The Reflective Teacher

Reflective teaching means looking at what you do in the classroom, thinking about why you do it, and thinking about if it works - a process of self-observation and self-evaluation. By collecting information about what goes on in our classroom, and by analysing and evaluating this information, we identify and explore our own practices and underlying beliefs. This may then lead to changes and improvements in our teaching. 

Why it is important
Many teachers already think about their teaching and talk to colleagues about it too. You might think or tell someone that "My lesson went well" or "My students didn't seem to understand" or "My students were so badly behaved today."
However, without more time spent focusing on or discussing what has happened, we may tend to jump to conclusions about why things are happening. We may only notice reactions of the louder students. Reflective teaching therefore implies a more systematic process of collecting, recording and analysing our thoughts and observations, as well as those of our students, and then going on to making changes.
If a lesson went well we can describe it and think about why it was successful.
If the students didn't understand a language point we introduced we need to think about what we did and why it may have been unclear.
If students are misbehaving - what were they doing, when and why?
Once you have some information recorded about what goes on in your classroom, what do you do?

Think
You may have noticed patterns occurring in your teaching through your observation. You may also have noticed things that you were previously unaware of. You may have been surprised by some of your students' feedback. You may already have ideas for changes to implement.

Talk
Just by talking about what you have discovered - to a supportive colleague or even a friend - you may be able to come up with some ideas for how to do things differently.
If you have colleagues who also wish to develop their teaching using reflection as a tool, you can meet to discuss issues. Discussion can be based around scenarios from your own classes.
Using a list of statements about teaching beliefs (for example, pairwork is a valuable activity in the language class or lexis is more important than grammar) you can discuss which ones you agree or disagree with, and which ones are reflected in your own teaching giving evidence from your self-observation.

Read
You may decide that you need to find out more about a certain area. There are plenty of websites for teachers of English now where you can find useful teaching ideas, or more academic articles. There are also magazines for teachers where you can find articles on a wide range of topics. Or if you have access to a library or bookshop, there are plenty of books for English language teachers.

Ask
Pose questions to websites or magazines to get ideas from other teachers. Or if you have a local teachers' association or other opportunities for in-service training, ask for a session on an area that interests you.

Source: http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/articles/reflective-teaching-exploring-our-own-classroom-practice 

Prudential: Project Listen

Please go to http://projectlisten.com.my/Written_story.php?name=R.Malar  and read my story.

6th. International English Language Teaching Conference (iELT-Con) 2013 

Conference 

17th   to  19th April 2013 
Georgetown, Penang, Malaysia 

Website: http://eltcon.webs.com/ 
Contact person: denise quah 

An international gathering of ELT professionals in a conference that strives not to dazzle you with numbers but rather a warm cosy environment for professional development and social networking. 

Organized by: Penang English Language Learning & Teaching Association(PELLTA) 
Deadline for abstracts/proposals: 31st January 2013 

Reading Strategies

Reading and Word-Attack Strategies

Reading is not just pronouncing words—it requires understanding. Most experienced readers use a variety of strategies to understand text. Research has shown that teachers can, and should, teach these strategies to beginning readers. The following strategies can help students understand any text in any subject.  

Make PredictionsPredictions encourage active reading and keep students interested, whether or not the predictions are correct. Incorrect predictions can signal a misunderstanding that needs to be revisited. Instruct students:

• Look at the pictures, table of contents, chapter headings, maps, diagrams, and features. What subjects are in the book?
• Write down predictions about the text. During reading, look for words or phrases from those predictions.
• While reading, revise the predictions or make new ones. 

VisualizeMany students think visually, using shapes, spatial relationships, movement, and colors, and can benefit greatly from this strategy. Instruct students:

• Imagine a fiction story taking place as if it were a movie. Imagine the characters' features. Picture the plot in time and space.
• Imagine processes and explanations happening visually. Use nouns, verbs, and adjectives to create pictures, diagrams, or other mental images.
• Use graphic organizers to lay out information. Make sketches or diagrams on scrap paper. 

Ask and Answer QuestionsHaving students form their own questions helps them recognize confusion and encourages active learning. Instruct students:

• Before reading, think about the subject based on the title, chapter heads, and visual information. Make note of anything you are curious about.
• While reading, pause and write down any questions. Be sure to ask questions if there is confusion.
• Look for the answers while reading. Pause and write down the answers.
• Were all the questions answered? Could the answers come from other sources? 

Retell and SummarizeRelating the text in students' own words clears up language issues. Retelling challenges them to aim for complete retention. Summarization allows students to discriminate between main ideas and minor details. Instruct students:

• During reading, note the main ideas or events. Put a check mark in the book or write a note to point out a main idea.
• At the ends of chapters or sections, review the information or story. Note main ideas or events and the details that support them.
• After reading, retell or summarize the text. Focus on the important points, and support them with relevant details.
• Refer to the book to check the retelling or summarization. 

