Action research, reflective teaching

There are two articles here, both from the excellent TeachingEnglish.org.uk site.

"Action research" is-- among other things -- a process by which teachers "notice what they and their students really do, rather than what they think they do". It involves narrowing down a particular "problem area", and planning solutions and gathering evidence on whether or not things are working.

"Reflective teaching" is pretty much the same thing, if you ask me. The article suggests that it is "a process of self-observation and self-evaluation", which involves a cyclical asking of the following questions:

• What are you doing?
• Why are you doing it?
  
• How effective is it?
  
• How are the students responding?
  
• How can you do it better?

The difference between the two, if any, is perhaps that "action research" would call for more actual gathering of "evidence"...

But whichever name you give it, learning about teaching means you've got to think about your teaching, and reflect on it.

I'd say a blog is one of the best possible tools available for recording your thoughts... Another possibility is -- either for recording your thoughts or for actually gathering the evidence from the classroom, is a tape recorder.

Any of you ever tried taping a class and listening to it (and to yourself) afterwards...?

A joke that made me laugh out loud

Here's a joke that made me laugh out loud (I'm not sure if I could explain why -- but it's got something to do with the fact that I know how much patience teaching kids, even just being with them, sometimes requires...

Did you hear about the teacher who was helping one of her kindergarten students put on his boots?

He was really struggling, so she began pulling and him pushing. The boots still didn't want to go on. Finally, after several minutes the first boot was on. When the second boot was on, she had worked up a sweat. She almost whimpered when the little boy said, "Teacher, they're on the wrong feet."

She looked and sure enough, they were. It wasn't any easier pulling the boots off than it was putting them on. She managed to keep her cool as together they worked to get the boots back on -- this time on the right feet.

He then announced, "These aren't my boots."

She bit her tongue rather than get right in his face and scream, "Why didn't you say so?" like she wanted to.

Once again she struggled to help him pull the ill-fitting boots off. He then said, "They're my brother's boots. My Mom made me wear them."

She didn't know if she should laugh or cry. She mustered what grace and courage she had left to wrestle the boots on his feet again.

"Now," she said sweating profusely, "where are your mittens?"

He said, "I stuffed them in the toes of my boots..."

Got a favourite joke about kids... or about teaching? (No reason why everything you post on a blog should be serious!)

Classroom rules, Class contract...

Here's a picture that I took in a classroom of a well-known Barcelona language school (!). Don't ask me what "the cage" is; Petra (the ultimate punishment, apparently!) is the Head of the Young Learners Department (and is in fact a really lovely person).

Rather than "rules of the class", I might have said a "class contract", which establishes what both the learners and the teacher negotiate and commit themselves to (not) doing...

Have any of you ever tried anything like that...? Do you think it would work...?

Use the "comment" link below to reply...

More on dictations

In case you don't spot the suggestions on dictations that Kat refers to in the next post, they are "hidden" in the comments to Kat's original post on dictations... (!)

It's one of the drawbacks to blogs -- you've probably got to read them more carefully than email (is that necessarily a bad thing?).

Another suggestion: simultaneous dictation
Another idea for dictations I remember from way back, I don't know where it came from...

You divide the class into 4 groups, with each group being approximately in one corner of the room. Then give each group a (shortist) text. What they have to do is dictate their text to the other groups, and have to take down what is dictated to them by the three other groups.

What makes it fun, is that they do this simulataneously -- so, like, you've got four people dictating at once.

It sounds like a recipe for chaos, doesn't it? But try it, and I think you'll find they police themselves into (relative) silence, and have to concentrate and listen really hard...!