Wednesday, February 21, 2018

EDUC/GINT-How To Be A Better Teacher In 2018

The following information is used for educational purposes only.


How To Be A Better Teacher In 2018

BY LAURIEGARDNER

Goodbye 2017. It’s time to start a new year fresh! If you’ve been stuck in a teaching slump because of the busyness of the holidays, read on to learn how to become a better teacher in 2018.

Redefine Your Teaching Philosophy

Most teachers have explored their teaching philosophy at one point or another in their career. If it’s been awhile since you’ve done this, I suggest you redefine your philosophy as you may have learned a bit more about your personal teaching style in the time since you last defined your philosophy. To some, this may seem like a minor detail, but it can actually be quite helpful. Knowing and understanding your teaching philosophy will help inform how you conduct class. Also, if anyone ever asks, you will be confident in your answer. If you’re having trouble getting started, you can simply google “how to write a teaching philosophy” or “teaching philosophy statement examples” to find some information on the internet. Also, you can write a general philosophy on your teaching practices as well as philosophies on planning, student growth, management, homework, attendance, etc).

Get Your Planning System in Check

All teachers should have a planning system in check for lessons. If you don’t already have a system, get one! It will organize your life and make your teaching more intentional and effective. There are many ways that you can setup your plans, but you should use whatever is the quickest and works for you. Some ideas you may want to include are: notes, objectives, language targets, list of activities, and worksheets. An important thing to remember when setting up your planning system is to get a binder (or organize them in computer folders) to save for the future. As year pass and your lessons will become more developed.

Don’t Plan Too Much

It’s so easy to get carried away and plan way too much. We have all done this - in an effort to teach as many points as possible, you overplan and end up rushing through the entire class. The next thing you know class is over and you’re left feeling confused about what just happened. Instead of trying to fit every little thing into one lesson, break up one topic into smaller parts. Teaching should only be a small part of class. For the most part, you want your class to have adequate practice time, and instead of teaching, you should become a “coach.”

Let Students Teach

They say that the best way to learn something is to teach it. If some of your class isn’t understanding the material, strategically group students and allow those that understand to teach those that don’t. This is beneficial for both groups. Teaching reaffirms what they know and gives them more confidence. Learning from peers allows them to get instruction in a different perspective and level.

Don’t be Afraid of Assessments

Assessments are important and informative. The key here is that we don’t want to go overboard. There is a such thing as too much assessing, and the way you approach assessments can make all the difference in your students attitude towards them. Good teachers are constantly assessing everyday. Of course, most assessments are informal (the ones you witness, but do not have physical evidence of). With informal assessments, you can witness what students are doing in real time to guide the lesson to where it needs to be to meet your goal. Formal assessments (also known as pen-and-paper) give us actual evidence as to where students are and help us inform future instruction.One trick is to make assessments an everyday normal part of class. As a teacher, you should let your students know that assessments are not a big deal, but as your teacher I need to know where you are so I can see how you’re growing and help you grow further. Without assessments, we are lost as to what our students need. Once you give a preassessment, you can continue to give the same assessment every few weeks, or months to continue showing progress.

Focus On Skills Growth, Not Levels

Levels are useful and helpful, but instead of getting caught up in advancing levels, focus on advancing skills. The most effective way to do this is with continuing assessments and progress updates. Share growth with your students, too. Doing so will help them learn to trust your teaching decisions, create mutual goals for teaching and learning, and continue growth at a good pace.

Respect Your Students

Respect goes a long way. When you respect your students, they’re more likely to respect you. A class dynamic of mutual respect is like no other. Classes with mutual respect allow for more effective learning and teaching. Here are some ideas for creating a respectful space: learn about their culture, ask them what they need help with, be open with them about their progress, help them set goals, ask them about their likes and dislikes, smile.

Practice Self Care

Take care of yourself outside of class so that you can show up ready to teach. Get enough rest, drink water, eat your vegetables. All those things that you should be doing anyway will really go far and give you the energy to be the best teacher you are capable of being. Don’t underestimate the power of self care.

P.S. If you enjoyed this article, please follow our Facebook page where we share more about creative, non-boring ways to teach English.



Source:https://busyteacher.org/25334-how-to-be-a-better-teacher-in-2018.html



How to Write a Lesson Plan

5 Secrets of Writing Fantastic Lesson Plans

BY TARA ARNTSEN

Writing a lesson plan will ensure that you are prepared for your class and will make it run more smoothly. It is important to break the material up into several sections and choose activities suitable for each. Knowing approximately how much time an activity will take is important, but after the first lesson you may need to adjust things accordingly. It is best to be flexible seeing as different classes will respond to material differently. If at any point students struggle, you will have to dedicate more time to instruction or drilling before moving on to practice activities. For the purposes of this example let’s assume that an English class is forty-five minutes long.



Does your own lesson plan look like this? Image credit: Chris Campbell, Flickr

How To Write a Perfect Lesson Plan

1 Warm up

A warm up activity can be used in a number of ways. It can get your students thinking about material that will be used later on in the class, review material from a previous class, or simply get your students thinking in English, moving around, or awake. This activity should only take up a small portion of your lesson, perhaps five minutes.

2 Introduction

A good introduction will create a need for students to learn the material you are going to present and get them interested in the day’s topic. This is the part of the lesson where the teacher does the most talking so try to get students involved and use choral repetition to keep students talking about half the time. Depending on how complex the topic is or how much new vocabulary there is, the introduction could take some time but in most cases, about ten minutes should be sufficient.

3 Practice

The practice activity would normally be about ten minutes and have students working individually or in pairs. Practicing model dialogues, completing worksheets, and doing short activities would be appropriate. This may take about ten minutes including going over the answers or having some demonstrations.

