August 02, 2009

Teachers need to be ready to deal with the unexpected!!!!

"My question is whether this teacher had planned her classes in advance or she is talented on dealing with the unexpected..."

You are welcome to share with me the experience of visiting a planned class...

Observation 4 - 2nd year - Colegio C - 2009

3 comments:

  1. Hi again Yoha!

    At one moment you state the T did not ask sts to demonstrate they were following her instructions, but just relied on "echo questions". Since this can be a misleading techniques (if asked "do you understand?", sts are certain to say "yes" 99% of the times), I'd like to ask you: was there any evidence sts were(n't) following? What did you infer from their face expressions /behaviour?
    You also mentioned BB contributed to class organization. How was that?

    Though I agree with you that a lesson plan should not be stuck to under all circumstances, we also need to consider not so many unexpected things crop up every day, and the more we plan, the more effective our teaching is likely to be... Paraphrasing one of my trainers, "plans are to be designed so that we know when to throw them away". :-P!
    Big hug,
    Gladys

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  2. Hi Gla!!!
    Great point in throwing plans away ;)
    Now, regarding your questions...
    It seemed that the ones following the class have no problems understanding the instruction, however, there were some students who were not even paying attention to the teacher. It was a noisy class probably due to the special conditions.
    Sorry if I misunderstood your question, but I guess that BB means Blackboard, right? If that's so, just let me share what I've observed. In such a messy class, having written down on the boar homework and deadline gave the students the feeling they could organize their schedules; or at least that was my feeling...
    Hope this clarifies my impressions on that lesson.

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  3. Thanks for commenting back, Yoha!

    A secret between you and me (and the whole blogosphere!): this class is quite noisy regardless of what the circumstances are. In my experience, so are most large classes, no matter the learners' age! The challenge lies in finding out whether the students are listening, despite their behaviour (many of us can talk AND listen to others at the same time, you know). The only way to actually find out would be to see if they finally behave in the expected way, I believe, so keep an eye on your learners and get to know them as much as you can!

    See you around,
    Gladys

    PS: BB does mean "blackboard"... an acronym from the days when boards were actually black!

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