Connect the Text to Life Experiences, Other Texts, or Prior KnowledgeConnecting a text to students' experiences and knowledge helps students personalize the information. It also helps students remember information when they link it to their lives. Instruct students:

• Is the subject familiar? Do the characters resemble familiar people? Have you learned about the concept from school, home, or other experiences?
• Is the style or genre familiar? Does it resemble other texts? Television shows, movies, and games can be considered "texts."
• Write down similarities between the current text and experiences, knowledge, or other texts.

Word-Attack StrategiesWord-attack strategies help students decode, pronounce, and understand unfamiliar words. They help students attack words piece by piece or from a different angle. Model and instruct students:

Use Picture Clues

• Look at the picture.
• Are there people, objects, or actions in the picture that might make sense in the sentence?

Sound Out the Word

• Start with the first letter, and say each letter-sound out loud.
• Blend the sounds together and try to say the word. Does the word make sense in the sentence?

Look for Chunks in the Word

• Look for familiar letter chunks. They may be sound/symbols, prefixes, suffixes, endings, whole words, or base words.
• Read each chunk by itself. Then blend the chunks together and sound out the word. Does that word make sense in the sentence?

Connect to a Word You Know

• Think of a word that looks like the unfamiliar word.
• Compare the familiar word to the unfamiliar word. Decide if the familiar word is a chunk or form of the unfamiliar word.
• Use the known word in the sentence to see if it makes sense. If so, the meanings of the two words are close enough for understanding.

Reread the Sentence

• Read the sentence more than once.
• Think about what word might make sense in the sentence. Try the word and see if the sentence makes sense.

Keep Reading

• Read past the unfamiliar word and look for clues.
• If the word is repeated, compare the second sentence to the first. What word might make sense in both?

Use Prior Knowledge

• Think about what you know about the subject of the book, paragraph, or sentence.
• Do you know anything that might make sense in the sentence? Read the sentence with the word to see if it makes sense.

30 Ideas for Teaching Writing

The National Writing Project's 30 Ideas for Teaching Writing offers successful strategies contributed by experienced writing project teachers.
 Source: http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/922  

1. Use the shared events of students' lives to inspire writing.
2. Establish an email dialogue between students from different schools who are reading the same book.
3. Use writing to improve relations among students.
4. Help student writers draw rich chunks of writing from endless sprawl.
5. Work with words relevant to students' lives to help them build vocabulary.
6. Help students analyze text by asking them to imagine dialogue between authors.
7. Spotlight language and use group brainstorming to help students create poetry.
8. Ask students to reflect on and write about their writing.
9. Ease into writing workshops by presenting yourself as a model.
10. Get students to focus on their writing by holding off on grading.
11. Use casual talk about students' lives to generate writing.
12. Give students a chance to write to an audience for real purpose.
13. Practice and play with revision techniques.
14. Pair students with adult reading/writing buddies.
15. Teach "tension" to move students beyond fluency.
16. Encourage descriptive writing by focusing on the sounds of words.
17. Require written response to peers' writing.
18. Make writing reflection tangible.
19. Make grammar instruction dynamic.
20. Ask students to experiment with sentence length.
21. Help students ask questions about their writing.
22. Challenge students to find active verbs.
23. Require students to make a persuasive written argument in support of a final grade.
24. Ground writing in social issues important to students.
25. Encourage the "framing device" as an aid to cohesion in writing.
26. Use real world examples to reinforce writing conventions.
27. Think like a football coach.
28. Allow classroom writing to take a page from yearbook writing.
29. Use home language on the road to Standard English.
30. Introduce multi-genre writing in the context of community service.

WORLD BOOK DAY - LOSE YOURSELF IN A BOOK!

World Book Day is a celebration! It’s a celebration of authors, illustrators, books and (most importantly) it’s a celebration of reading. In fact, it’s the biggest celebration of its kind, designated by UNESCO as a worldwide celebration of books and reading, and marked in over 100 countries all over the world.

World Book Day will help to put libraries at centre stage, through offering a range of exciting activities and positive PR about libraries. 

Go to  http://www.worldbookday.com/resources/schools/secondary-schools/ 

LDP SESSION on ACTION RESEARCH in EDUCATION

I presented a professional development training session at my own school for Forms 3 - 6 teachers on Action Research in Education.

