Notes from Roger Gower, Diane Philips & Steve Walters: TEACHING PRACTICE

These tips will keep you in good stead when dealing with colleagues as well as your students:

Behaving professionally with colleagues:

• Clean the board when you finish
• If you rearrange the furniture, return the room to the state you found it in 
• Return borrowed materials
• Start and finish lessons on time
• Make sure you know how to use the machinery. Try not to break it & if the worst does happen, report it.

 Improve your Attitude in the Classroom:

• Smile – it shows a friendly attitude and warms the students to you.
• Respond to what students say as communication – respond naturally and show interest in what they say
• Find out about students, get to know them; address them by name. 
• Take time, show interest in both the learning & the personal interests of the students. Talk to them before and after the lesson. Notice if they are absent.
• Try to enjoy their company as a group
• Show them that you are enjoying teaching them

Use eye contact to manage the class:

• To ensure students have understood what they are supposed to do & know what is going on
• To indicate who is to speak
• To encourage ideas during eliciting ideas / responses
•  To show a student who is talking that you are taking notice
• To keep in touch with students – especially those whom you are not dealing with at that time
• To stop, to hurry up or to signal an activity like pair work
• To check everyone is participating

Use students’ names:

• Helps to establish rapport; it creates a friendly cooperative atmosphere
• Shows you are interested in them as people
• Makes possible to discuss students with colleagues / superiors

How to learn names:

• Get students to introduce each other and go around the class in random order, saying their names aloud to check if you remember
• Keep a register and call out if needed to learn names
• Associate names with physical features
• Use names consciously in the first few lessons
• Finally, if you can’t remember a name, admit it and ask!

How to make instructions effective

• Use simple language & short expressions
• Be consistent
• Use visual or written clues
• Demonstrate
• Break the instructions down
• Target your instructions
• Be decisive and use words as signals, like Right / Listen etc.

Why are pair work & group work useful?

• Gives students more valuable talk time for practice, especially language
• Allows you to withdraw and monitor individual performances
• Encourages rapport between students
• Increases cooperation and independent of teacher
• Gives opportunity for shy / unconfident students to participate
• Provides change in pace
• Adds variety to a lesson

How to monitor Group Work

• Stand back
• Quickly check
• Don’t interrupt unless there is a real need
• Spread your attention
• Be easily accessible
• Feed in ideas only if needed
• Provide encouragement & be positive
• Give correction and / or gather data for feedback

How to establish rapport and maintain discipline

• Have the right style that suits your personality
• Don’t prejudge a class
• Enjoy your job / look as if you enjoy your job
• Be positive about the activities and materials you are using
• Show personal interest in students
• Personalize materials and activities
• Respond and react to what students say
• Be interested in their progress
• Ask for comments on the class

How to gain respect from your student

• Be punctual
• Be well prepared for the lesson
• Return homework promptly
• Do what you say you are going to do
• Treat students & people consistently and fairly
• Try not to let your personal feelings about individual students influence the way you treat them as members of the group
• Don’t ignore their problems
• Never make threats you are never able or prepared to carry out
• Never lose your temper

How can you encourage students to write?

Have a positive & cooperative attitude towards writing: encourage real writing tasks; plan sufficient writing tasks; encourage peer discussion & advice; give encouraging feedback; be selective about the mistakes you are going to mark so that you don’t have to mark every single mistake made; display finished tasks in a class file / wall

Prepare students for writing: brainstorm / help gather ideas; talk about layouts

Structure writing tasks: plan writing activities carefully so that there is controlled/ guided / free writing; provide clear models; monitor carefully; show that you think neat, accurate writing is important.

Plan guided and freer practice carefully.

Guidelines for a process writing activity: 

Introduction – stimulate interest through a listening / reading text / speaking activity such as role play, visuals etc. Create a situation where a piece of writing is required. Discuss text type – letter / poster / essay / report etc. Think about reader(s). Who are they? What will interest them? What do they need to know?

Working with ideas – get ideas from students through brainstorming / using word pools / word clouds / mind maps etc. Note down ideas. Develop the ideas. Choose those ideas to keep and those to be rejected. Order the ideas. 

Planning – remind students of format of text types. 

Drafting – encourage them to write drafts in pairs. 

Reviewing / editing – students correct and improve their first draft. They look at content, language, accuracy, organization, style etc. At this stage you can take the work in and make comments. 

Re-writing – students write out the final version and submit to the teacher for checking & assessment.