ESSAY

How  can teachers improve their teaching practice in order to help students learn effectively? First of all, before thinking about how a lesson plan could be done, it is important to bear in mind what kind of prior knowledge students have, what they already know before you start introducing a new topic. One more important thing I have learned is how to teach classes so the brain can learn in a friendly way. The amygdala, which is responsible for processing emotions, memory, making decisions and so on; once stimulated can stimulate good feelings or bad feelings. However, how can we as teaches could stimulate our students’ amygdala in order to students learn? We should let them think more, be more critical, engage them in class. Engaging our students does not mean that they must have fun it means that they will be with you the whole class; producing and participating.

I have three Junior 1 groups and at this stage kids do not know much English; they are true beginners. My lesson plan is going to be about Unit 3- lesson 2- Book: Take Shape 1 and I can assume that my students’ prior knowledge is: greetings, colors, asking and answering names, age and, finally, toys which are the main topic in the unit.

Taking into consideration that in the previous class they had been taught toys, the first stage of my lesson plan will be correcting the homework they had to do. In my opinion, correcting the homework and reviewing what students have learned from a previous class is a way to fire until you wire because, according to neuroscience, every time someone learns new subject the cells from the brain connects; communicate to the other cells and with enough repetition this communication becomes automatic.

Also, to wire their cells in the brain, I will elicit from them toys that they can remember from the other class. As they speak, I will write the toys on the board. And this is an important step because students will produce the language and, as Vygotsky states, language is one of the cultural developments. After that, I will ask them to open their books to page 26 and we will explore the pictures together, and it is at this stage that the grammar point will be introduced in the dialogue for the first time. I believe that the learning cycle will start at this point because students will go through all the actions, which are: sensing, integrating, organizing ideas; assembling langage and acting. Moreover, by listening to the dialogue, reading, and observing the pictures they will be sensing the language; this means they will be receiving the first input from outside. Afterwards, they will listen to the conversation and repeat it, so they will have the opportunity to understand the language; create meaning, and later gather all the information and organize it in the brain. At last, they will act out the dialogue putting everything into practice. It is important to remember that scaffolding is also being used at this point because the task will be divided into simpler steps and their attention will be focused on specific points.

Later, I will write the grammar point, which is asking and answering questions, on the board: Is it a____? J Yes, it is and L No, it isn’t. While showing them pictures of toys I will ask “Is it a ball?”, for instance, and then the class should answer. Later, I will choose one confident student and have him or her ask another student the question above mentioned, always monitoring their dialogue, because, as Vygotsky believes, the teacher should provide modelling in order to help students learn.

In order to make sure my main goal is achieved, I will give students pieces of paper and ask them to choose one of the toys, draw it, and write only the question: Is it a ____? I will give them 7’ to 10’ to finish the activity. Afterwards, we will sit down on the floor and they will show their drawing to the whole and ask: Is it a____? and the class will answer J Yes, it is and L No, it isn’t. At this point, I will not introduce anything, just monitor them. I believe that at this time the magical middle has been achieved because students will feel securer to ask and answer as well. The definition of the magic middle comes from the theory of the ZPD (Zone of proximal development). This magical middle is the difference between what a learner can do without help and what he or she can do with help; in other words, we should teach students something that is not too difficult and not too easy. Teachers must find the balance between these two aspects. Moreover, this activity is based on concrete experience because they are putting their hands on it and, according to the last step from the learning process, they will be able to produce, make, act and so on.

Later, I will ask them to copy the homework and as wrap-up activity we will play a game – the Chinese whisper – so that they can practice pronunciation, review vocabulary and produce language.

I would like to describe Piaget’s theory in which he believes that a child learns though stages, which is called: theory of cognitive development. Kids from Junior 1 are seven to eleven years old and according to Piaget’s they are on stage of concrete operational. Abstract thinking has not developed yet, so kids learn by using concrete objects at this age students and they also have the ability to group words or things into categories, for instance:  the units from the book Take shape are divided by a set of vocabularies (food, toys, colors and so on).  To summarize, I realized that kids at this age should use more concrete supplies in class, such as realia, pictures and so on. That is why I asked my students to create their answers and choose one toy to draw it because I believe that they will develop their abilities in English much better.

Thinking outside the box.

This semester at my TDC course helped me think more about my classes, since the first day of this subject that I have been thinking about how my classes are and how could I change them in order to help my students learn in a positive way. Every class I go or every text I read gives me more ideas to use; there are three steps or words that triggered me the most, which are: the prior knowledge, the three functions and the concrete experience.

First, before planning the class, the teacher should bear in mind what kind of background, experience her or his students have and their age; these are called prior knowledge. We as teachers should not think about our own experience, background or the way we prefer to learn because each person has his or hers own experience and methods to trace their own path in learning. In Zull’s words: “when we find out what our students already know, we are actually finding out about their neuronal network. We are discovering the connections they have in their brains”.

Second, according to Zull, there are three functions of the cerebral cortex: sensing, integrating and motor. Sensing is related to all four senses (listening, hearing, smelling and tasting) that are input. In this level, students gather their information and integration means to organize all this sense in the brain, analyze and then put everything into practice, by creating, speaking, writing and so on.   

Third, students learn by concrete experiences, which mean that they learn, simply, by being involved into living the experience, for example if the teacher teaches a dialogue or grammar point it’s important that students role play it, pretend in a place and they have to use the grammar point taught.

I would like to describe one activity that I do in class in order to introduce vocabulary about food items to young learners. I start the class by eliciting from them what kind of food they like and write their answers on the board or I play the hangman game on board and then elicit from them the items as well. Later, I show them some pictures.  While showing the pictures, I (drill the words and work on spelling and pronunciation).do some activities: drilling, working on spelling and pronunciation. After students feel confident and safe about the vocabulary, I start to ask some questions such as: what do you like the most? What do you like the least? Is this food healthy or unhealthy? Then, I ask them to open their books and practice the vocabulary in the book.

However, this is the point that I changed in my class this week: instead of asking them to open their books, I did another activity which I showed students one short video related to food and asked them beforehand to grasp all the items they could see and later write in a piece of paper. After this activity, I told them to talk to their friends about what they have seen and check spelling. I also invited the ones who wanted to come to the board and write one food. Later, I gave them ten more minutes to come up with a dialogue to use in a restaurant, they did it, role played it and loved it.

To summarize, the activity that I just thought about contains the important steps for the brain to learn and what Zull commented in his book is that not only how will our students learn, but also how we as teachers can improve learning environment in our classes and how we can plan a better class in order to work all the skills and achieve the goal to all students. It is important to keep in mind that teachers have the “power” to make the students like the subject or not.