there are. 3. Delete or hide the words after half a minute and challenge Ss to write them down, each working individually. 4, Then tell them to join up in twos etc and see if they can manage to remember them all. They can help each other get the spelling right. 5. Finally, write up again or re-display the original words. 6. Congratulate all those who got them all. The ones who didn’t should now copy down the ones they missed. Check that everyone understands the meanings of all items. I also get them to write down the L1 translati...

The thing that really stuck in my head from last week's session was the idea of wasting time. I don't know if this has happened to any of you, but during my classes this week I've found myself reflecting on if this activity could have been done in a more efficient way, or perhaps scrapped altogether. Probably not coincidentally, I've also noticed that the majority of these times have been during tasks which are institutionally required, and are not the main part of the 'actual teaching'! That's not to say I couldn't achieve them in a better way, like when I make sure the students are doing their homework and give them the answers. The real benefit of doing these courses is how they prompt you to engage with your teaching in ways that you wouldn't normally, and push you out of your comfort zone.

Just to say how much I'm enjoying the course!

I think it is important to make good use of lesson time, though some of the tips Penny provided on Sunday were new to me so it’s interesting to have a chance to find out how they will work with my own groups. Considering the possibility that students may be enjoying a task but not actually learning anything is also an important reminder, and something to look at when I plan my lessons. Of course, ideally learners should be enjoying what they learn. I haven’t used hangman for years – I think I subconsciously realized that it was too often a waste of time – but the ‘recall and share’ activity seems useful – I tried it this week with my writing class and the learners were engaged and happy to work together to identify words they’d misspelt. I used the recall and share activity at the start of the class before handing the learners back their paragraphs which I’d marked over the weekend – the words I used in the activity were common errors from those assignments, so it was a chance for them...

I love the fact that so many of us are prepared to put into practice a lot of the things that Penny suggested on Sunday. Many of you tried out something the day after! What stayed with me is the power of storytelling. I am retired, but I do a lot of volunteer English teaching. This Saturday I am starting a Film Club at the only public teacher training university in Ecuador. We will be watching Pay It Forward and (as a pre-screening activity) the facilitators will ask the students to tell us if they have done any "good deeds" recently. We had a planning session today and decided that we will all tell them about one of our good deeds. My facilitators are dedicated, pay-back-to-the-community expats / Peace Corps volunteers, so it'll be easy for them to give an example and allow the students a little time to think. I already have my story: I worked in a refugee camp in Greece in May at a school for children from Afghanistan. Don't ask me why, but the camp and the school w...

I'd also like to share a few ideas on doing gap-fills. I came across these on the web, but many of my colleagues and I have already tried them. They work really well and the SS LOVE them ! 1.Round the room Gapfill Divide the text into paragraphs / sentences and post round the room. Learners write the gap numbers (e.g. 1 – 10) on a piece of paper and walk around the room, doing the task as an open cloze, writing down the words they think should go in the gap. Partial feedback – dictate the answers out of order and learners write them down next to their original answers. Learners go back to the round the room text and check their ideas. Full feedback. 2. Shouting Banana Dictation Divide the target text into two halves, ideally on a sentence by sentence basis to ensure that learners take turns during the rest of the activity. Divide the class into two groups. Group A gets one half and group B gets the other. Ask each group stand / sit on opposite sides of the room, so that each...