4 Production

In the production activity students should have to produce material on their own. Rather than reading sentences, perhaps they have to answer questions or make their own sentences. Longer activities such as board games, which can be played in groups, or activities for the whole class, where students work in teams, would be best. The remaining class time can be devoted to this activity.

5 Review

It is a good idea to plan another five minute activity that can be done at the end of class as a review or used as the warm up in the following lesson. If the production activity does not take up the remaining portion of the class period, you have a backup plan.

The idea behind a lesson plan is that another teacher could pick it up and successfully teach your class without further instructions.

Important

When writing lesson plans, be sure to include what part of the textbook you are covering in the lesson, the target structure, new vocabulary, directions for all the activities you intend to use, and the approximate time each section of your lesson will take. The idea behind a lesson plan is that another teacher could pick it up and successfully teach your class without further instructions. If there is an activity where you plan to ask the students questions so that they use the past tense in their responses, write down the questions you plan to ask. It is more difficult to think of appropriate questions on the spot and you are more likely to ask them a question using vocabulary they are unfamiliar with as well. If there is a group activity in the lesson, write down about how many students should be in each group because two to four students is a lot different than five to ten. Writing out your lesson plan can also help you figure out what material you must prepare for a lesson because if your production activity will only take about ten minutes, then you are obviously going to need an additional activity to end the class with.








Not all lessons will be conducted the same. In some instances, the introduction of new material may take an entire lesson or the production activity may be an entire lesson. It is always good to have familiar activities to fall back on in case something doesn’t work quite the way you had planned. If students are playing the board game without actually speaking, in other words just moving their pieces around the board, they are not getting the necessary practice so you may have to either join the group having difficulties or change activities altogether.

At any rate, lesson plans are enormously helpful and if the following year you find yourself teaching the same material, preparation will be a breeze.


P.S. If you enjoyed this article, please follow our Facebook page where we share more about creative, non-boring ways to teach English.





Source:https://busyteacher.org/3753-how-to-write-a-lesson-plan-5-secrets.html



6 Super Easy Steps to Creating a Winning Lesson Plan

BY SUSAN VERNER

Coming up with lesson plans is an ever present task for most teachers, and ESL teachers are no exception.

We have books, standards, and standardized tests to which we often teach. Sometimes, though, we can become so overwhelmed with the material that we fail to make a careful plan for sharing it with our students. However, that can be the exception rather than the rule if you follow these super simple steps for creating a winning lesson plan!

How to Create a Winning Lesson Plan: 6 Super Easy Steps

1 Know Your People

Before you can make any kind of effective lesson plan, you have to know your students. What age are they? Why are they studying English? What is their current proficiency level? You may already know those answers, but ask yourself the less obvious questions, too. What learning styles do they lean toward? What topics interest them? What cultures are represented in your class? Also, keep in mind any students who may have additional or special needs during the lesson.

2 Know Your Plan

Officially, you should know your learning objectives. Put more simply, this means knowing what you hope to accomplish by the end of your lesson. Do you want your students to know a specific set of vocabulary or a new grammatical structure? Do you want your class to practice using the language they already know or be comfortable with a dialogue in a specific situation? These are the language specific objectives for your lesson. If you are teaching content, think about ways to tie it to reading, writing, listening and speaking for your English students. Always keep in mind your ultimate goal, and knowing where you plan to get by the end of the lesson will help you as you work your way through it.

3 Know Your Priorities

What are the most important things your students should know from the lesson you are planning? What would you like them to know but can be cut if necessary? What extra bits of information would you like to present to the class but feel confident they are not essential to the lesson or for your students’ understanding? Decide the answers to these questions before you go into detail with your lesson plan. For example, in a speaking class learning a specific set of vocabulary may be secondary. Learning cultural nuances may be a third level priority. When you define your priorities at the start of your lesson planning, you can be sure that your students will learn what they need to learn by the end of your class.

4 Know Your Pieces

Just like any good story, a good lesson plan needs a beginning, middle and end. Plan a way of introducing the subject that will get your students thinking about what they already know, making connections in the brain. Plan more than one activity to introduce and practice new material. As you do, note any vocabulary or grammatical structures or other language specifics your student will need to successfully accomplish the tasks and make plans to review them as necessary. Also, think about whether you will need more than one class period to cover all the material in your lesson. Finish by planning a closing element to your lesson in which your students review and apply the information they learned during class.

5 Anticipate Your Pace

One of the hardest tasks for a new teacher is determining how much time a given activity will take. Often the activities we think will take the largest portion of a class period are over in a matter of minutes and those we expect our students to breeze through end up trapping them like so much muck and mire. Make sure you are ready for anything in your class by over planning activities for each lesson. It is easy to scrap an optional activity at the last minute if you run out of time but not as easy to add an activity when you have not planned for it. Be ready for anything, and after you present your lesson make note of how long you spent on each activity.

6 Process Your Outcome

It is always beneficial to spend a few moments after a lesson evaluating how it went, but your evaluation does not have to be a complicated process. Take three colored pencils – green, yellow and red, for example – and mark up your plan. What was good? Underline it in green. What was bad? Underline this in red. Is there anything that could be improved? Underline this in yellow and make a few notes. This will not only help you the next time you go through the same material with a future class, it will help you plan upcoming lessons better for the class you have now!

Different teachers will write different types of lesson plans.
Some may choose to include curriculum objectives as required by their administrations, and others may conduct their lessons from a skeletal outline. No matter where you fall in the spectrum of written plans, as long as you walk through these six points for lesson planning, both you and your students will have a positive experience with the material you present in class.





P.S. If you enjoyed this article, please follow our Facebook page where we share more about creative, non-boring ways to teach English.





Source:https://busyteacher.org/11771-create-winning-lesson-plan-6-easy-steps.html





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