Week 6 Reflection

Effective teaching techniques:

Through this week, I came across several methods (which get from the suggested articles) a teacher could use to create an interactive classroom especially in large classes as in lectures. It is true that I have small group of students in my classes; however, these techniques would work even better in my classes. There should be time for individual, group work and think, pair & share exercises. Presenting after the exercise ought to increase the interactivity in the class. Moreover, using interactive PowerPoint shows has great impact on students' motivation and engagement in class. Besides its use as break routine, interactive with its all elements (blank page, great deal of media, think, pair & share exercises), interactive PPT presentation involves students actively and interestingly in displayed lesson or task. 

Project step#5: implementing the potential solutions:

Looking back at my essential concern, you will notice that my students lack autonomy. I planned to give them gradual steps so that they can start depending on themselves to find suitable websites could help enhance their weakness in a skill they chose. I printed out a prepared task and handed it to my students where they have to think of a certain skill which they would like to enhance. I structured the domain of search on three important websites I found useful because the more option I give, the more confession my students will encounter to select. These are the suggested sources:

- Learn English/British Council (http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/)

- ESL independent study lab (http://legacy.lclark.edu/~krauss/toppicks/toppicks.html)

- Elllo website ( http://www.elllo.org)  

My students are required to explore the previous activity resources  and choose the one they think would aid their objective to be met.

This task should be done as homework. Next day, discussed my students about the skill they prefer to work on and everyone gave her the reasons behind their choice. Two of them want to enhance their reading and comprehension skill so that they do better in their final examinations, whereas, other two were concerning about their amount of vocabulary they need to use properly in writing and to express themselves while speaking as well. Another one I helped her to choose one skill among two so she settled on fortifying her pronunciation since she has a serious problem in pronouncing words appropriately. Enhancing grammar is choosing by the last two of my students.

Having put in mind what specific skill are aiming to focus on, all the 7 students, unfortunately, haven’t had the opportunity yet to explore any of the sites. They have been trying for a week but in vain. There was a serious problem in connectivity. My students managed to access the front page of each websites; however, they cannot go further. I gave them two days to try and the last two day I attended a one-day workshop on "Jolly Phonics" and the last day of the week I took the IELTS Test which was out of my town.

When I came today, I found the same problem of connectivity is still the obstacle in my planning which I didn't expect. I searched for this unusual problem which wasn't an issue before the second semester! I found that the communication company is trying to activate "3G" in the surrounded area. It sounds thrilling a bit, but being unable to predict when to finish this maintenance makes me in harry to work on "Plan B".   I am downloading some activities according to the skills my students will be working on and I will put the file on the LRC (Learning Resource Center) and the Computer Lab. I shall confess here that it takes me time to do it but I have to do something till the connectivity issue is solved.

Plan B:

I can assign one of my periods a week for students to visit the LRC or computer lab so my students will have the opportunity to do at least one or two activities weekly. They will also have the chance to carry the files home so they can manage their time to practice some of the activities. As assessing their progress they will be giving sheets of paper organized into columns where students will keep records on the following: skill, the title of the activity, resource, score and comments on the activity.

This is what I experienced so far. I kindly accept any suggestions, so colleagues and tutors waiting to see your comments.

Best,

Iman, Oman