Effective Teaching: Strategies, Lesson Planning, and Skills
What Makes a Good Teacher?
What makes a good teacher? What would a classroom with a positive environment look like? A good teacher is effective, doesn’t stigmatize students, and is open to learning from their environment. They facilitate knowledge, create opportunities, spaces, and relationships. A good teacher is empathetic, understanding, organized, dynamic, accessible, creative, and patient.
This type of teacher creates a positive classroom atmosphere, enabling students to work well. Dynamic and varied classes, incorporating games and activities, engage students and foster interest in learning.
Routines, attention grabbers, and wall displays are valuable in the English classroom, helping students remember vocabulary and grammar in a fun way.
Lesson Objectives and Learning Outcomes
What are Lesson Objectives/Aims?
What are lesson objectives/aims? Aims are statements, from a teacher’s perspective, that indicate specific areas to be covered in a block of learning.
What are Lesson Learning Outcomes?
What are lesson learning outcomes? Learning outcomes are specific and measurable statements, from a learner’s perspective, describing what the learner will know or be able to demonstrate after completing a learning process. Good learning outcomes are specific, measurable, and observable.
Lesson Planning Essentials
What is a Lesson Plan?
What is a lesson plan? A lesson plan is a didactic unit used to program teaching within a given timeframe. It’s a detailed description by the teacher to guide instruction. Details vary depending on teacher preference, subject matter, and student needs. Each lesson is broken down into stages, depending on the lesson type (e.g., vocabulary, grammar, reading, listening, writing, speaking).
Factors to Consider When Planning
What other factors do we need to consider when planning? Deciding factors include students’ likes, dislikes, interests, previous knowledge; topics, products, language, skills, context, student objectives, assessment/evaluation, and curriculum.
Teaching Methodologies and Techniques
What is Scaffolding?
What is scaffolding? Scaffolding is the distance between a student’s independent problem-solving ability and their potential development through guided problem-solving, either with an adult or a more capable peer. Support types include language, techniques/resources, and peer assistance. Examples: using gestures, actions, or L1 when appropriate.
What is Communicative Competence?
What is communicative competence? The ability to understand and use language effectively to communicate in authentic social and school environments.
Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)
Which statements refer to CLT? People learn a language best when using it to do things; it’s okay to make mistakes when learning; both accuracy and fluency are goals in CLT.
CCC Rule for Vocabulary Teaching
CCC RULE: When teaching vocabulary, you should…
- Check meaning: use different ways to elicit vocabulary (images, descriptions, examples, realia, mime…)
- Check understanding: use concept checking questions NOT “do you understand?”, and controlled practice activities.
- Consolidate learning: give learners plenty of opportunities to use target vocabulary in a variety of contexts
Language Skills Development
Receptive Skills
Receptive skills: Receptive skills are listening and reading. Learners receive and understand language without needing to produce it (comprehension). These contrast with the productive skills of speaking and writing.
Developing Reading Skills
Which type of questions better develop reading skills? Why? Questions that encourage the listener/reader to construct their own meaning from the text. This allows students to practice English through vocabulary, grammar, etc., and demonstrate their understanding by writing an argued response.
The Importance of Pronunciation
Why is it important to teach pronunciation? What aspects of pronunciation should we focus on? Good pronunciation is important for communication. Intelligibility is more important than accuracy. Consider individual sounds, intonation, and connected speech when teaching pronunciation.
Anticipating and Solving Classroom Challenges
Anticipated problems: Consider potential mishaps (little accidents, obstacles) and/or challenges in the real class. Possible solutions: Consider how to avoid or lessen these challenges/issues.
Information Gap Tasks
An information gap task is a language teaching technique where students lack information needed to complete a task or solve a problem, requiring them to communicate with classmates to fill the gaps.