SAFE TRICKS FROM AN OLD WITCH!

Many times teaching requires that we do magic, but studying, experiencing and learning from colleagues gives us the necessary ingredients.

Trick 1. Do not skip the brewing stage.

At the planning stage, the right focus.

Focus on the real students you have in your class.

Focus on the desired outcome at the end of the course.

Focus on your students most immediate needs.

Remember the four pillars: dynamic classes, friendly atmosphere, good quality and speaking skills.

Teaching basic levels

Introduction of classroom rules.

Introduction of classroom language

Many short tasks

Lots of drilling.

Lots of time dedicated to functional language use and basic speaking skills.

A huge repertoir of techniques is used every class in order to add variety.

Lots of grouping configurations: pairs, groups, lock step, mixers

Different seating arrangements: circles, groups, rows, pairs, etc.

Trining students in the kind of evaluation we do, aiming at the ability to preoduce language to achieve things in the world..

Teacher's role and attitude at basic levels

Establishing clear rules for classroom routines and discipline.

Lots of affective support helping sts develop affective strategies such as lowering anxiety or taking the emotional temperature.

Extremely dynamic management of the class: keeping pace, timing, making on the spot decisions.

Controlling teacher talk.

Controlling the tendency to be overprotective and the danger of spoiling sts.

Control mothering attitudes that are in the end castrating.

Teaching interemediate levels

Start systematically working on metacognition. Make students aware of their learning process. Have many feedback sessions, questionnaires, tally sheets, etc.

When you teach a topic they've been exposed to reach a step further.

Make new learning noticeable in regular recap sessions.

Intensify work on reading and writing skills, use a wider viariety of genre.

Teach techniques to systematically develop lexicon (lots of lexical approach!!)

Expand repertoire of idioms, formulaic speech and registers.

Teacher's role and attitude at intermediate levels.

Help students find their intrinsic motivation since they might feel they are really tired by now.

Demand more production and make students aware of their level.

Facilitate their learning but step back so they develop autonomy.

Remind students of their overall objective in learning English.

Orient their learning and teach them learning strategies.

Teaching Advanced levels

Activities will take longer, but the pace of the class should never be slugish!Aim at academic language. This means sophisticated vocabulary that they can use to explain abstract thoughts.

Demand production at a high level in speaking and in writing. Imagine you are training a student who will enter college in the USA

Perfect moment for all kinds of internet resources: dictionaries, concordancers.

Expand your teaching tools with technology: blogs, wikis, webquests, etc. Provide the variety that textbooks lack.

Lots of learning tasks: for ex. grammar should be directly addressed in all its complexity, exemptions, and richness.

Teacher's role and attitude

The teacher should make it clear to students that they have to be able to selfteach.

Help students learn more in their particular area of interest.

Be as demanding as can be with each student. Help them reach their most and best.

You have important international exams coming, but remember you are teaching people who tomorrow might be professionals lecturing in English in front of an audience. Are you preparing them for that too?

A moment for trying new tricks!

Trick 2. If you want different results, do something different.

What has not been working lately?

Ex. Discipline

To discipline means to instruct a person to follow a particular code of conduct "order." Consequently, "in the field of child development, discipline refers to methods of modeling character and of teaching self-control and acceptable behavior."

Create a code, or agree on a code.

Make it known to students. Make it visible.

Respect it yourself and firmly adhere to it.

Instruct your students on respecting this code.

Train them to do so.

Reward positive behavior

Discourage bad behavior firmly.

Grant a degree of authority to your sts.

Plan you class for short attention spans.

What not to do.

Do not promise something you will not be able to comply to.

Do not show your weakness by yelling, giving up, leaving the classroom, enfuriating, crying, etc.

Do not threaten students with their parents. Many times parents are more lenient than you.

Deal with group problems in the group and individual problems individually.

Isolate the person who repeatedly misbehaves and deal with him/her outside of class.

Some ideas to implement for reward:contingent

ROUTINES: create a set of predictable routines.

CODE ON THE WALL: visible

PASSPORT: little pad for stamps, stickers or comments.

A TANGIBLE PRIZE: stamps, stickers, diplomas, call to parents, email to parents, recognition on a chart/on the wall.

CONTRACTS: agree on specific objectives and what will happen if they reach those objectives.

Some ideas to implement for punishment:contingent

TIME OUT: in a supervised context, with assigned tasks.

Trick 3: Remember why and how you will evaluate.

Evaluate effectiveness in the real world.Remember differences among assessment, testing and evaluation.

Trick 4: Struggle to reach a work-life balance.

Remember your basic needs: eat and sleep well.Keep some time for yourself and remember to socialize!

Trick 5. Choose the way you want to be, find your magic.