Date: 4 April 2012

Time: 2.00 pm

Venue: Cempaka Room, SMKBSP

Reflections on Lesson Study

“Improving something as complex and culturally embedded as teaching
requires the efforts of all the players, including students, parents, and
politicians. But teachers must be the primary driving force behind
change. They are best positioned to understand the problems that
students face and to generate possible solutions.”
-James Stigler and James Hiebert

In the lesson study cycle teachers work together to:
• Formulate goals for student learning and long-term development.
• Collaboratively plan a “research lesson” designed to bring life to these goals.
• Conduct the research lesson, with one team member teaching and others gathering
evidence on student learning and development.
• Discuss the evidence gathered during the lesson, using it to improve the lesson, the
unit, and instruction more generally.

The lesson study cycle provides the opportunity for teachers to:
• Think carefully about the goals of a particular lesson, unit, and subject area.
• Think deeply about long-term goals for students. What is the gap between who
students are now and who we hope they will become?
• Study and improve the best available lessons.
• Deepen their own subject-matter knowledge, by considering questions like: what
knowledge and understanding are important?; how is it developed?; what are the
gaps in student understanding and knowledge?
• Collaboratively plan lessons.
• Anticipate student thinking.
• Carefully study student learning and behavior.
• Build powerful instructional strategies – for example, develop questioning strategies
that stimulate student interest and learning.

MORE ON LESSON STUDY

Stage 4: One member of the group teaches the lesson, and other group members attend the class to observe and collect evidence of student learning, thinking and engagement.
In preparation for teaching the lesson, teams think about how to collect data that will help them determine the extent to which the learning goal is achieved.
Teams develop an observation protocol based on their predictions of student responses and decide what types of evidence will be collected from students.
Before the actual class period, inform students about the Research Lesson and the observers that will be in the classroom.
Prior to the lesson, introduce the observers to the class and indicate what they will be doing. If you are doing Lesson Study as a formal research project, remind students of informed consent.
Traditional classroom observations tend to focus on what the teacher does during the class period. Observations of Research Lessons focus on students and what they do in response to instruction. Observers should have a copy of the lesson plan and student handouts used in the lesson. Also provide observers with specific questions to focus their attention during the lesson.
To get richer information, you might invite outside observers to attend the lesson.


Stage 5: The analysis phase addresses three questions. In what ways did students accomplish the lesson goals? How could the lesson be improved? What did we learn from this experience?
After the lesson is taught, while it is still fresh in everybody's minds, the group--and any invited observers--meet to discuss and analyze it.
Participants offer their observations, interpretations and comments on the lesson. The purpose is to analyze and evaluate the lesson thoroughly in terms of student learning, thinking and engagement.
To prepare for this post-lesson session, it helps to identify someone to take careful notes during this session and to collect the additional data from lesson observers. Bring copies of important material such as observers’ notes and other documentation.
Japanese teachers refer to the post-lesson session as a “colloquium” during which the lesson study teacher, group members and outside observers discuss the Research Lesson. The person who taught the lesson is given the opportunity to speak first followed by lesson study group members and other observers. The discussion should focus on the lesson (not the teacher) and on analyzing what, how and why students learned or did not learn from the experience.

* To be continued. 

WHAT I DISCOVERED ABOUT LESSON STUDIES

A Lesson Study group usually consists of several teachers (3-6) who are interested in working together to improve their teaching and student learning.
To ensure multiple perspectives, a lesson study group should involve no fewer than three teachers. Having more than six may make arranging meetings and finding common ground difficult.
Typically, participants are from the same discipline. Include anyone who is interested, even if a person does not teach the course for which the lesson is being developed.

The learning goal is the backbone of a lesson and provides the “reason” for teaching and observing it.
Teams usually begin by selecting a subject, concept, theme, or topic in the course they want to study. Many are drawn to topics that are particularly difficult for students to learn or for teachers to teach. Others select a topic that comes later in the term so they have enough time to plan and design the lesson. Still others focus on topics that are new to the curriculum or that are especially important in their fields.
Learning goals should be stated in terms of what students will understand and what they will be able to do as a result of the lesson. Goals specify desired forms of student learning, thinking, engagement, and behavior. Whatever the instructors decide to do in the class will be considered in light of the goals.
 Example: Students can revise their drafts by identifying and evaluating main ideas and entering into critical conversations with peers.

In the planning stage, team members usually begin by sharing how they have taught or would teach the lesson, discussing and debating the merits of different types of class activities, assignments, exercises and so forth. To keep the focus on student learning, though, teachers also pool their knowledge of how students in the past have learned or struggled to learn the topic at hand. Once past experiences and personal approaches are on the table, the team can begin to design a Research Lesson that will help students achieve the chosen learning goal.

* to be continued as I dwell deeper.